Here is no shadow of government authorit_An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872, and on the Trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, the Inspectors of Election by Whom Her Vote was Received.

any class from their full and equal enjoyment. Here is pronounced the

right of all men, and "consequently," as the Quaker preacher said, "of

all women," to a voice in the government. And here, in this very first

paragraph of the declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of

all to the ballot; for, how can "the consent of the governed" be given,

if the right to vote be denied. Again:

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends,

it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a

new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and

organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to

effect their safety and happiness."

Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is here clearly implied.

For however destructive to their happiness this government might

become, a disfranchised class could neither alter nor abolish it, nor

institute a new one, except by the old brute force method of

insurrection and rebellion. One-half of the people of this nation to-day

are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or

to write there a new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are

with this form of government, that enforces taxation without

representation,--that compels them to obey laws to which they have never

given their consent,--that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a

jury of their peers, that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of

their own persons, wages and children,--are this half of the people left

wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct violation of the spirit

and letter of the declarations of the framers of this government, every

one of which was based on the immutable principle of equal rights to

all. By those declarations, kings, priests, popes, aristocrats, were all

alike dethroned, and placed on a common level, politically, with the

lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, men, as such, were deprived

of their divine right to rule, and placed on a political level with

women. By the practice of those declarations all class and caste

distinction will be abolished; and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman,

all alike, bound from their subject position to the proud platform of

equality.

The preamble of the federal constitution says:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more

perfect union, establish justice, insure _domestic_ tranquility,

provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and

secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do

ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of

America."

It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the

male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. And we

formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not

to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole

people--women as well as men. And it is downright mockery to talk to

women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are

denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this

democratic-republican government--the ballot.

The early journals of Congress show that when the committee reported to

that body the original articles of confederation, the very first article

which became the subject of discussion was that respecting equality of

suffrage. Article 4th said:

"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and

intercourse between the people of the different States of this

Union, the free inhabitants of each of the States, (paupers,

vagabonds and fugitives from justice excepted,) shall be entitled

to all the privileges and immunities of the free citizens of the

several States."

Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of the

universal application of the great principle of equal rights to all--in

order to produce the desired result--a harmonious union and a

homogeneous people.

Luther Martin, attorney-general of Maryland, in his report to the

Legislature of that State of the convention that framed the United

States Constitution, said:

"Those who advocated the equality of suffrage took the matter up on

the original principles of government: that the reason why each

individual man in forming a State government should have an equal

vote, is because each individual, before he enters into government,

is equally free and equally independent."

James Madison said:

"Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that the

mass 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 assertions of the framers of the United States Constitution 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 sex. 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. Sir, I have been shocked, in the course of this

debate, to hear Senators declare this right only a conventional and

political arrangement, a privilege yielded to you and me and

others; not a right in any sense, only a concession! Mr. President,

I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the contrary, I

believe that whenever you establish that doctrine, whenever you

crystalize that idea in the public mind of this country, you ring

the death-knell of American liberties."

Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against the fourteenth and

fifteenth amendments, insisted that, so soon as by the thirteenth

amendment the slaves became free men, the original powers of the United

States Constitution guaranteed to them equal rights--the right to vote

and to be voted for. In closing one of his great speeches he said:

"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,' entitled 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 Constitution of the State of New York declares the

same purpose. It says:

"We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God

for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish

this Constitution."

Here is not the slightest intimation, either of receiving freedom from

the United States Constitution, 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 Constitutions. Each and all, alike declare rights

God-given, and that to secure the people in the enjoyment of their

inalienable rights, is their one and only object in ordaining and

establishing government. And all of the State Constitutions 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 Constitution 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

Constitution makes special mention of all who may be excluded. It says:

"Laws may be passed 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 alms

house, 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 the New York State Constitution for the

disfranchisement of women is in section 1st of article 2d, which says:

"Every male citizen of the age of twenty-one years, &c., shall be

entitled to vote."

But I submit that in view of the explicit assertions of the equal right

of the whole people, both in the preamble and previous article of the

constitution, 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 Constitution: and

there is no provision in that document that can be fairly construed into

a permission to the States to deprive any class 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 pronounced 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

passed 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 constitutional 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 Constitution, cited by our opponents as

giving power to the States to disfranchise any classes 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."

This cannot be construed into a concession to the States of the power to

destroy the right to become an elector, but simply to prescribe what

shall be the qualifications, such as competency of intellect, maturity

of age, length of residence, that shall be deemed necessary to enable

them to make an intelligent choice of candidates. If, as our opponents

assert, the last clause of this section makes it the duty of the United

States to protect citizens in the several States against higher or

different qualifications for electors for representatives in Congress,

than for members of Assembly, then must the first clause make it equally

imperative for the national government to interfere with the States, and

forbid them from arbitrarily cutting off the right of one-half of the

people to become electors altogether. Section 4th says:

"The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and

Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the

Legislature thereof; but Congress may at any time, by law, make or

alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing

Senators."

Here is conceded the power only to prescribe times, places and manner of

holding the elections; and even with these Congress may interfere, with

all excepting the mere place of choosing Senators. Thus you see, there

is not the slightest permission in either section for the States to

discriminate against the right of any class of citizens to vote. Surely,

to regulate cannot be to annihilate! nor to qualify to wholly deprive.

And to this principle every true Democrat and Republican said amen, when

applied to black men by Senator Sumner in his great speeches for EQUAL

RIGHTS TO ALL from 1865 to 1869; and when, in 1871, I asked that Senator

to declare the power of the United States Constitution to protect women

in their right to vote--as he had done for black men--he handed me a

copy of all his speeches during that reconstruction period, and said:

"Miss Anthony, put 'sex' where I have 'race' or 'color,' and you

have here the best and strongest argument I can make for woman.

There is not a doubt but women have the constitutional right to

vote, and I will never vote for a sixteenth amendment to guarantee

it to them. I voted for both the fourteenth and fifteenth under

protest; would never have done it but for the pressing emergency of

that hour; would have insisted that the power of the original

Constitution to protect all citizens in the equal enjoyment of

their rights should have been vindicated through the courts. But

the newly made freedmen had neither the intelligence, wealth nor

time to wait that slow process. Women possess all these in an

eminent degree, and I insist that they shall appeal to the courts,

and through them establish the powers of our American _magna

charta_, to protect every citizen of the Republic. But, friends,

when in accordance with Senator Summer's counsel, I went to the

ballot-box, last November, and exercised my citizen's right to

vote, the courts did not wait for me to appeal to them--they

appealed to me, and indicted me on the charge of having voted

illegally."

Senator Sumner, putting sex where he did color, said:

"Qualifications cannot be in their nature permanent or

insurmountable. Sex cannot be a qualification any more than size,

race, color, or previous condition of servitude. A permanent or

insurmountable qualification is equivalent to a deprivation of the

suffrage. In other words, it is the tyranny of taxation without

representation, against which our revolutionary mothers, as well as

fathers, rebelled."

For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the

disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of

attainder, or an _ex post facto_ law, and is therefore a violation of

the supreme law of the land. By it, the blessings of liberty are forever

withheld from women and their female posterity. To them, this government

has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them

this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an

odious aristocracy; a hateful obligarchy of sex. The most hateful

aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe. An obligarchy of

wealth, where the rich govern the poor; an obligarchy of learning, where

the educated govern the ignorant; or even an obligarchy of race, where

the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this obligarchy of

sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the obligarchs over

the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of every household; which

ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension,

discord and rebellion into every home of the nation. And this most

odious aristocracy exists, too, in the face of Section 4, of Article 4,

which says:

"The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a

republican form of government."

What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference between the inhabitants

of a monarchical and those of a republican form of government, save

that in the monarchical the people are subjects, helpless, powerless,

bound to obey laws made by superiors--while in the republican, the

people are citizens, individual sovereigns, all clothed with equal

power, to make and unmake both their laws and law makers, and the moment

you deprive a person of his right to a voice in the government, you

degrade him from the status of a citizen of the republic, to that of a

subject, and it matters very little to him whether his monarch be an

individual tyrant, as is the Czar of Russia, or a 15,000,000 headed

monster, as here in the United States; he is a powerless subject, serf

or slave; not a free and independent citizen in any sense.

But, it is urged, the use of the masculine pronouns he, his and him, in

all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were meant to be

included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the

letter of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent, and accept

the other horn of the dilemma, which would compel you to exempt women

from taxation for the support of the government, and from penalties for

the violation of laws.

A year and a half ago I was at Walla Walla, Washington Territory. I saw

there a theatrical company, called the "Pixley Sisters," playing before

crowded houses, every night of the whole week of the territorial fair.

The eldest of those three fatherless girls was scarce eighteen. Yet

every night a United States officer stretched out his long fingers, and

clutched six dollars of the proceeds of the exhibitions of those orphan

girls, who, but a few years before, were half starvelings in the streets

of Olympia, the capital of that far-off north-west territory. So the

poor widow, who keeps a boarding house, manufactures shirts, or sells

apples and peanuts on the street corners of our cities, is compelled to

pay taxes from her scanty pittance. I would that the women of this

republic, at once, resolve, never again to submit to taxation, until

their right to vote be recognized.

Miss Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., twenty years ago, took this

position. For several years, the officers of the law distrained her

property, and sold it to meet the necessary amount; still she persisted,

and would not yield an iota, though every foot of her lands should be

struck off under the hammer. And now, for several years, the assessor

has left her name off the tax list, and the collector passed her by

without a call.

Mrs. J.S. Weeden, of Viroqua, Wis., for the past six years, has refused

to pay her taxes, though the annual assessment is $75.

Mrs. Ellen Van Valkenburg, of Santa Cruz, Cal., who sued the County

Clerk for refusing to register her name, declares she will never pay

another dollar of tax until allowed to vote; and all over the country,

women property holders are waking up to the injustice of taxation

without representation, and ere long will refuse, _en masse_, to submit

to the imposition.

There is no she, or her, or hers, in the tax laws.

The statute of New York reads:

"Every person shall be assessed in the town or ward where _he_

resides when the assessment is made, for the lands owned by _him_,

&c." "Every collector shall call at least once on the person taxed,

or at _his_ usual place of residence, and shall demand payment of

the taxes charged on _him_. If any one shall refuse to pay the tax

imposed on _him_, the collector shall levy the same by distress and

sale of _his_ property."

The same is true of all the criminal laws:

"No person shall be compelled to be a witness against _himself_,

&c."

The same with the law of May 31st, 1870, the 19th section of which I am

charged with having violated; not only are all the pronouns in it

masculine, but everybody knows that that particular section was intended

expressly to hinder the rebels from voting. It reads "If any person

shall knowingly vote without _his_ having a lawful right," &c. Precisely

so with all the papers served on me--the U.S. Marshal's warrant, the

bail-bond, the petition for habeas corpus, the bill of indictment--not

one of them had a feminine pronoun printed in it; but, to make them

applicable to me, the Clerk of the Court made a little carat at the left

of "he" and placed an "s" over it, thus making _she_ out of _he_. Then

the letters "is" were scratched out, the little carat under and "er"

over, to make _her_ out of _his_, and I insist if government officials

may thus manipulate the pronouns to tax, fine, imprison and hang women,

women may take the same liberty with them to secure to themselves their

right to a voice in the government.

