authority of the country has been vested in the Lord Proprietor, the Governor and Council, and the Twenty-four Keys.

When these three estates, or the two latter of them, were assembled, they were called the Tynwald Court; and by the joint concurrence of these three branches of the Legislative power of the Island, the laws which governed its inhabitants were enacted.

The Lords Proprietors deriving their authority under the before-mentioned grants, possessed the prerogatives, and had, for a considerable length of time, the title of royalty. They had the sovereign control of government in every instance, under such restrictions as were from time to time introduced.

With respect to the persons who composed, and had a right to a seat and voice in that Council, which, together with the Governor, formed the second branch of the Legislative power in the Island, various opinions have been offered; and as this is a question now in controversy, we shall state all the information we have been able to collect upon the subject.

The Deemster represents this Council to have consisted of the following superior lay and spiritual officers of the Lord Proprietor, viz. :-The Treasurer or Receiver-General, the Comptroller, Clerk of the Rolls, Water-Bailiff, AttorneyGeneral, two Deemsters; Bishop, Archdeacon, his Official, and the two Vicars-General of the Bishop. The Clerk of the Rolls concurs in the foregoing description of this Council, as far as relates to the before-named lay officers, adding thereto the Collectors; but considers the Bishop and other ecclesiastical officers, only entitled to attend this Council when summoned by the Governor.

The Attorney-General differs, in some measure, from each of these opinions; for, though he considers some spiritual officers to have had a fixed seat in this Council, he does not allow that all those enumerated by the Deemster were entitled

to that privilege. He further confines the right of a seat in this Council to such lay officers as composed the lord's household, and acted in his ministerial departments. He thereby excludes the Collectors, and doubts the propriety of ranking the Deemsters as members of this Council; although he admits they appear never to have been absent from the meetings of the Legislature: So that, according to his account, this Council consisted of the Receiver-General or Treasurer, the Comptroller, Clerk of the Rolls, Water-Bailiff or Collector, the Attorney-General, and probably the Bishop and Archdeacon as stated, and the Vicars-General and Official as occasional members.1

The claims of some of the before-named spiritual officers to a seat in this Council at the time of the revestment, is moreover supported by instances of the enjoyment of that privilege for a series of years prior to that period. These instances are to be found in the Manks Statute Book, which, from the beginning of the sixteenth century, generally records the names of the members of the Legislature who signed the laws enacted in the Island, either in their passage to the Lord Proprietor for his assent, or at the promulgation thereof afterwards; which signatures are admitted to be proofs of the exercise of Acts of Legislation.

From this authority it appears, that from the year 1637 to the year 1742, the Bishop, his Archdeacon, and sometimes one and at other times both the Vicars-General, subscribed their names to Bills that had received or were prepared for the assent of the Lord Proprietor; but no instance has been pointed out to us, of the like signature of the Archdeacon's Official.

1 At present the Bishop, Archdeacon, and Vicar-General are always recognised as members, but the Archdeacon's Official has never sat as a member of the Council within living memory.

Appendix,
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No. 10.

A particular enumeration of these Bills that were so signed, and of the ecclesiastics who added their signatures thereto, was delivered to us by the present Lord Bishop of the Island, and is stated in the Appendix.

We shall only add, that these Bills are, with few exceptions, Acts of general concern to the inhabitants of the Island, and by no means confined to, or connected with, ecclesiastical affairs.

The duty of this Council was to assemble, when called upon by the Lord Proprietor or his Governor, and give their assent or dissent to the laws proposed to be enacted.

The Keys, who constituted the third branch of the Legislative power of the Isle of Man, consisted of twenty-four of the principal commoners, and, as they were anciently styled, "the worthiest men in the land."

The Keys were in remote times called Taxiaxe, and have clearly existed in the Island for many centuries.

In a declaration of the laws of the Island to Sir John Stanley, at Castle Rushen, in the year 1422, the Deemsters and Twenty-four Keys "gave for law, that there was never "Twenty-four Keys in certainty since they were first that were called Taxiaxe; those were Twenty-four Freeholders, namely, eight in the Out Isles, sixteen in the Island of "Man; and that was in King Orrye's days; but since they "have not been in certainty: But if a strange point had

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come, the which the Lieutenant will have reserved to the "Tynwald twice a year; and by leave of the Lieutenant, the "Deemsters there to call, of the best of his Council in that

point as he thinketh to give judgment by; and without the

"Lord's will, none of the Twenty-four Keys to be."

