ADULT SUFFRAGE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1335, 10 December 1914, Page 4

ADULT SUFFRAGE.

The remarkable development of the principle implied in the right of the people to govern, through representatives, the country they live in was referred to by Mr W, B. Scandrett, the returning officer for Invercargill, in a conversation with a representative of the Southland Daily News. He stated that Dr Robert McNab depicts sn interesting incident in his new book, “From Tasman to Marsden,” which gives the history ot the northern portion ot New Zea land from 1642 to 1818. Dr McNab refers to the visit of Thomas Fysche Palmer to New Zealand in 1800, after the expiry of bis sentence of seven years’ transportation to Botany Bay for advocating in Scotland, where he was a Unitarian minister, the principle of manhood and womanhood suffrage. The sentence was passed on him in 1793, and in 1893, just 100 years after, the Royal Assent was given to the Act of the New Zealand Parliament conferring adult suffrage on every man and woman of 21 years of age, a development which took 100 years to accomplish.