So long as any classes of men were denied their right to vote, the

government made a show of consistency, by exempting them from taxation.

When a property qualification of $250 was required of black men in New

York, they were not compelled to pay taxes, so long as they were content

to report themselves worth less than that sum; but the moment the black

man died, and his property fell to his widow or daughter, the black

woman's name would be put on the assessor's list, and she be compelled

to pay taxes on the same property exempted to her husband. The same is

true of ministers in New York. So long as the minister lives, he is

exempted from taxation on $1,500 of property, but the moment the breath

goes out of his body, his widow's name will go down on the assessor's

list, and she will have to pay taxes on the $1,500. So much for the

special legislation in favor of women.

In all the penalties and burdens of the government, (except the

military,) women are reckoned as citizens, equally with men. Also, in

all the privileges and immunities, save those of the jury box and ballot

box, the two fundamental privileges on which rest all the others. The

United States government not only taxes, fines, imprisons and hangs

women, but it allows them to pre-empt lands, register ships, and take

out passport and naturalization papers. Not only does the law permit

single women and widows to the right of naturalization, but Section 2

says: "A married woman may be naturalized without the concurrence of her

husband." (I wonder the fathers were not afraid of creating discord in

the families of foreigners); and again: "When an alien, having complied

with the law, and declared his intention to become a citizen, dies

before he is actually naturalized, his widow and children shall be

considered citizens, entitled to all rights and privileges as such, on

taking the required oath." If a foreign born woman by becoming a

naturalized citizen, is entitled to all the rights and privileges of

citizenship, is not a native born woman, by her national citizenship,

possessed of equal rights and privileges?

The question of the masculine pronouns, yes and nouns, too, has been

settled by the United States Supreme Court, in the Case of _Silver

versus Ladd_, December, 1868, in a decision as to whether a woman was

entitled to lands, under the Oregon donation law of 1850. Elizabeth

Cruthers, a widow, settled upon a claim, and received patents. She died,

and her son was heir. He died. Then Messrs. Ladd & Nott took possession,

under the general pre-emption law, December, 1861. The administrator,

E.P. Silver, applied for a writ of ejectment at the land office in

Oregon City. Both the Register and Receiver decided that an unmarried

woman could not hold land under that law. The Commissioner of the

General Land Office, at Washington, and the Secretary of the Interior,

also gave adverse opinions. Here patents were issued to Ladd & Nott, and

duly recorded. Then a suit was brought to set aside Ladd's patent, and

it was carried through all the State Courts and the Supreme Court of

Oregon, each, in turn, giving adverse decisions. At last, in the United

States Supreme Court, Associate Justice Miller reversed the decisions of

all the lower tribunals, and ordered the land back to the heirs of Mrs.

Cruthers. The Court said:

"In construing a benevolent statute of the government, made for the

benefit of its own citizens, inviting and encouraging them to

settle on its distant public lands, the words 'single man,' and

'unmarried man' may, especially if aided by the context and other

parts of the statute, be taken in a generic sense. Held,

accordingly, that the Fourth Section of the Act of Congress, of

September 27th, 1850, granting by way of donation, lands in Oregon

Territory, to every white settler or occupant, American half-breed

Indians included, embraced within the term _single man_ an

_unmarried woman_."

And the attorney, who carried this question to its final success, is now

the United States senator elect from Oregon, Hon. J.H. Mitchell, in whom

the cause of equal rights to women has an added power on the floor of

the United States Senate.

Though the words persons, people, inhabitants, electors, citizens, are

all used indiscriminately in the national and state constitutions, there

was always a conflict of opinion, prior to the war, as to whether they

were synonymous terms, as for instance:

"_No person_ shall be a _representative_ who shall not have been

seven years a _citizen_, and who shall not, when elected, be an

_inhabitant_ of that state in which he is chosen. No _person_ shall

be a senator who shall not have been a _citizen_ of the United

States, and an _inhabitant_ of that state in which he is chosen."

But, whatever room there was for a doubt, under the old regime, the

adoption of the fourteenth amendment settled that question forever, in

its first sentence: "All persons born or naturalized in the United

States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the

United States and of the state wherein they reside."

And the second settles the equal status of all persons--all citizens:

"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the

privileges or immunities of citizens; nor shall any state deprive

any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of

law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal

protection of the laws."

The only question left to be settled, now, is: Are women persons? And I

hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they

are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens, and no state has a

right to make any new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge

their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against

women in the constitutions and laws of the several states, is to-day

null and void, precisely as is every one against negroes.

Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities of citizens? I

think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state prisoners will all

agree with me, that it is not only one of them, but the one without

which all the others are nothing. Seek first the kingdom of the ballot,

and all things else shall be given thee, is the political injunction.

Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define citizen to be a person, in the

United States, entitled to vote and hold office.

Prior to the adoption of the thirteenth amendment, by which slavery was

forever abolished, and black men transformed from property to persons,

the judicial opinions of the country had always been in harmony with

these definitions. To be a person was to be a citizen, and to be a

citizen was to be a voter.

Associate Justice Washington, in defining the privileges and immunities

of the citizen, more than fifty years ago, said: "they included all such

privileges as were fundamental in their nature. And among them is the

right to exercise the elective franchise, and to hold office."

Even the "Dred Scott" decision, pronounced by the abolitionists and

republicans infamous, because it virtually declared "black men had no

rights white men were bound to respect," gave this true and logical

conclusion, that to be one of the people was to be a citizen and a

voter.

Chief Judge Daniels said:

"There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of

writers on government, or in any actual experiment heretofore

tried, an exposition of the term citizen, which has not been

considered as conferring the actual possession and enjoyment of the

perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment of an entire equality of

privileges, civil and political."

Associate Justice Taney said:

"The words 'people of the United States,' and 'citizens,' are

synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the

political body, who, according to our republican institutions, form

the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the government,

through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the

sovereign people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a

constituent member of this sovereignty."

Thus does Judge Taney's decision, which was such a terrible ban to the

black man, while he was a slave, now, that he is a person, no longer

property, pronounce him a citizen, possessed of an entire equality of

privileges, civil and political. And not only the black man, but the

black woman, and all women as well.

And it was not until after the abolition of slavery, by which the

negroes became free men, hence citizens, that the United States

Attorney, General Bates, rendered a contrary opinion. He said:

"The constitution uses the word 'citizen' only to express the

political quality, (not equality mark,) of the individual in his

relation to the nation; to declare that he is a member of the body

politic, and bound to it by the reciprocal obligations of

allegiance on the one side, and protection on the other. The

phrase, 'a citizen of the United States,' without addition or

qualification, means neither more nor less than a member of the

nation."

Then, to be a citizen of this republic, is no more than to be a subject

of an empire. You and I, and all true and patriotic citizens must

repudiate this base conclusion. We all know that American citizenship,

without addition or qualification, means the possession of equal rights,

civil and political. We all know that the crowning glory of every

citizen of the United States is, that he can either give or withhold his

vote from every law and every legislator under the government.

Did "I am a Roman citizen," mean nothing more than that I am a "member"

of the body politic of the republic of Rome, bound to it by the

reciprocal obligations of allegiance on the one side, and protection on

the other? Ridiculously absurd question, you say. When you, young man,

shall travel abroad, among the monarchies of the old world, and there

proudly boast yourself an "American citizen," will you thereby declare

yourself neither more nor less than a "member" of the American nation?

And this opinion of Attorney General Bates, that a black citizen was not

a voter, made merely to suit the political exigency of the republican

party, in that transition hour between emancipation and enfranchisement,

was no less infamous, in spirit or purpose, than was the decision of

Judge Taney, that a black man was not one of the people, rendered in

the interest and at the behest of the old democratic party, in its

darkest hour of subjection to the slave power. Nevertheless, all of the

adverse arguments, adverse congressional reports and judicial opinions,

thus far, have been based on this purely partisan, time-serving opinion

of General Bates, that the normal condition of the citizen of the United

States is that of disfranchisement. That only such classes of citizens

as have had special legislative guarantee have a legal right to vote.

And if this decision of Attorney General Bates was infamous, as against

black men, but yesterday plantation slaves, what shall we pronounce upon

Judge Bingham, in the house of Representatives, and Carpenter, in the

Senate of the United States, for citing it against the women of the

entire nation, vast numbers of whom are the peers of those honorable

gentlemen, themselves, in morals!! intellect, culture, wealth,

family--paying taxes on large estates, and contributing equally with

them and their sex, in every direction, to the growth, prosperity and

well-being of the republic? And what shall be said of the judicial

opinions of Judges Carter, Jameson, McKay and Sharswood, all based upon

this aristocratic, monarchial idea, of the right of one class to govern

another?

I am proud to mention the names of the two United States Judges who have

given opinions honorable to our republican idea, and honorable to

themselves--Judge Howe, of Wyoming Territory, and Judge Underwood, of

Virginia.

The former gave it as his opinion a year ago, when the Legislature

seemed likely to revoke the law enfranchising the women of that

territory, that, in case they succeeded, the women would still possess

the right to vote under the fourteenth amendment.

Judge Underwood, of Virginia, in noticing the recent decision of Judge

Carter, of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, denying to

women the right to vote, under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment,

says;

"If the people of the United States, by amendment of their

constitution, could expunge, without any explanatory or assisting

legislation, an adjective of five letters from all state and local

constitutions, and thereby raise millions of our most ignorant

fellow-citizens to all of the rights and privileges of electors,

why should not the same people, by the same amendment, expunge an

adjective of four letters from the same state and local

constitutions, and thereby raise other millions of more educated

and better informed citizens to equal rights and privileges,

without explanatory or assisting legislation?"

If the fourteenth amendment does not secure to all citizens the right to

rote, for what purpose was that grand old charter of the fathers

lumbered with its unwieldy proportions? The republican party, and Judges

Howard and Bingham, who drafted the document, pretended it was to do

something for black men; and if that something was not to secure them in

their right to vote and hold office, what could it have been? For, by

the thirteenth amendment, black men had become people, and hence were

entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the government,

precisely as were the women of the country, and foreign men not

naturalized. According to Associate Justice Washington, they already had

the

"Protection of the government, the enjoyment of life and liberty,

with the right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and

to pursue and obtain happiness and safety, subject to such

restraints as the government may justly prescribe for the general

welfare of the whole; the right of a citizen of one state to pass

through or to reside in any other state for the purpose of trade,

agriculture, professional pursuit, or otherwise; to claim the

benefit of the writ of habeas corpus, to institute and maintain

actions of any kind in the courts of the state; to take, hold, and

dispose of property, either real or personal, and an exemption from

higher taxes or impositions than are paid by the other citizens of

the state."