Hence it may be collected, that the number of the Keys was, for some time at least, uncertain.

At what particular period, after the severance of the Isle of Man from the Outer or Western Isles, the Twenty-four Keys were all chosen in the Isle, is not ascertained; nor do we know more of the original manner of their election, than what appears from the before-mentioned declaration of law in the year 1422.

Although the time when, and the manner in which the Keys were first elected, is uncertain,2 we find from one of the before-mentioned records, that in the year 1417, Twenty-four Keys concurred with the Lord Proprietor's Commissioners in a public Act: And from this early period at least to the time of the revestment, their number has continued the same; and for an indefinite length of time prior to the year 1765, they have been elected in the following manner :

When a vacancy in the House of Keys was to be filled up, the Keys proceeded to the election and nomination of two persons to be presented to the Governor by their Speaker, as eligible thereto.3 The Governor having made choice of one of

2 That the Keys were elected by the people in ancient times appears from a document recorded in the Insular Liber Cancellarii, 1581. A commission having been directed by the Earl of Derby, the then lord of the Island, to the officers spiritual and temporal, and the twenty-four Keys, on their proceeding under the commission Bishop Merick objected "that if the twenty-four and the rest be called together for the establishing of a law to stand in force and bind his successors and the whole country, and not to decide a controversy, then he is of opinion that the twenty-four should be elected by the whole consent of the country, viz., of every sheading a number to say for and represent the rest.” The record further states that "William Christian and Hugh Holland, Archdeacon, made challenge as well to some of the spirituality as to part of the twenty-four Elders," and that "the twenty-four say that for establishing a law the country ought to give its consent for the choosing of the said twenty-four, &c., and so the commission is stayed till his lordship's pleasure be known."

3 The mole of election described in the text existed up to the passing of "The House of Keys Election Act, 1866." Under that Act the members are elected by the voters of the sheadings and towns; each of the six sheadings electing three, the town of Douglas three, and the towns of Castletown, Peel, and Ramsey one each. The House is elected for seven years, unless sooner dissolved by the Governor, who has power to do so whenever he may deem it expedient.

Under "The House of Keys Election Act, 1881," the qualification of a voter is the ownership or tenancy of real estate of £4 a year rateable value, or the occupation as a lodger of premises of the annual value of £10. Under the ownership qualification unmarried women are admitted as voters. The Keys proposed to extend the tenancy qualification to females also, but the Council objecting to it, the Keys were compelled to accept the compromise made by the

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those persons, directed the Clerk of the Rolls to administer to Appendix, him the oath in the Appendix; and thereupon he became a Key, and was entitled to hold that office for life; unless he chose to resign, and the Governor accepted such resignation; or became disqualified, by expulsion by the House of Keys, or by the acceptance of the Lord Proprietor's appointment to any office that entitled him to a seat in the Governor's Council, or of the office of Deemster.

What would have been the proceeding, if the Governor had refused both the persons presented to him for his election to supply a vacancy in the House of Keys, does not appear; nor did we learn, that there was any fixed time for declaring or filling up the vacancies in that House; but it is said, this was generally done at the next meeting of that assembly.

In case the Keys did not all concur in the nomination of two persons eligible to be a member of their House, their Speaker, at the time fixed for filling up the vacancy therein, collected from each of the members then present, the name of the person he wished to appoint; and having so done, declared the names of the two persons in whose favour the majority of the Keys then present had thus decided, and presented the same to the Governor, for his selection of one of them.

It seems agreed, that no person was capable of being elected a Key until he was twenty-one years of age; but what other qualifications were necessary to entitle him to enjoy that office, appear by no means settled, nor could we find that this ques

tion had been ever decided.

That some real property was necessary, was admitted, and may be collected from the declaration of the law in the year 1422, where the first Keys are said to have been freeholders.

Act as it stands, in order to obtain an admission of the principle of the right of women to vote, but in doing so recorded their protest against their partial exclusion. This Act is said to be the only law now existing in Europe recognizing the right of women to vote in the election of the members of a legislative body.