The second case, Chorlton _v._ Ressler, a woman freeholder at Rusholme with a county qualification with no relation to the 1832 Charter of Manchester, they refused to hear. Dr. Pankhurst was silenced. The Lord Chief-Justice said to him—“Do you expect to convince us that we are wrong, and that we ought to alter our judgment just given?” Dr. Pankhurst—“Your judgment is inchoate, and might be altered during the term. (Laughter.) This is not a point of Common Law but of Constitutional Law.” The next case was Wilson _v._ Town Clerk of Salford; Martha Wilson having appeared on the Overseer’s List, and not having been objected to, wanted to know why she had been struck out. She was curtly referred to the decision in Chorlton _v._ Lings. The next case, Bennet _v._ Bromfit, was a consolidated appeal of men and women against the revising barrister at Ormskirk, who had held that certain notices of objection were valid, without the reasons of objection being stated. Here the Revising Barrister had decided that Ellen Ashcroft was qualified to vote. The Lord Chief-Justice interposed—“The Revising Barrister may have decided that Ellen Ashcroft had a right to vote, but we have decided that she has not.” “But, your Lordship, what has to become of Birch, Roberts and the other men concerned in this appeal?” “It is laid down that where appeals are improperly consolidated they cannot be heard.” And thus, in a Court of Common Law, amid peals of amused laughter, the Constitutional Privilege of British Freewomen was taken from them, as a Justice worded it, “_forever_.” Yet Coke himself had declared “Judges ought not to give any opinion of a matter of Parliament because it is not decided by the Common Law, but _secundum legem et consuetudini_ Parliamenti” (“Fourth Institute,” 15). In 1704, the Commons had resolved that “they cannot judge of the right of elections without determining the right of electors; and if the electors were at liberty to prosecute suits touching the right of giving voices in other courts, there might be different voices in other courts which would make confusion and be dishonourable to the House of Commons, and that such an action was a breach of privilege.” But this decision was accepted from the Common Law Courts, and, by Christmas, 1868, there was not a “Freewoman” left in Britain, except the _One_ who sat on the throne, holding her privileges, not as her female subjects did, by Statutes written in general terms, but by Statutes where the language designates the male sex alone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII. THE TURN OF THE TIDE. 1868-1894. “Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.”