Thus, you see, those newly freed men were in possession of every

possible right, privilege and immunity of the government, except that of

suffrage, and hence, needed no constitutional amendment for any other

purpose. What right, I ask you, has the Irishman the day after he

receives his naturalization papers that he did not possess the day

before, save the right to vote and hold office? And the Chinamen, now

crowding our Pacific coast, are in precisely the same position. What

privilege or immunity has California or Oregon the constitutional right

to deny them, save that of the ballot? Clearly, then, if the fourteenth

amendment was not to secure to black men their right to vote, it did

nothing for them, since they possessed everything else before. But, if

it was meant to be a prohibition of the states, to deny or abridge their

right to vote--which I fully believe--then it did the same for all

persons, white women included, born or naturalized in the United States;

for the amendment does not say all male persons of African descent, but

all persons are citizens.

The second section is simply a threat to punish the states, by reducing

their representation on the floor of Congress, should they disfranchise

any of their male citizens, on account of color, and does not allow of

the inference that the states may disfranchise from any, or all other

causes; nor in any wise weaken or invalidate the universal guarantee of

the first section. What rule of law or logic would allow the conclusion,

that the prohibition of a crime to one person, on severe pains and

penalties, was a sanction of that crime to any and all other persons

save that one?

But, however much the doctors of the law may disagree, as to whether

people and citizens, in the original constitution, were one and the

same, or whether the privileges and immunities in the fourteenth

amendment include the right of suffrage, the question of the citizen's

right to vote is settled forever by the fifteenth amendment. "The

citizen's right to vote shall not be denied by the United States, nor

any state thereof; on account of race, color, or previous condition of

servitude." How can the state deny or abridge the right of the citizen,

if the citizen does not possess it? There is no escape from the

conclusion, that to vote is the citizen's right, and the specifications

of race, color, or previous condition of servitude can, in no way,

impair the force of the emphatic assertion, that the citizen's right to

vote shall not be denied or abridged.

The political strategy of the second section of the fourteenth

amendment, failing to coerce the rebel states into enfranchising their

negroes, and the necessities of the republican party demanding their

votes throughout the South, to ensure the re-election of Grant in 1872,

that party was compelled to place this positive prohibition of the

fifteenth amendment upon the United States and all the states thereof.

If we once establish the false principle, that United States citizenship

does not carry with it the right to vote in every state in this Union,

there is no end to the petty freaks and cunning devices, that will be

resorted to, to exclude one and another class of citizens from the right

of suffrage.

It will not always be men combining to disfranchise all women; native

born men combining to abridge the rights of all naturalized citizens, as

in Rhode Island. It will not always be the rich and educated who may

combine to cut off the poor and ignorant; but we may live to see the

poor, hardworking, uncultivated day laborers, foreign and native born,

learning the power of the ballot and their vast majority of numbers,

combine and amend state constitutions so as to disfranchise the

Vanderbilts and A.T. Stewarts, the Conklings and Fentons. It is a poor

rule that won't work more ways than one. Establish this precedent, admit

the right to deny suffrage to the states, and there is no power to

foresee the confusion, discord and disruption that may await us. There

is, and can be, but one safe principle of government--equal rights to

all. And any and every discrimination against any class, whether on

account of color, race, nativity, sex, property, culture, can but

imbitter and disaffect that class, and thereby endanger the safety of

the whole people.

Clearly, then, the national government must not only define the rights

of citizens, but it must stretch out its powerful hand and protect them

in every state in this Union.

But if you will insist that the fifteenth amendment's emphatic

interdiction against robbing United States citizens of their right to

vote, "on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,"

is a recognition of the right, either of the United States, or any

state, to rob citizens of that right, for any or all other reasons, I

will prove to you that the class of citizens for which I now plead, and

to which I belong, may be, and are, by all the principles of our

government, and many of the laws of the states, included under the term

"previous condition of servitude."

First.--The married women and their legal status. What is servitude?

"The condition of a slave." What is a slave? "A person who is robbed of

the proceeds of his labor; a person who is subject to the will of

another."

By the law of Georgia, South Carolina, and all the states of the South,

the negro had no right to the custody and control of his person. He

belonged to his master. If he was disobedient, the master had the right

to use correction. If the negro didn't like the correction, and

attempted to run away, the master had a right to use coercion to bring

him back.

By the law of every state in this Union to-day, North as well as South,

the married woman has no right to the custody and control of her person.

The wife belongs to her husband; and if she refuses obedience to his

will, he may use moderate correction, and if she doesn't like his

moderate correction, and attempts to leave his "bed and board," the

husband may use moderate coercion to bring her back. The little word

"moderate," you see, is the saving clause for the wife, and would

doubtless be overstepped should her offended husband administer his

correction with the "cat-o'-nine-tails," or accomplish his coercion with

blood-hounds.

Again, the slave had no right to the earnings of his hands, they

belonged to his master; no right to the custody of his children, they

belonged to his master; no right to sue or be sued, or testify in the

courts. If he committed a crime, it was the master who must sue or be

sued.

In many of the states there has been special legislation, giving to

married women the right to property inherited, or received by bequest,

or earned by the pursuit of any avocation outside of the home; also,

giving her the right to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such

separate property; but not a single state of this Union has ever secured

the wife in the enjoyment of her right to the joint ownership of the

joint earnings of the marriage copartnership. And since, in the nature

of things, the vast majority of married women never earn a dollar, by

work outside of their families, nor inherit a dollar from their fathers,

it follows that from the day of their marriage to the day of the death

of their husbands, not one of them ever has a dollar, except it shall

please her husband to _let_ her have it.

In some of the states, also, there have been laws passed giving to the

mother a joint right with the father in the guardianship of the

children. But twenty years ago, when our woman's rights movement

commenced, by the laws of the State of New York, and all the states, the

father had the sole custody and control of the children. No matter if he

were a brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the

mother's consent, to apprentice her sons to rumsellers, or her daughters

to brothel keepers. He could even will away an unborn child, to some

other person than the mother. And in many of the states the law still

prevails, and the mothers are still utterly powerless under the common

law.

I doubt if there is, to-day, a State in this Union where a married woman

can sue or be sued for slander of character, and until quite recently

there was not one in which she could sue or be sued for injury of

person. However damaging to the wife's reputation any slander may be,

she is wholly powerless to institute legal proceedings against her

accuser, unless her husband shall join with her; and how often have we

heard of the husband conspiring with some outside barbarian to blast the

good name of his wife? A married woman cannot testify in courts in cases

of joint interest with her husband. A good farmer's wife near Earlville,

Ill., who had all the rights she wanted, went to a dentist of the

village and had a full set of false teeth, both upper and under. The

dentist pronounced them an admirable fit, and the wife declared they

gave her fits to wear them; that she could neither chew nor talk with

them in her mouth. The dentist sued the husband; his counsel brought the

wife as witness; the judge ruled her off the stand, saying "a married

woman cannot be a witness in matters of joint interest between herself

and her husband." Think of it, ye good wives, the false teeth in your

mouths are joint interest with your husbands, about which you are

legally incompetent to speak!! If in our frequent and shocking railroad

accidents a married woman is injured in her person, in nearly all of

the States, it is her husband who must sue the company, and it is to her

husband that the damages, if there are any, will be awarded. In

Ashfield, Mass., supposed to be the most advanced of any State in the

Union in all things, humanitarian as well as intellectual, a married

woman was severely injured by a defective sidewalk. Her husband sued the

corporation and recovered $13,000 damages. And those $13,000 belong to

him _bona fide_; and whenever that unfortunate wife wishes a dollar of

it to supply her needs she must ask her husband for it; and if the man

be of a narrow, selfish, niggardly nature, she will have to hear him

say, every time, "What have you done, my dear, with the twenty-five

cents I gave you yesterday?" Isn't such a position, I ask you,

humiliating enough to be called "servitude?" That husband, as would any

other husband, in nearly every State of this Union, sued and obtained

damages for the loss of the services of his wife, precisely as the

master, under the old slave regime, would have done, had his slave been

thus injured, and precisely as he himself would have done had it been

his ox, cow or horse instead of his wife.

There is an old saying that "a rose by any other name would smell as

sweet," and I submit if the deprivation by law of the ownership of one's

own person, wages, property, children, the denial of the right as an

individual, to sue and be sued, and to testify in the courts, is not a

condition of servitude most bitter and absolute, though under the sacred

name of marriage?

Does any lawyer doubt my statement of the legal status of married women?

I will remind him of the fact that the old common law of England

prevails in every State in this Union, except where the Legislature has

enacted special laws annulling it. And I am ashamed that not one State

has yet blotted from its statute books the old common law of marriage,

by which Blackstone, summed up in the fewest words possible, is made to

say, "husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband."

Thus may all married women, wives and widows, by the laws of the several

States, be technically included in the fifteenth amendment's

specification of "condition of servitude," present or previous. And not

only married women, but I will also prove to you that by all the great

fundamental principles of our free government, the entire womanhood of

the nation is in a "condition of servitude" as surely as were our

revolutionary fathers, when they rebelled against old King George. Women

are taxed without representation, governed without their consent, tried,

convicted and punished without a jury of their peers. And is all this

tyranny any less humiliating and degrading to women under our

democratic-republican government to-day than it was to men under their

aristocratic, monarchical government one hundred years ago? There is not

an utterance of old John Adams, John Hancock or Patrick Henry, but finds

a living response in the soul of every intelligent, patriotic woman of

the nation. Bring to me a common-sense woman property holder, and I will

show you one whose soul is fired with all the indignation of 1776 every

time the tax-gatherer presents himself at her door. You will not find

one such but feels her condition of servitude as galling as did James

Otis when he said:

"The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not

represented appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most

essential rights, and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire

disfranchisement of every civil right. For, what one civil right is

worth a rush after a man's property is subject to be taken from him

at pleasure without his consent? If a man is not his own assessor

in person, or by deputy, his liberty is gone, or he is wholly at

the mercy of others."

What was the three-penny tax on tea, or the paltry tax on paper and

sugar to which our revolutionary fathers were subjected, when compared

with the taxation of the women of this Republic? The orphaned Pixley

sisters, six dollars a day, and even the women, who are proclaiming the

tyranny of our taxation without representation, from city to city

throughout the country, are often compelled to pay a tax for the poor

privilege of defending our rights. And again, to show that

disfranchisement was precisely the slavery of which the fathers

complained, allow me to cite to you old Ben. Franklin, who in those

olden times was admitted to be good authority, not merely in domestic

economy, but in political as well; he said:

"Every man of the commonalty, except infants, insane persons and

criminals, is of common right and the law of God, a freeman and

entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. That liberty or freedom

consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who

are to frame the laws, and who are to be the guardians of every

man's life, property and peace. For the all of one man is as dear

to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right,

but more need to have representatives in the Legislature than the

rich one. That they who have no voice or vote in the electing of

representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved

to those who have votes and their representatives; for to be

enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and

to be subject to laws made by the representatives of others,

without having had representatives of our own to give consent in

our behalf."

