MANX PARLIAMENT

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 148, 19 December 1929, Page 25

MANX PARLIAMENT

TEN CENTURIES OLD

FIRST WOMEN VOTERS

The smallest democratically self-gov-orning community .in the British Empire is in the throes, of a General Election. In the capital, the three towns, and the six sheadings the electorate is being wooed, and shortly the electors will choose their representatives for the House of Keys. Then the third estate of the realm of the Isle of Man will once more |be complete.

The niceties• of. Manx politics, writes Lewis Broad-in; the "Daily Telegraph," are..unknown mysteries for Englishmen, whose'ignorance, I fear, has been fostered by the jealousies of our constitutional historians. The existence of the House of Keys is a standing reproof, for those grandiloquent claims of the unparalleled antiquity of the English Parliament. The Manxman who hears an-Englishman boasting can only suggest, in all humility that if England's ■is - the "mother,: then Mona 's must be the •venerable grandmother of parliaments.. /;

If all they claim in .Man is true, then the. Tynwald arid the House of Keys have a historical continuity which cannot, be paralleled in.Europe outside Iceland. Even sceptics . must agree that the Manx historians have made out a ease, which, has all the semblance of being unimpeachable. A NORSE SETTLEMENT. All Manx customs not demonstrably of modern origin: are attributed to those Norse emigrants who made Man a Viking settlement during the ninth century, and'if we may credit the historians these Norsemen had already evolved a system of constitutional government. So.:at -a time when Charlemagne was campaigning in Europe and when Alfred and the Danes were contending for supremacy in England, Manxmen were /already favoured with the blessings .which flow from government by three estates of the realm.

To attest the..archaic origin of the Island constitution alll its nomenclature is invoked—Tynwald, from "Phigvollr," Norse for Parliament field; Keys, from "Kjosa," Scandinavian for chosen, which must, of course, mean elected: sheading (the constituencies), from "Settungr,"-or 1 sixth part, the Island being divided. into North-side, South-side, each with ■ three sheadings. Nor must you miss the significance of i the fact that the House of Keys consists of twenty-four members. Twelve and its multiples was the sacred num-

ber of the. Scandinavians, who Insisted that overy body of or. judges should be constitutedl in-accord with this belief —one, byi the way, which has given England her jury/of twelve good men and true. ■ POLITICAL PIONEERS. One result of the yearly origin of their constitution was that' Manxmen were able to pass ttfrougu the stages of development a few centuries ahead of the English, and' they had reached the period of oligarchy and corruption by the time Simon .de Montfort , and Stephen Langton were founding England's liberties. Unfortunately for the Manx, their oligarchy was long maintained, and the Keform Bill, which founded English democracy in 1832, was deferred in Man until 1866, when the House of Keys was again made an elective body instead';of a self-consti-tutued oligarchy.

A few years' later—as every woman should know—Manxmen again" took the lead as pioneers in political progress. In ISBI an electoral law was passed which, under an ownership of property qualification, admitted unmarried women as voters. So-the Tynwald which claims to be the oldest free and independent legislature in the world, can also boast of having led the way among the States of Europe in conferring rights of citizenship upon women. It is a pity that the ancient suzerainty of the island has had to pass with the march of progress. For several centuries successive heads of the Stanley family lorded it over. Man with all the pomp of "petty sovereigns, and then, in the eighteenth century, the Duke of Atlioll became Lord of Man in the right of his wife. . .

Troubles with this smugglers and the excise men became, at last, so acute that the Imperial Government decided to acquire and extinguish the sovereign and manorial, rights. So, in 1765, a '' Revesting Act was passed which terminated the suzerainty which had endured through the centuries. With it passed the feudal7 act ' of homage which had been performed at all coronations.