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Otago Witness, Issue 3169, 9 December 1914, Page 74

Tho remarkable development of the principle implied in the right of the people to govern through representatives the country they live in was referred to on tho 24th ult. by Mr W. B. Scandrett, the returning officer for Invercargill, in a conversation with a representative of the Southland News, who stated that tho Hon. Dr Robert M'Nab depicts an interesting incident in his now book “From Tasman to Marsdcii,” which gives tho history of the northern portion of New Zealand from 1642 1818. Dr M'Nab refers to the visit of Thomas Fysche Palmer to New Zealand in 1800 after tho expiry of his sentence of seven years’ transportation to Botany Bay for advocating in Scotland, where ho was an 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 sufferago on men and women of 21 years of age, a development which took 100 years to accomplish.