Suppose I read it with the feminine gender:

"That women who have no voice nor vote in the electing of

representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved

to men who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved

is to have governors whom men have set over us, and to be subject

to the laws made by the representatives of men, without having

representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf."

And yet one more authority; that of Thomas Paine, than whom not one of

the Revolutionary patriots more ably vindicated the principles upon

which our government is founded:

"The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by

which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to

reduce man to a state of slavery; for slavery consists in being

subject to the will of another; and he that has not a vote in the

election of representatives is in this case. The proposal,

therefore, to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the

proposal to take away property."

Is anything further needed to prove woman's condition of servitude

sufficiently orthodox to entitle her to the guaranties of the fifteenth

amendment?

Is there a man who will not agree with me, that to talk of freedom

without the ballot, is mockery--is slavery--to the women of this

Republic, precisely as New England's orator Wendell Phillips, at the

close of the late war, declared it to be to the newly emancipated black

men?

I admit that prior to the rebellion, by common consent, the right to

enslave, as well as to disfranchise both native and foreign born

citizens, was conceded to the States. But the one grand principle,

settled by the war and the reconstruction legislation, is the supremacy

of national power to protect the citizens of the United States in their

right to freedom and the elective franchise, against any and every

interference on the part of the several States. And again and again,

have the American people asserted the triumph of this principle, by

their overwhelming majorities for Lincoln and Grant.

The one issue of the last two Presidential elections was, whether the

fourteenth and fifteenth amendments should be considered the irrevocable

will of the people; and the decision was, they shall be--and that it is

not only the right, but the duty of the National Government to protect

all United States citizens in the full enjoyment and free exercise of

all their privileges and immunities against any attempt of any State to

deny or abridge.

And in this conclusion Republicans and Democrats alike agree.

Senator Frelinghuysen said:

"The heresy of State rights has been completely buried in these

amendments, that as amended, the Constitution confers not only

national but State citizenship upon all persons born or naturalized

within our limits."

The Call for the national Republican convention said:

"Equal suffrage has been engrafted on the national Constitution;

the privileges and immunities of American citizenship have become a

part of the organic law."

The national Republican platform said:

"Complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil,

political and public rights, should be established and maintained

throughout the Union by efficient and appropriate State and federal

legislation."

If that means anything, it is that Congress should pass a law to require

the States to protect women in their equal political rights, and that

the States should enact laws making it the duty of inspectors of

elections to receive women's votes on precisely the same conditions they

do those of men.

Judge Stanley Mathews--a substantial Ohio democrat--in his preliminary

speech at the Cincinnati convention, said most emphatically:

"The constitutional amendments have established the political

equality of all citizens before the law."

President Grant, in his message to Congress March 30th, 1870, on the

adoption of the fifteenth amendment, said:

"A measure which makes at once four millions of people voters, is

indeed a measure of greater importance than any act of the kind

from the foundation of the Government to the present time."

How could _four_ millions negroes be made voters if _two_ millions were

not included?

The California State Republican convention said:

"Among the many practical and substantial triumphs of the

principles achieved by the Republican party during the past twelve

years, it enumerated with pride and pleasure, the prohibiting of

any State from abridging the privileges of any citizen of the

Republic, the declaring the civil and political equality of every

citizen, and the establishing all these principles in the federal

constitution by amendments thereto, as the permanent law."

Benjamin F. Butler, in a recent letter to me, said:

"I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that the Constitution

authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as it authorizes

trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to citizens."

And again, General Butler said:

"It is not laws we want; there are plenty of laws--good enough,

too. Administrative ability to enforce law is the great want of the

age, in this country especially. Everybody talks of law, law. If

everybody would insist on the enforcement of law, the government

would stand on a firmer basis, and questions would settle

themselves."

And it is upon this just interpretation of the United States

Constitution that our National Woman Suffrage Association which

celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the woman's rights movement

in New York on the 6th of May next, has based all its arguments and

action the past five years.

We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to

vote. We appeal to the women everywhere to exercise their too long

neglected "citizen's right to vote." We appeal to the inspectors of

election everywhere to receive the votes of all United States citizens

as it is their duty to do. We appeal to United States commissioners and

marshals to arrest the inspectors who reject the names and votes of

United States citizens, as it is their duty to do, and leave those alone

who, like our eighth ward inspectors, perform their duties faithfully

and well.

We ask the juries to fail to return verdicts of "guilty" against honest,

law-abiding, tax-paying United States citizens for offering their votes

at our elections. Or against intelligent, worthy young men, inspectors

of elections, for receiving and counting such citizens' votes.

We ask the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law,

and wherever there is room for a doubt to give its benefit on the side

of liberty and equal rights to women, remembering that "the true rule of

interpretation under our national constitution, especially since its

amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional,

everything against human rights unconstitutional."

And it is on this line that we propose to fight our battle for the

ballot--all peaceably, but nevertheless persistently through to complete

triumph, when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals

before the law.

SPEECH OF

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE,

In Canandaigua and 16 other towns of Ontario county, previous to Miss

Anthony's Trial, June 17th, 1873.

THE UNITED STATES ON TRIAL;

_not_

SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That is the axiom of our republic. From this axiom we understand that

powers used by the government without the consent of the governed, are

_not just_ powers, but that on the contrary, they are _unjust_ powers,

_usurped_ powers, _illegal_ powers.

In what way does the consent of the governed come?

By and through the ballot alone. The ballot answers questions. It says

yes, or no. It declares what _principles_ shall rule; it says what

_laws_ shall be made, it tells what _taxes_ are to be raised; it places

men in office or lays their heads low in the dust. It is the _will_ of a

man embodied in that little piece of paper; it is the consent of the

governed.

Are women governed? Most certainly; they pay taxes,--they are held

amenable to laws; they are tried for crimes; they are fined, imprisoned,

hung. The government wields strong power over them. Have they consented

to this power of the government? Have they a recognized right to the

ballot? Has their consent bean asked through their votes? Have they had

a voice in saying what taxes shall be levied on their property,--what

penalties they shall pay for crimes? _No._ They are ruled without their

consent. The first principles of government are founded on the natural

rights of individuals; in order to _secure_ the exercise of these

natural, individual rights our government professed to be founded.

Governments never created a single right; rights did not come new-born

into the world with our revolutionary fathers. They were men of middle

age when they severed their connexion with Great Britain, but that

severance did not endow them with a single new right. It was at that

time they first entered into the _exercise_ of their natural, individual

rights. Neither our Declaration, nor our Constitution created a single

right; they merely recognized certain rights as in existence. They

recognized those rights as human rights,--as inalienable rights,--as

rights existing by virtue of common humanity. Natural rights never

change, but the power to perceive these natural rights does change, and

various nations have had their own standard.

Three names, said to be the sweetest the world ever knew, are mother,

home, and heaven. There is one still sweeter--one for which men have

given up mother and home, and for which they have almost sacrificed the

hope of heaven; that word is LIBERTY.

When the fires of liberty began to creep through Europe in the middle

ages, at a time when hereditary monarchs and the catholic church ruled

the world, men placed its safeguards in municipal corporations. The idea

of municipal corporations descended from Rome to the rest of Europe, and

"free cities" became the germ of personal freedom. But a new world was

needed for the great experiment of individual freedom. Macauley calls

government an experimental science and therefore a progressive science;

history shows this to be true. Liberty did not spring "full armed" like

Minerva from the head of Jove. The liberty possessed by the world has

been gradually secured, and it was left for our country first to

incorporate in its foundation a recognition of individual rights. A

hundred years before the revolutionary war, Massachusetts and Virginia

resisted English tyranny. Massachusetts, in 1664, called herself a

"perfect republic." She preserved a neutral harbor by force of arms

against opposing English factions; she enacted laws against the

supremacy of the English parliament, and she established her own mint.

This last is noticeable, as in the progress of liberty, rights of

property, of which money is the exponent, have always been one of the

foremost. Bancroft says Virginia was always a land of liberty; that

Virginia placed the defense of liberty not in municipal corporations,

_but in persons_, and that the liberty of the individual was ever highly

prized. The difference between a monarchy and a republic is the

difference between force and consent; it is the difference between being

governed and governing yourself; it is the difference between the _men_

of Russia and the _men_ of the United States; it is the difference

between the political rights of one man as the government and the

political rights of the people as the government. But the world has

never yet seen a true republic, though it has for hundreds of years been

taking steps towards one.

The original principles of just governments are five, all of which were

acknowledged by the United States at its foundation. These principles

are:

_First._ The natural right of each individual to self-government.

_Second._ The exact equality of these rights.

_Third._ That these rights when not delegated by the individual, are

retained by the individual.

_Fourth._ That no person can exercise these rights of others without

delegated authority.

_Fifth._ That the non-use of these rights does not destroy them.

These five underlying principles are the admitted basis of all

governmental rights, and the old revolutionists acted upon them. They

were men of middle life; they were under an old and established form of

government to which they had not delegated authority, and during all

these years they had made no use of their natural, equal rights. When

they chose to assume the exercise of these rights, they at once took

them up.

The women of that day were no less in earnest than were the men. Mercy

Otis Warren, sister of that James Otis whose fiery words did so much

towards rousing the colonies, was herself no less in earnest, had no

less influence than her brother. She was a member of the famous

committee of correspondence, and was constantly consulted by Adams,

Jefferson, Franklin, Hancock, Washington and all the foremost men of

that day. Through her lips was first whispered the word, separation. No

less active were the women of New England, and in 1770, five years

before the breaking out of the revolutionary war, the women of Boston

held a public meeting, and formed themselves into a league to resist

taxation. As tea was the article upon which Great Britain was then

making her stand, in order to sustain the _principle_ of taxation, these

women declared they would use no more tea until the tax upon it was

repealed. This league was first formed by the married women, but the

next day the young women met "in innumerable numbers," and took similar

action. They expressly stated, they did not do this so much for

themselves, as for the benefit of their posterity. In the country, the

women of that hour went abroad over the fields and sowed their tea, as

men sow wheat. This action of the women of the revolution was taken

three years before the famous Tea Party of Boston harbor, and was the

real origin of that "Tea Party." The women of the present day, the

"posterity" of these women of the revolution, are now following the

example then set, and are protesting against taxation without

representation. A few weeks ago I attended a meeting of the tax-paying

women of Rochester who met in the Mayor's office in that city, and

there, like their revolutionary mothers, formed a league against

taxation without representation. Meetings for the discussion of measures

are regularly held by them, and they have issued an address, which I

will read you.

_To the Women of the City of Rochester and the County of Monroe_:

After twenty-five years of discussion, appeal and work, the Women

of Rochester assembled, are prompted to advise and urge tax-paying

women of the City and County, that the time has come to act, as our

patriot mothers acted in 1770, _in protest against unjust

government_, and the action appropriate and suited to the time, is

strong and earnest protest against the violation of the Republican

principles, which compels the payment of taxes by women, while they

are denied the ballot.

By order of "THE WOMEN TAX PAYERS' ASSOCIATION of the City of

Rochester and County of Monroe."

