Women In Parliament

1901

It is a fact seemingly known to very few people, that there are actually ladies who have the right and privilege to sit in the British parliament, writes Clement Scott in The Free Lance. There can be no doubt, according to many excellent authorities, that those few people who are "peeresses in their own right" can claim to sit in the house lords during any ordinary assembly that house.

Such ladies as the Countess of Cromartie, the Baroness Couyers and the Baroness Burdett-Coutts might at any time create a sensation throughout the empire by appearing in person and claiming to take their seats in that house, and if they can sit and vote there they can certainly take part in actual debates of the house.

What would happen should any such lady venture to exercise her peeress' rights in that direction the imagination fails to conceive, but it is easily seen that with the ideas which are at present in the air with regard to the advance of women we may ere long have some peeress in her own right or even more than one who will insist on these rights being accorded. Then what an upheaval of parliamentary tradition and custom there will be!