For many years these readings remained in uncontested force, not without protest on the part of women and of the friends of justice. In 1851, Lord Romilly’s Bill, otherwise called Lord Brougham’s Bill, “for shortening the language of the Acts of Parliament,” was passed. This decided that the word “man” should always include “woman” except where otherwise expressly stated. In that year the Earl of Carlisle presented a Petition drafted at a public meeting in Sheffield for the extension of the Parliamentary Suffrage to women. Sympathetic minds were stirred by the great American Convention of the subject, and in the _Westminster and Foreign Quarterly_, July, 1851, appears the notable article on “The Enfranchisement of Women,” by Mrs. Mill. “That women have as good a claim as men have to the suffrage and to be jury, it would be difficult for any one to deny.” “It is one axiom of English freedom that taxation and representation always go together; it is another that all persons must be tried by their peers, yet _both_ are denied to women.” “A reason must be given why what is permitted to one person is interdicted to another.” “Far from being _expedient_, the division of mankind into two castes, one born to rule the other, is an unqualified mischief, a source of perversion and demoralisation both to the favoured class and to those at whose expense they are favoured, producing none of the good which it is the custom to ascribe to it, and forming a bar to any really vital improvement either in the character or the social condition of the human race.” “It is the boast of modern Europeans and Americans that they know and do many things which their fore-fathers neither knew nor did; it is the most unquestionable point of their superiority that custom is not now the tyrant that it formerly was. Yet in this case prejudice appeals to custom and authority.” “Great thinkers from Plato to Condorcet have made emphatic protests in favour of the equality of women.” “We deny the right of any portion of the species to decide for another portion, or any individual for another individual what is and what is not their ‘proper sphere.’ The proper sphere of all human beings is the largest and highest they can attain to.” =The Bill of 1867.= Again the “Representation of the people” came before the House in 1867. The word “man” was exchanged for “male persons” of the 1832 Charter. John Stuart Mill redeemed his father’s errors and moved an Amendment that it should be made expressly to include women. “We ought not to deny to them what we are conceding to everyone else, a right to be consulted; of having, what every petty trade or profession has, a few members who feel specially called on to attend to their interests, to point out how these interests are affected by law.” “The want of this protection has affected their interests vitally. The rich can make private laws unto themselves by settlements, but what of the poor?”