They have also issued this memorial and protest, addressed

_To the Board of Supervisors of the County of Monroe, and to the

Hon. the Common Council of the City of Rochester_:

The payment of taxes is exacted in direct violation of the

principles that "Governments derive their just powers from the

consent of the governed," and that "there shall be no taxation

without representation." Therefore we earnestly protest against the

payment of taxes, either Municipal, County, or State, until the

ballot secures us in the right of representation, just and equal

with other citizens.

By order of "THE WOMEN TAX PAYERS' ASSOCIATION of the City of

Rochester and County of Monroe."

Thus women are everywhere going back to fundamental principles, and this

action of the women of Rochester is but the commencement of a protest

which will soon become a resistance, and which will extend from the St.

Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The

women of the city of Rochester pay taxes on seven millions of property,

and yet not one of these tax payers is consulted as to how, or when that

tax shall be raised, or for what purpose used. This seven millions is

but a small proportion of property on which the women of that city

really pay taxes, as it does not include that much larger amount of

property of which they have been robbed, and over which they are assumed

to have no control. The foundation of a new city hall has recently been

laid in that city. Women's property, without their consent, has been

used for this purpose. Water is soon to be brought in from Hemlock Lake,

and a dozen other projects are on foot, all of which require money, and

towards all of which, the money of tax-paying women will be taken

without their consent.

To illustrate the extreme injustice with which women are treated in this

matter of taxation, to show you how contrary it is to all natural right,

let us suppose that all the taxable property in the city of Rochester

belonged to women, with the exception of a single small house and lot,

which were owned by a man. As the law is now interpreted, the man who

owned that house and lot could vote a tax upon the property of all those

women at his own will, to build CITY HALLS, COURT HOUSES, JAILS, could

call an election and vote an extraordinary tax to bring in water from a

dozen different lakes, erect fountains at every corner, fence in twenty

parks, vote himself in, Mayor, Alderman, Assessor, Collector with a fat

salary from these women's money, attached to each one of these offices,

and in the end elect himself the sole policeman of the city, to protect

the women from--himself; and this you call just government. It is no

more unjust, no more unrepublican, to take the property of fifty, or a

hundred, or a thousand women in this way, than it would be to take the

property of a single one; the principle is still the same. The women of

to-day, protest, as did their fore-mothers, for principle. Women come

into the world endowed with the same natural rights as men, and this by

virtue of their common humanity, and when prevented or restrained from

their exercise, they are enslaved. Old Ben Franklin once said, "those

that have no vote or voice in the laws, or the election of those who

administer them, do not enjoy liberty, but are _absolutely enslaved_ to

those who have votes, and their representatives." That sentiment is as

true to-day as when uttered. While the women of this nation are

restrained from the exercise of their natural rights of self-government,

they are held enslaved to those who do administer the laws. Said an old

minister of revolutionary fame, "One who is bound to obey the will of

another is as really a slave, though he may have a good master, as if he

had a bad one." Those of you who remember Adolph in Uncle Tom's Cabin,

will recall his apparent freedom. Dressed in style, wearing his master's

garments before the first gloss was off, viewing Uncle Tom,

superciliously through his eye glass, he was a petted companion of his

master and did not feel his bonds. But one day the scene changed. St.

Clair died, and poor Adolph, stripped of all his favors, was dragged off

to the vile slave pen. Do you see no parallel between Adolph and the

women of America? Adolph was restrained by unjust power from exercise of

his natural rights, so are the women of this country, as is most fully

shown, by this prosecution and trial of Susan B. Anthony.

In this country, two kinds of representation exist, property and

personal. Let us look for a moment, at the Constitution of the United

States. In three years we celebrate our centennial. From what does it

date? Not from the Constitution, as our country existed eleven years

without a Constitution,--in fact, thirteen years, before it was ratified

by the thirteen colonies. The centennial dates from the declaration of

Independence, which was based on underlying principles. But as our

government has recognized its own needs, it has thrown new safeguards

around liberty. Within a year after the Declaration, it was found

necessary to enter into articles of Confederation, and those were soon

followed by the Constitution, as it was found property rights were not

secure "under the action of thirteen different deliberatives."

England has never possessed personal representation, but only that of

property; and in the secret proceedings upon the framing of our

Constitution, the question as to property, or personal representation

was strongly agitated. Some of the delegates favored the fuller

representation of property than of persons. Others, who advocated the

equality of suffrage, took the matter up on the original principles of

government, recognizing the fact that it was not strength, or wisdom, or

property, that conferred rights, but that "in a state of nature, before

any government is formed, all persons are equally free and independent,

no one having any right or authority to exercise power over another,"

and this, without any regard to difference in personal strength,

understanding or wealth. It was also argued, and upon this

acknowledgment the Constitution was based, "that when individuals enter

into government they have _each_ a right to an equal voice in its first

formation, and afterwards have _each_ a right to an equal vote in every

matter which relates to their government. That if it could be done

conveniently, they have a right to exercise it in person. When it cannot

be done in person, but for convenience, representatives are appointed to

act for them, every person has a right to an equal vote in choosing that

representative, who is intrusted to do for the whole, that which, the

whole, if they could assemble, might do in person, and in the

transaction of which they would have an equal voice."

This was the basis upon which the Constitution was established, and

these, the principles which led to its adoption; principles which

include the full recognition of each person as possessed of the

inalienable right of self-government.

The argument for equality was continued in the following strain, as

reported by one of the delegates, to the Legislature of Maryland: "That

if we were to admit, because a man was more wise, more strong, more

wealthy, he should be entitled to more votes than another, it would be

inconsistent with the freedom of that other, and would reduce him to

slavery." The following illustration was used: "Suppose, for instance,

_ten individuals_ in a state of nature, about to enter into government,

nine of whom were equally wise, equally strong, equally wealthy, the

tenth is ten times as wise, ten times as strong, or ten times as rich;

if, for this reason, he is to have ten votes for each vote of the

others, the nine might as well have no vote at all, and though the whole

nine might assent to the measure, yet the vote of the tenth would

countervail, and set aside all their votes. If this tenth approved of

what they wished to adopt, it would be well; but if he disapproved, he

could prevent it, and in the same manner he could carry into execution

any measure he wished, contrary to the opinion of all the others, he

having ten votes, and the others altogether but nine. It is evident that

on these principles, the nine would have no will or discretion of their

own, but must be totally dependent on the will and discretion of the

tenth; to him they would be as absolutely slaves as any negro is to his

master. If he did not attempt to carry into execution any measures

injurious to the other nine, it could only be said that they had a good

master; they would not be the less slaves, because they would be totally

dependent upon the will of another and not on their own will. They might

not feel their chains, but they would notwithstanding wear them; and

whenever their master pleased, he might draw them so tight as to gall

them to the bone." Again it was urged that though every individual

should have a voice in the government, yet even then, superior wealth,

strength, or understanding, would give great and undue advantage to

those who possessed them. But the point especially pressed in these

debates was that each individual before entering into government, was

equally free and independent: and therefore the conclusion was drawn

that each person had equal right both at the time of framing a

government, and also after a government or constitution was framed.

To those who with old English ideas, constantly pressed property

representation, it was replied that "taxation and representation ought

to go together in so far that a person not represented ought not to be

taxed."

This Constitutional Convention was in session a number of months; its

delegates were partially elected by women's votes, as at that date

women were exercising their right of self-government through voting,

certainly in the States of Massachusetts and New Jersey, if not in

Georgia and Delaware. These women sent their delegates or

representatives to assist in framing a Constitution.

Let us look at the Preamble of that instrument. It reads thus:

"We, the PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more

perfect union, establish _justice_, insure domestic tranquility,

provide for the _common_ welfare, and secure the blessings of

liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish

this Constitution for the United States of America."

Here we have a statement as to _who_ established the Constitution. It

was not the thirteen States as States, not the government in its

sovereign capacity, but the people: not the white people alone, not the

native born alone, not the male people alone, but the people in a

collective sense. Justice was not established by this Constitution if

one half the people were left out from its provisions, neither was the

_common_ welfare considered unless all people in common, equally shared

the benefits of the Constitution. And moreover, the posterity of the

people of that time are female as well as male. Therefore not only by

our knowledge of the course of argument taken by the framers of the

Constitution, not only by our knowledge that women as well as men helped

elect delegates to that convention,--not only from the original

principles proclaimed in the Declaration, but also by and through this

Preamble to the Constitution do we find woman equally with man,

recognized as part of the governing power.

Although women do not rest their claim to self-government upon any human

instrument, it is well to show that even in the Declaration, and the

original Constitution, the "Constitution as it was," the rights of _all_

people were most emphatically and truly recognized.

Judge Story in his commentaries upon the Constitution, says, "The

importance of examining _the Preamble_ for the purpose of expounding the

language of a Statute has always been felt and universally conceded in

all judicial proceedings."

_Com. on Const., 1, 443-4._

Chief Justice Jay regarded the Preamble of the Constitution of the

United States as an authoritative guide to a correct interpretation of

that instrument.

2 _Dallas_, 414.

Coke says, "The Preamble of a Statute is a good means to find out the

meaning of the Statute, and as it were, a _key_ to the understanding

thereof."

Blackstone lays it down as a fundamental principle, that we "must argue

from generals down to particulars." Here is good legal authority. I have

cited men whose opinions are accepted. We have thus argued down from the

_generals_ of the Declaration and Constitution to the particulars which

appertain to each individual alike, and what is the result? Freedom for

all; equal rights. We have read the Preamble of the Constitution, and

quoted authorities to show in what light it must be read in reference to

its following provisions. By its Preamble, the Constitution is shown to

make no distinction in favor of sex. From secret debates of the

convention which framed it, we find the motives and the arguments of its

framers.

The great foundation and key stone alike of our Republican ideas, _of

our Constitution_, is _individual, personal representation_, and it is

the greatest blessing to the country at large that the question of

representation has come up in the person of Miss Anthony. Men are

_compelled_ to think upon underlying principles. They are compelled to

ask themselves where they get either natural or constitutional right to

govern women.

From the earliest ages men have queried among themselves as to where lay

the governing power. In the time of Abraham, and even now in some parts

of the world the Patriarch of the tribe is looked upon as its supreme

ruler. Members of Scottish clans to-day, look with more reverence upon

their chief, than upon the Queen: they obey his behests sooner than

parliamentary laws. Other men have believed the governing power lay in

the hands of a select few, an aristocracy, and that these few men could

by right make laws to govern the rest. Others again have believed this

power vested in a single man called King, or Czar, or Pope, but it was

left to our country, and our age, to promulgate the idea that the

governing power lay in the _people themselves_. It took men a great many

thousand years to discover this pregnant fact, and although our

government laid down at the very first, certain underlying truths, it

has taken a very long time even for this country to see, and practice

these principles; but as men have opened their eyes to liberty there

have been constant advances towards securing its full blessings to each

and every individual, and in this progress we had first, the

Declaration; second, the Articles of Confederation; third, the

Constitution; then the ten Conciliatory Amendments, quickly followed by

an eleventh and twelfth, each one of these designed to more fully secure

liberty to the people, and making fifteen successive steps in the short

period of twenty-eight years.

