George III in United Kingdom

George III and the Electoral System in the Colonias

While allowing its colonies to have legislative assemblies, London was also deciding, through governors and their councillors, who would have the right to vote. The legislative assemblies of the Maritime colonies gained partial control in this area between 1784 and 1801, while Upper and Lower Canada did not do so until after their union in 1840. It was 1847, however, before London gave colonial assemblies the right to set their own rules on naturalization of immigrants, thereby giving them full authority to determine who had the right to vote. Thereafter, each colony had the authority to confer the status of British subject, but this status was valid only on its own territory; granted by London, such status was valid throughout the empire.

Initially, the rules governing the right to vote in the colonies of British North America tended to be modelled on those of the mother country. In the England of George III – the second half of the eighteenth century – several categories of individuals were denied the right to vote. First, the right to vote was based on property ownership: to be eligible to vote, an individual had to own a freehold (land free of all duties and rents), and this freehold had to generate a minimum annual revenue of 40 shillings, or £2 sterling; this immediately excluded a large segment of the population.

Of the other groups denied the vote, women undoubtedly represented the greatest number. There was no decree or law prohibiting them from voting; rather, they had not voted for centuries by virtue of a tacit convention of English common law. They did not acquire the right to vote in Canada until 1918. (Some women associated with the war effort gained the vote in 1917. For a full discussion of women and the vote, see Chapter 2.)

Nor could Catholics and Jacobites vote. Mostly Scottish and Irish Catholics, the Jacobites were supporters of James II, who had tried in vain to restore Catholicism in England in the late seventeenth century. Shortly after, in 1701, in an attempt to strengthen Protestantism, the English authorities devised three oaths of state designed to exclude Catholics and Jacobites from public office. The first oath was one of allegiance to the king of England; the second, known as the oath of supremacy, denounced Catholicism and papal authority; and the last, the oath of renunciation, repudiated all rights of James II and his descendants to the English throne. Not only was swearing these oaths necessary to hold public office, but electors could be required to swear them before voting.

What is more, the law forbade Catholics to practise their religion, to acquire property through purchase or inheritance, to sit in Parliament and to vote. The prohibition on owning property was removed in 1778, and a 1791 law allowed open practice of their religion again, but they would not be given the right to vote until 1829. Jews also experienced exclusion, though indirectly. They were not explicitly denied the vote, but they refused to take the oaths of state, because they were to be taken “in the name of the Christian faith.”

Immigrants and other new arrivals who were not British subjects and had not been in the colonies long enough to become naturalized citizens were the other sizable group unable to vote. Once again, no law or decree prohibited them from voting; rather, common law prevented them from doing so and from owning property directly or through a lease or farm tenancy. In 1844, a law was passed, allowing them to hold property through a lease or farm tenancy, and in 1870, a second law allowed them to purchase landed property directly; but both laws also stipulated that they did not have the right to vote, even if they met the legal qualifications. Since 1740, however, immigrants had been able to become British subjects and thereby gain the right to vote if they met three conditions: they had lived in England for seven years, they had taken the three oaths of state and they had received communion according to the rite of a reformed church (which was, in practice, the Church of England). These conditions prevented Catholic immigrants, as well as immigrants belonging to certain Protestant sects, such as Baptists and Methodists, from becoming British subjects.

On the whole, these restrictions were applied only partially and erratically in the North American colonies because of the different socio-economic conditions prevailing there. The criteria also varied from colony to colony, with the result that those that formed Canada initially – Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia – joined Confederation with appreciably different electoral laws.

Source: “A History of the Vote in Canada”(Ottawa, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, 2007)

Resources

See Also

• Elections
• Vote

Notes