Volume II Part 83 (1/2)

James Madison said:

Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that the ma.s.s of the citizens should not be without a voice in making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the magistrates who are to administer them.

Also,

Let it be remembered, finally, that it has ever been the pride and the boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature.

And these a.s.sertions of the framers of the United States Const.i.tution of the equal and natural rights of all the people to a voice in the government, have been affirmed and reaffirmed by the leading statesmen of the nation, throughout the entire history of our Government.

Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said in 1866:

I have made up my mind that the elective franchise is one of the inalienable rights meant to be secured by the Declaration of Independence.

B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three days' discussion in the United States Senate in 1866, on Senator Cowan's motion to strike ”male” from the District of Columbia suffrage bill, said:

Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and as a matter of fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of race or s.e.x. I will go farther, and say that I recognize the right of franchise as being intrinsically a natural right. I do not believe that society is authorized to impose any limitations upon it that do not spring out of the necessities of the social state itself.

Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against the XIV. and XV.

Amendments, insisted that, so soon as by the XIII. Amendment the slaves became free men, the original powers of the United States Const.i.tution guaranteed to them equal rights--the right to vote and to be voted for:

I do not hesitate to say that when the slaves of our country became ”citizens,” they took their place in the body politic as a component part of the ”people,” ent.i.tled to equal rights, and under the protection of these two guardian principles: First, that all just governments stand on the consent of the governed; and second, that taxation without representation is tyranny; and these rights it is the duty of Congress to guarantee as essential to the idea of a Republic.

The preamble of the Const.i.tution of the State of New York declares:

We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty G.o.d for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish this Const.i.tution.

Here is not the slightest intimation, either of receiving freedom from the United States Const.i.tution, or of the State conferring the blessings of liberty upon the people; and the same is true of every one of the thirty-six State Const.i.tutions. Each and all alike declare rights G.o.d-given, and that to secure the people in the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, is their one and only object in ordaining and establis.h.i.+ng government. And all of the State const.i.tutions are equally emphatic in their recognition of the ballot as the means of securing the people in the enjoyment of these rights. Article 1 of the New York State Const.i.tution says:

No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.

And so carefully guarded is the citizen's right to vote, that the Const.i.tution makes special mention of all who may not vote:

Laws may be pa.s.sed excluding from the right of suffrage all persons who have been or may be convicted of bribery, larceny, or any infamous crime.

In naming the various employments that shall not affect the residence of voters, the 3d section of Article 2d says

That being kept at any almshouse or other asylum, at public expense, nor being confined at any public prison, shall deprive a person of his residence,

and hence his vote. Thus is the right of voting most sacredly hedged about. The only seeming permission in our const.i.tution for the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women is in section 1st of Article 2d:

Every male citizen of the age of twenty-one years, etc., shall be ent.i.tled to vote.

But I insist that in view of the explicit a.s.sertions of the equal right of the whole people, both in the preamble and previous article of the const.i.tution, this omission of the adjective ”female” in the second, should not be construed into a denial; but, instead, counted as of no effect. Mark the direct prohibition:

”No member of this State shall be disfranchised, unless by the 'law of the land,' or the judgment of his peers.”

”The law of the land,” is the United States Const.i.tution; and there is no provision in that doc.u.ment that can be fairly construed into a permission to the States to deprive any cla.s.s of their citizens of their right to vote. Hence New York can get no power from that source to disfranchise one entire half of her members. Nor has ”the judgment of their peers” been p.r.o.nounced against women exercising their right to vote. No disfranchised person is allowed to be judge or juror--and none but disfranchised persons can be women's peers; nor has the Legislature pa.s.sed laws excluding them on account of idiocy or lunacy; nor yet the courts convicted them of bribery, larceny, or any infamous crime. Clearly, then, there is no const.i.tutional ground for the exclusion of women from the ballot-box in the State of New York. No barriers whatever stand to-day between women and the exercise of their right to vote save those of precedent and prejudice.

The clauses of the United States Const.i.tution, cited by our opponents as giving power to the States to disfranchise any cla.s.ses of citizens they shall please, are contained in sections 2d and 4th of article 1st. The second says:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States; and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.