At the time of framing this government women existed as well as men,

women are part of the people; the people created the government. Now,

when speaking to you to-night, I am speaking to the people of this part

of Ontario County, I am not speaking to men alone, I am not speaking to

women alone, but to you all as people. When people frame a government

the rights not delegated by them to the government, are retained by

them, as is declared by the tenth amendment. Now where do men get their

constitutional right to govern women? Women have either delegated their

right of self-government to certain delegates, by them to be elected

according to all the forms of this government, or they have not so

delegated their rights of self-government, but have retained them. In

either case, according to the genius of our government, what is there to

prevent them from exercising these rights any moment they choose, unless

it is force? What prevents them unless it is unjust illegal power? The

ninth amendment declares that the enumeration of certain rights, shall

not be construed to deny, or disparage others retained by the people.

Remember what are the foundation principles of just government,

principles fully acted upon by the old revolutionists; remember that no

government of whatever kind or character can possibly _create_ the right

of self-government, but only _recognize_ rights as existent; remember

the non-use of a right does not destroy that right.

I have a natural right to as much fresh air as I can breathe; if you

shut me in a close room with door and windows barred, that does not

invalidate my right to breathe pure, fresh air. I have a natural right

to obey the dictates of my own conscience, and to worship God as I

choose. If you are physically stronger than I am, or if you are legally

stronger than I am and use your strength to prevent the exercise of

these natural rights, you by no means destroy them. Though I do not use

these rights, I still possess them. The framers of this government, the

men and the women who voted at that early day had never until then,

exercised their natural rights of self-government; when they chose, they

took them up.

But people tell us it was not the intention to include women. What then

was the intention? Did the framers of the Declaration intend to leave

women under the government of Great Britain? Did they intend to set

themselves and their male compeers free, and leave women behind, under a

monarchy? Were not women intended to be included in the benefits of the

constitution?

Oh, but says some one, they were intended to be generally included, but

the amendments had nothing to do with them.

Let us look at this. Is it possible to amend a Constitution not in

accordance with its underlying principles? It can be repealed,

abolished, destroyed, but not _amended; except in accordance with its

original character_. The Supreme Court of the United States has declared

that the powers of the Constitution are granted by the people, and are

to be exercised strictly _on them_, and _for their benefit_.

Story asks, "Who are the parties to this great contract?" and answers

the question by saying, "The people of the United States are the parties

to the Constitution."

_Com. on Con._

_Com. on Con. Legal Rules_, 283, says:

"This first paragraph of the Constitution, declaring its ends, is

the most vital part of the instrument, revealing its spirit and

intent, _and the understanding of its framers_."

Here we have the recognized legal rule that the understanding or

INTENTION of the framers of an instrument is to be found in its first

paragraph, and the first paragraph of the Constitution declares it was

framed BY THE PEOPLE, and for the purpose of securing the blessings of

liberty to themselves and their posterity. The native-born American

women of to-day, are the posterity of the framers of the Constitution,

which was thus designed for their benefit. The intention to include

women is here positive; women are part of the people now, and ever have

been. "Rules of legal interpretation are general in their character,"

and so general has the interpretation of the Constitution been, that not

only did the people who framed the Constitution, and their posterity,

come in for its blessings, but the people also of every nation and

tongue, from continent or isles of the sea, who come to us, are included

in its benefits. Who can say our forefathers _intended_ to include

Chinamen, or Sandwich Islanders, or the Norwegian, Russian, or Italian

in its benefits? Yet they do all share in it as soon as they become

citizens. How absurd we should think the assertion that it was not the

Lord's intention to hold the people of the United States under the law

of the Ten Commandments, as they were given to the Jews alone, some four

thousand years before the United States existed as a nation.

Massachusetts never abolished slavery by legislative act; never

intentionally abolished it. In 1780 that State adopted a new

Constitution with a Bill of Rights, declaring "All men born free and

equal." Upon this, some slaves demanded their freedom, and their masters

granted it. The slavery of men and _women_, both, was thus destroyed in

Massachusetts without intention on the part of the framers of the

Constitution, and this, because it is a legal rule to argue down from

generals to particulars, and that the "words of a statute ought not to

be interpreted to destroy natural justice;" but as Coke says, "Whenever

the question of liberty runs doubtful, _the decision must be given in

favor of liberty_."

_Digest C.L._

When a Charter declares "all men born free and equal," it means,

intends, and includes all women, too; it means all mankind, and this is

the _legal interpretation_ of the language.

To go back to the Constitution of the United States, let us examine if

women were not intended. The first amendment reads, "Congress shall make

no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free

exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the

government for a redress of grievances."

No mention is there made of women, but who will deny it was not intended

for them to enjoy the right of worshipping as they choose? Were they not

to be protected in freedom of speech, and in the right of assembling to

petition the government for a redress of grievances? Not a man before me

will deny that women were included equally with men in the intention of

the framers.

The Sixth Amendment reads, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused

shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury

of the State and District wherein the crime shall have been committed,

which District shall have been previously ascertained by law; and to be

informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted

with the witnesses against _him_; to have compulsory processes for

obtaining witnesses in _his_ favor; and to have the existence of counsel

in _his_ defense."

The words "him" and "his," are three times mentioned in this amendment,

yet no one can be found wild enough to say women were not intended to be

included in its benefits. Miss Anthony, herself, has already come under

its provisions, and were she denied a speedy and open trial, she could

appeal to the protection of this very amendment, which not only does not

say women, or her, but does alone say _him_ and _his_, and this,

notwithstanding the other legal adage, that laws stand as they are

written. This whole question of constitutional rights, turns on whether

the United States is a nation. If the United States is a nation, it has

_national_ powers. What is the admitted basis of our nation? We reply,

equality of political rights. And what, again, is the basis of political

rights? Citizenship. Nothing more, nothing less. National sovereignty is

only founded upon the political sovereignty of the individual, and

national rights are merely individual rights in a collective form. The

acknowledged basis of rights in each and every one of the thirty-seven

States, is citizenship,--not State citizenship alone, as that alone

cannot exist, but first, national citizenship. _National_ rights are the

fundamental basis of _State_ rights. If this is not true, we are then no

nation, but merely a confederacy, held together by our own separate

wills, and the South was right in its war of secession. Every sovereign

right of the United States exists solely from its existence as a

nation.

As the nation has grown to know the needs of liberty, it has from time

to time thrown new safeguards around it, as I have shown in its fifteen

progressive steps since 1776. For sixty years there was no change.

Slavery had cast its blight upon our country, and the struggle was for

State supremacy. Men forgot the rights, and need of freedom; but in

1861, the climax was reached, and then came the bitter struggle between

state and national power. Although our underlying principles were all

right, freedom required new guards, and the right of all men to liberty,

was put in a new form. An especial statute or amendment was added to our

National Constitution, declaring that involuntary servitude, unless for

crime, could not exist in this republic. This statute created no new

rights; it merely affirmed and elucidated rights as old as creation, and

which, in a general way, had been recognized at the very first

foundation of our government--even as far back as the old Articles of

Association, before the Declaration of Independence. This amendment was

the sixteenth step in _securing_ the rights of the people, but it was

not enough. Our country differs from every other country, in that we

have _two kinds_ of citizenship. First, we have national citizenship,

based upon equal political rights. A person born a citizen of the United

States, is, by the very circumstances of birth, endowed with certain

political rights. In this respect, the circumstances of birth are very

different from those of a person born in Great Britain. A person born in

Great Britain is not endowed with political rights, simply because born

in that country. Political rights in Great Britain are not based upon

personal rights; they are based upon property rights. In England,

persons are not represented; only property is represented. That is the

very great political difference between England and the United States.

In the United States, representation is based upon individual, personal

rights--therefore, every person born in the United States--_every

person_,--not every white person, nor every male person, but every

person is born with _political_ rights. The naturalization of foreigners

also secures to them the exercise of political rights, because it

secures to them citizenship, and they obtain naturalization through

_national_ law. The war brought about a distinct and new recognition of

the rights of national citizenship. States had assumed to be superior to

the nation in this very underlying national basis of voting rights, but

when certain States boldly attempted to thwart national power, and vote

themselves out of the Union,--when by this attempt they virtually said,

there is no nation, a new protection was thrown around individual,

personal, political rights, by a seventeenth step, known to the world by

the Fourteenth Amendment, which defined, (not created) citizenship. "All

persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the

jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State

wherein they reside," thus recognizing United States citizenship as the

first and superior citizenship.

Miss Anthony was not only _born_ in the United States, but the United

States also has jurisdiction over her, as is shown by this suit, under

which she was arrested in Rochester, and held there to examination in

the same little room in which fugitive slaves were once examined. From

Rochester she was taken to Albany, from Albany back to Rochester, and

now from Rochester to Canandaigua, where she is soon to be tried. She

has thus been fully acknowledged by the United States as one of its

citizens, and also as a citizen of the State in which she resides.

In order to become a citizen of a State, and enjoy the privileges and

immunities of States, a citizen of the United States must reside in a

State. Citizenship of the United States secures nothing over the

citizenship of other countries, unless it secures the right of

self-government. State laws may hereafter regulate suffrage, but the

difference between regulating and prohibiting, is as great as the

difference between state and national citizenship. The question of the

war was the question of State rights; it was the negro, _vs._ State

rights, or the power of States over the ballot. The question to-day is,

woman, _vs._ United States rights, or the power of the United over the

ballot. The moral battle now waging will settle the question of the

power of the United States over the rights of citizens. By the civil

war, the United States was proven to be stronger than the States. It was

proven we were a nation in so far that States were but parts of the

whole. The woman question, of which in this pending trial, Miss Anthony

stands as the exponent, is to settle the question of United States power

over the individual political rights of the people; it is a question of

a monarchy or a republic. The United States may usurp power, as did the

States, but it has no rights in a sovereign capacity, not given it by

the Constitution, or in other words, BY THE PEOPLE. By the Preamble we

have discovered _who_ are its people, and for _what purpose_ its

Constitution was instituted. Each and every amendment--the first ten,

the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, are only

parts of the grand whole, and must, each and every one, be examined in

the light of the Preamble.

Each added amendment makes this change in the status of the People, in

that it gives new guaranties of freedom, and removes all pretense of

right from any existing usurped power. People are slow to comprehend the

change which has been effected by the decision as to State rights. One,

claims that only the negro, or persons of African descent, were affected

by it. Others claim, and among them, some prominent Republicans, that

every civil right is by these amendments, thrown under national control.

Recently, two or three suits have come before the United States on this

apprehension. One of these, known as the Slaughter House Case, came up

from New Orleans in the suit of certain persons against the State of

Louisiana. A permit had been given certain parties to erect sole

buildings for slaughter, and in other ways control that entire business

in the city of New Orleans for a certain number of years. A suit upon it

was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, on the ground of

the change in the power of States, by, and through the last three

amendments, and on the supposition that all the civil power of the

States had thus been destroyed.

