§ MR. HAROLD COX (Preston)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has yet been able to ascertain at what age the right to vote in parliamentary elections is conferred upon citizens of the principal foreign countries.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) The following information has been collected for me by the Foreign Office from His Majesty's representatives abroad. The age at which persons, who are otherwise qualified, are entitled to exercise the franchise is in a large number of countries either twenty-one or twenty-five years. In the following countries twenty-one years is the age: Brazil, Bulgaria, Cuba, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Roumania, Servia, Sweden, United States of America, Wurtemberg. 470 In the following countries the age is twenty-five years: Baden (Baden Diet), Bavaria, Belgium (Chamber of Representatives), Germany (Empire), Hesse-Darmstadt (Hessian Diet), Luxemburg (Chamber of Deputies), Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain (Cortes), Saxony (Landtag). In Mexico and Uruguay married men otherwise qualified may exercise the franchise at eighteen years of age, unmarried men at the ages of twenty-one and twenty in the two countries respectively. In Hungary and Switzerland the age is twenty; in Spain, for the election of senators, it is twenty-three; in Austria and the Kingdom of Prussia it is twenty-four; and in Belgium, in the case of direct election to the Senate, and in Denmark it is thirty.