The Court decided it had no jurisdiction, though in its decision it

proclaimed the far-reaching character of these amendments. In reference

to the Thirteenth Amendment, the Court used this language:

"We do not say that no one else but the negro can share in this

protection. Both the language _and spirit_ of these articles are to

have their full and just weight in any question of construction.

Undoubtedly while negro slavery alone was in the minds of the

Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it forbids any kind

of slavery, now, or hereafter. If Mexican peonage, or the Chinese

cooley labor system shall develop slavery of the Mexican or Chinese

race within our territory, this amendment may be safely trusted to

make it void."

This is the language used by the Supreme Court of the United States in

reference to this thirteenth amendment; prohibiting any, _all_, and

every kind of slavery, not only now, but in the hereafter, and this,

although the decision, also acknowledges the fact that only African

slavery _was intended_ to be covered by this amendment.

The Court further said, "And so if _other_ rights are assailed by the

States, _which properly and necessarily fall within the protection of

these articles_, that protection will apply, though the party interested

may not be of African descent."

What "other rights fall within the protection of these articles?" What

"other rights" do these amendments cover? The fourteenth article, after

declaring who are citizens of the United States, and of States, still

further says, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall

abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,

nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property,

without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its

jurisdiction, the equal protection of the laws." This comprises the

first section of that amendment. The jurisdiction and protection of the

general government applies to United States citizens. By its prosecution

of Miss Anthony, the general government acknowledges her as a citizen of

the United States, and what is much more, it acknowledges its own

jurisdiction over the ballot--over the chief--chief, did I say,--over

the _only_ political right of its citizens. This prosecution is an

admission of United States jurisdiction, instead of State jurisdiction.

This whole amendment, with the exception of the first clause of the

first section, which simply declares who are citizens of the United

States and States, is directed against the interference of _States_ in

the rights of citizens. But in Miss Anthony's case, the State of New

York has not interfered with her right to vote. She voted under local

laws, and the State said not a word,--has taken no action in the case,

consequently the United States has had no occasion to interfere on that

ground. The question of _State_ rights was not as great a question as

this: What are United States rights? Can the United States, in its

sovereign capacity, overthrow the rights of its own citizens? No, it

cannot; for the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution specifically

declares "The right of citizens of the United States _to vote_, shall

not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on

account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

This fifteenth Amendment has been seriously misapprehended by many

people, who have understood it to mean that _women_ could be excluded

from voting, simply because they are women. I have shown you that

Statutes and Constitutions are always general in their character; that

from generals we must argue down to particulars, and that if there is

any doubt as to the interpretation of a statute, it must be defined in

the interests of liberty. But as to the interpretation of this statute

there can be no doubt. Had it read, "The right of citizens of the United

States to take out passports, shall not be denied or abridged by the

United States, on account of race, color, or previous condition of

servitude," no person would interpret it to mean that such right to take

out passport could be denied on account of _female_ sex, or on account

of _male_ sex. We will read it now, first in the light of the

Declaration; second, in that of the Preamble to the Constitution, and

the Constitution itself, and its various amendments, to which I have

referred: the first, sixth, ninth and tenth, which would have been

interpreted male, had the Constitution meant men alone, but which have

always been defined to cover, and include woman--to cover and include

the rights of the _whole_ people to freedom of conscience, to freedom of

speech, to the right of a speedy and public trial, &c., &c., and this,

although in the Sixth Amendment, the terms _him_ and _his_ are alone

used. The Courts long ago decided that Statutes were of general bearing,

as is fully true of the Declaration and Constitution, which are supreme

statutes. The Fifteenth Amendment does not specifically exclude right of

male citizens to vote, because they are _male_ citizens, therefore, male

citizens are of necessity included in the right of voting. It does not

specifically exclude female citizens from the right of voting, because

they are female citizens, therefore, female citizens are of necessity

included in the right of voting--a right which the United States cannot

abridge. No male citizen can claim that he, as a male citizen, is

included, save by implication, and save on the general grounds that he

is not specifically excluded, he is necessarily included. Can the

United States, at pleasure, take from its own citizens the right of

voting, or abridge that right? Has it the right to take from citizens of

States the right of voting? Are citizens of States simply protected

against States, and can the United States now, at will, step in and deny

or abridge the right of voting to all its male citizens simply because

they are male? If it has that power over its female citizens, it has the

same power over its male citizens. You cannot fail to see that the

question brought up by Miss Anthony's prosecution and trial _by the

United States_ for the act of voting, has developed the most important

question of United States rights; a larger, most pregnant, more

momentous question by far, than that of _State_ rights. The liberties of

the people are much more closely involved when the United States is the

aggressor, than when the States are aggressors.

"The Act to Enforce the right of citizens to vote," declares that

CITIZENS shall be entitled and allowed to vote at all elections by the

people, in any state, territory, district, county, city, parish,

township, school district, municipality, or other territorial division,

&c.

This Act was passed _after_ the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment,

and is designed to be in accordance with the Constitution. It does not

say _black_ citizens shall be entitled and allowed to vote; it does not

say _male_ citizens shall be entitled and allowed to vote--it merely

says CITIZENS. It covers the right of women citizens to vote, and yet

United States officials claim to find in this very act, their authority

for prosecuting Miss Anthony and those fourteen other women citizens of

Rochester for the alleged _crime_ of voting. When Miss Anthony voted,

what did she do? She merely exercised her citizen's right of suffrage--a

right to which she, and all women citizens are entitled by virtue of

their citizenship in the nation--a right to which they are entitled

because individual political rights are the basis of the government. The

United States has no other foundation. If that right is trampled upon,

we have no nation. We may hang together in a sort of anarchical way for

a time, but our dissolution draws near. Can the United States destroy

rights on account of sex? In the original Constitution, before even the

first ten amendments were added, States were forbidden to pass bills of

attainder. By the fourteenth amendment, the right of voting was

forbidden to be abridged, _unless for crime_. Is it a crime to be a

woman? "In the beginning God created man, male and female, created he

them." A bill of attainder inflicts punishment, creates liabilities or

_disabilities_, on account of parentage, _birth_, or descent. Do United

States officials presume to create a disability, or inflict a

punishment, on account of _birth_ as a woman, and this in direct

defiance of the Constitution? When the Constitution of the United States

presents no barrier, no lesser power has such authority. "The

Constitution of the United States, _and the laws made in pursuance

thereof_, shall be the supreme law of the land."

Says article sixth: "Any law of Congress not made in pursuance of, or in

unison with the Constitution, is an illegal and void law." Coke declared

an Act of Parliament against Magna Charta was null and void.

But United States officials declare it a crime for a United States

citizen to vote. If it is a crime for a native-born citizen, it ought to

be a still greater crime for a foreign-born citizen. But the fact that

citizenship carries with it the right of voting, is shown in the act of

naturalization. A foreigner, after a certain length of residence in this

country, proceeds to take out papers of citizenship. To become a

citizen, is all that he needs to make of him a voter. At one and the

same time he picks up a ballot, and his naturalization papers. Nothing

more than his becoming a citizen is needed for him to vote--nothing less

will answer. Susan B. Anthony is a native-born citizen. She had to take

out no papers to make her a citizen--she was born in the United

States--she is educated, intelligent, and FREE BORN. Native-born

citizenship is generally conceded to be of more value than that which is

bought. Do you not remember that when Paul was brought up, preparatory

to being scourged, he demanded by what right they scourged him, a Roman

citizen. The chief captain said, "I bought this freedom with a great

price." Paul replied, "I am free born"; then great fear fell upon the

chief captain, and he ordered the bonds removed from Paul. Native-born

Roman citizenship was worth as much as that two thousand years ago.

To-day, the foreign-born American citizen, who has bought his freedom

with a great price, who has left his home and country, and crossed the

sea to a strange land, in order that he may find freedom, is held to be

superior to "free born" American women citizens.

But Miss Anthony is not battling for herself alone, nor for the woman

alone; she stands to-day, the embodiment of Republican principles. The

question of to-day, is not has woman a right to vote, but has _any_

American citizen, white or black, native-born, or naturalized, a right

to vote. The prosecution of Miss Anthony by the United States, for the

alleged crime of having cast a vote at the last election, is a positive

declaration of the government of the United States that it is a crime to

vote. Let that decision be affirmed, and we have no republic; the

ballot, the governing power in the hands of every person, is the only

true republic. Each person to help make the laws which govern him or

her, is the only true democracy. Individual responsibility, personal

representation, exact political equality, are the only stable

foundations of a republic, and when the United States makes voting a

crime on the part of any free-born, law-abiding citizen, it strikes a

blow at its own stability; it is undermining the very foundations of the

republic--it is attempting to overthrow its own Constitution.

Miss Anthony is to-day the representative of liberty; she is to-day

battling for the rights of every man, woman and child in the country;

she is not only upholding the right of every native-born citizen, but of

every naturalized citizen; to-day is at stake in her person, the

new-born hopes of foreign lands, the quickened instincts of liberty, so

well nigh universal. All these are on trial with her; the destinies of

America, the civilization of the world, are in the balance with her as

she stands on her defence. If the women of this country are restricted

in their right of self-government, what better is it for them to have

been born in the United States, than to have been born in Russia, or

France, or England, or many another monarchical country? No better; nor

as well, as in all these countries, women vote upon certain questions.

In Russia, about one-half of the property of the country is in the hands

of women, and they vote upon its disposition and control. In France and

Sweden, women vote at municipal elections, and in England, every woman

householder or rate-payer, votes for city officers, for poor wardens and

school commissioners, thus expressing her views as to the education of

her children, which is a power not possessed by a single woman of this

State of New York, whose boast has been that it leads the legislation of

the world in regard to women. Property-holding women in England, vote

equally with property-holding men, for every office except

Parliamentary, and even that is near at hand, a petition for it of

180,000 names going up last year. England, though a monarchy, is

consistent with herself. As the foundation of English representation is

property, not persons, property is allowed its representation, whether

it is held by man or by woman.

"Are ye not of more value than many sparrows?" said one of old. Is it

less pertinent for us to ask if personal representation is not more

sacred than property representation? "Where governments lead, there are

no revolutions," said the eloquent Castelar. But revolution is imminent

in a government like ours, instituted by the people, for the people, in

its charters recognizing the most sacred rights of the people, but

which, in a sovereign capacity, through its officials, tramples upon the

most sacredly secured and guaranteed rights of the people.

The question brought up by this trial is not a woman's rights question,

but a citizen's rights question. It is not denied that women are

citizens,--it is not denied that Susan B. Anthony was born in the United

States, and is therefore a citizen of the United States, and of the

State wherein she resides, which is this State of New York. It cannot be

denied that she is a person,--one of the people,--there is not a word in

the Constitution of the United States which militates against the

recognition of woman as a person, as one of the people, as a citizen.

The whole question, then, to-day, turns on the power of the United

States over the political rights of citizens--the whole question then,

to-day, turns on the supreme authority of the National Constitution.

The Constitution recognizes native-born women as citizens, both of the

United States, and of the States in which they reside, and the

Enforcement Act of 1870, in unison with our national fundamental

principles, is entitled "An Act _to enforce the right of citizens of the

United States to vote_ in the several States of the Union." Out of those

three words, "for other purposes," or any provisions of this act

included in them, cannot be found authority for restraining any citizen

not "guilty of participating in the rebellion, or other crime," from

voting, and we brand this prosecution of Miss Anthony by United States

officials, under claim of provisions in this act, as _an illegal

prosecution_--_an infamous prosecution_, in direct defiance of national

law--dangerous in its principles, tending to subvert a republican form

of government, and a direct step, whether so designed or not, to the

establishment of a monarchy in this country. Where the right of one

individual is attacked, the rights of all are menaced. A blow against

one citizen, is a blow against every citizen.

The government has shown itself very weak in prosecuting Miss Anthony.

No astute lawyer could be found on a side so pregnant of flaws as this

one, were not the plaintiff in the case, the sovereign United States.

The very fact of the prosecution is at one and the same time weakness on

the part of the government, and an act of unauthorized authority. It is

weakness, because by it, the United States comes onto the ground of the

defendant, and, at once admits voting is an United States right, because

United States rights _are citizens' rights_. By this prosecution, the

United States clearly admits that protection of the ballot is an United

States duty, instead of a State duty. It is an United States duty

instead of a State duty, because voting is an United States right

instead of a State right. This prosecution is an open admission by the

United States, that voting is a _Constitutional right_.

But the prosecution is also an admission of unauthorized authority in

that by it, the United States _discriminates between citizens_. If there

is one point of our government more strongly fortified than another, it

is that the government is of the people. The Preamble of the

Constitution, heretofore quoted, _means all the people_, if language has

a meaning. _All_ the people are citizens, if the fourteenth amendment

has any signification at all.

If any minds are so obtuse as not to see that the ballot is an United

States right,--if any person before me still claims suffrage as a state

right alone, such person certainly cannot fail to see that under his

views the United States has been guilty of a high-handed outrage upon

Miss Anthony and the fourteen other women whom this great

government,--this _big United States_ has prosecuted. Under this view of

the right of suffrage such person cannot fail to see there has been

unauthorized interference by the United States, with the duties and

rights of the State of New York. And while Uncle Sam was thus busy last

winter over the prosecution of women citizens of the State of New York,

the State itself submitted in its Legislature, a resolution looking

towards the recognition by the State of the right of tax-paying women to

the ballot. Thus at one and the same time was seen the anomaly of a

prosecution by the United States of women of the State of New York for

an act that New York herself was resolving it right to perform, and

which if the ballot is not a constitutional right, the United States has

no power over at all.

Look at this prosecution as you will, it presents a fine dilemma to

solve; it presents to the country, as never before, the most important

and vital question of United States rights; it presents the most

important and vital question of unconstitutional power which has grown

to such dimensions in the hands of United States officials; and it must

bring to people's cognizance the very slight thread by which hangs the

security of any citizen's right to the ballot.

Governments try themselves. No government has been stable in the past;

all have fallen because all have been one-sided; all have permitted the

degradation of woman. Babylon fell; her religion defiled woman; the

hand-writing appeared upon the wall, and in a single night she was

overthrown. Neither was Rome immortal; her laws were class laws; the

rights of humanity were not respected; she underwent many changes, and

that vast empire which once ruled the world lives now only in name.

Egypt held the wisdom of the world, and as to a certain extent she

recognized the equality of woman, her empire endured for ages; at last,

she too fell, for her civilization was still an unequal one.

Special laws, or laws specially defined for one particular body of

people, on account of race, color, sex, or occupation, is class

legislation, and bears the seeds of death within itself. It was the

boast of our forefathers, that the rights for which they contended were

the rights of human nature. Shall the women of this country forever

have cause to say that the declaration and the constitution are

specially defined,--are organs of special law?

Where the legislative and executive function of the law are in the hands

of a single class, special law, or special renderings of law are the

unvarying results. If the constitution of the United States is defined

and ruled by United States officials to discriminate between classes of

citizens, then the constitution is by them made to be nothing less than

an organ of special law, and is held not to sustain the rights of the

people. While the class which has usurped the legislative, the executive

and the judicial functions of the government, defines political rights

to belong to male citizens alone, the women of the United States are

under special law; and while thus debarred from exercising their natural

right of self-government, they are subjects, not citizens. It matters

not if women never voted since the framing of the government, until now,

this right has merely been retained by them; it has been held in

abeyance, to be exercised by them whenever they chose. The principles

advocated by the women to-day are the principles which brought on the

revolutionary war, and Miss Anthony and other women associated with her

are exponents of the very principles which caused the colonies to rebel

against the mother country.

The eyes of all nations are upon us; their hopes of liberty are directed

towards us; the United States is now on trial by the light of its own

underlying principle. Its assertion of human right to self-government

lies a hundred years back of it. The chartered confirmation and renewal

of this assertion has come up to our very day, and though all the world

looked on and wondered to see us crush the rebellion of '61, it is at

this hour,--at this soon coming trial of Miss Anthony at Canandaigua,

before the Supreme Court of the Northern District of New York,--it is at

this trial that republican institutions will have their grand test, and

as the decision is rendered for, or against the political rights of

citizenship, so will the people of the United States find themselves

free or slaves, and so will the United States have tried itself, and

paved its way for a speedy fall, or for a long and glorious

continuance.

Miss Anthony is to-day the representative of liberty. In all ages of the

world, and during all times, there have been epochs in which some one

person took upon their own shoulders the hopes and the sorrows of the

world, and in their own person, through many struggles bore them onward.

Suddenly or gradually, as the case might be, men found the rugged path

made smooth and the way opened for the world's rapid advance. Such an

epoch exists now, and such a person is Susan B. Anthony.

To you, men of Ontario county, has come an important hour. The fates

have brought about that you, of all the men in this great land, have the

responsibility of this trial. To you, freedom has come looking for

fuller acknowledgement, for a wider area in which to work and grow. Your

decision will not be for Susan B. Anthony alone; it will be for

yourselves and for your children's children to the latest generations.

You are not asked to decide a question under favor, but according to the

foundation principles of this republic. You will be called upon to

decide a question according to our great charters of liberty--the

Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

You are to decide, not only on a question of natural right, but of

absolute law, of the supreme law of the land. You are not to decide

according to prejudice, but according to the constitution. If your

decision is favorable to the defendant, you will sustain the

constitution; if adverse, if you are blinded by prejudice; you will not

decide against women alone, but against the United States as well. No

more momentous hour has arisen in the interest of freedom, for the

underlying principles of the republic, its warp and woof alike, is the

exact and permanent political equality of every citizen of the nation,

whether that citizen is native born or naturalized, white or black, man

or woman. And may God help you.

JUDGE HUNT,

AND

The Right of Trial by Jury.

By JOHN HOOKER, Hartford, Conn.

* * *

The following article was intended for publication in a magazine, but

the writer kindly contributed it for publication in this pamphlet.

* * *

In the recent trial of Susan B. Anthony for voting, (illegally, as was

claimed, on the ground that as a woman she had no right to vote--a point

which we do not propose to consider,) the course of Judge Hunt, in

taking the case from the jury, and ordering a verdict of guilty to be

entered up, was so remarkable, so contrary to all rules of law, and so

subversive of the system of jury trials in criminal cases, that it

should not be allowed to pass without an emphatic protest on the part of

every public journal that values our liberties.

Let us first of all see precisely what were the facts. Miss Anthony was

charged with having knowingly voted, without lawful right to vote, at

the Congressional election in the eighth ward of the City of Rochester,

in the State of New York, in November, 1872. The Act of Congress under

which the prosecution was brought provides that, "If, at any election

for representative or delegate in the Congress of the United States, any

person shall knowingly personate and vote, or attempt to vote, in the

name of any other person, whether living, dead or fictitious, or vote

more than once at the same election for any candidate for the same

office, or vote at a place where he may not be lawfully entitled to

vote, or vote without having a lawful right to vote, every such person

shall be deemed guilty of a crime," &c.

The trial took place at Canandaigua, in the State of New York, in the

Circuit Court of the United States, before Judge Hunt, of the Supreme

Court of the United States.

The defendant pleaded not guilty--thus putting the Government upon the

proof of their entire case, admitting, however, that she was a woman,

but admitting nothing more.

The only evidence that she voted at all, and that, if at all, she voted

for a representative in Congress, offered on the part of the government,

was, that she handed four bits of paper, folded in the form of ballots,

to the inspectors, to be placed in the voting boxes. There was nothing

on the outside of these papers to indicate what they were, and the

contents were not known to the witnesses nor to the inspectors. There

were six ballot boxes, and each elector had the right to cast six

ballots.

This evidence would undoubtedly warrant the conclusion that Miss Anthony

voted for a Congressional representative, the fact probably appearing,

although the papers before the writer do not show it, that one of the

supposed ballots was placed by her direction in the box for votes for

Members of Congress. The facts are thus minutely stated, not at all for

the purpose of questioning their sufficiency, but to show how entirely

it was a question of fact, and therefore a question for the jury.

Upon this evidence Judge Hunt directed the clerk to enter up a verdict

of guilty. The counsel for the defendant interposed, but without effect,

the judge closing the discussion by saying, "Take the verdict, Mr.

Clerk." The clerk then said, "Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to your

verdict, as the Court has recorded it. You say you find the defendant

guilty of the offence whereof she stands indicted, and so say you all."

To this the jury made no response, and were immediately after dismissed.

It is stated in one of the public papers, by a person present at the

trial, that immediately after the dismissal of the jury, one of the

jurors said to him that that was not his verdict, nor that of the rest,

and that if he could have spoken he should have answered "Not guilty,"

and that other jurors would have sustained him in it. The writer has no

authority for this statement, beyond the letter mentioned. The juror, of

course, had a right, when the verdict was read by the clerk, to declare

that it was not his verdict, but it is not strange, perhaps, that an

ordinary juror, with no time to consider, or to consult with his

fellows, and probably ignorant of his rights, and in awe of the Court,

should have failed to assert himself at such a moment.

Probably the assumption by the judge that Miss Anthony in fact voted,

did her no real injustice, as it was a notorious fact that she did vote,

and claimed the right to do so. But all this made it no less an

usurpation for the judge to take the case from the jury, and order a

verdict of guilty to be entered up without consulting them.

There was, however, a real injustice done her by the course of the

judge, inasmuch as the mere fact of her voting, and voting unlawfully,

was not enough for her conviction. It is a perfectly settled rule of law

that there must exist an intention to do an illegal act, to make an act

a crime. It is, of course, not necessary that a person perpetrating a

crime should have an actual knowledge of a certain law which forbids the

act, but he must have a criminal intent. Thus, if one is charged with

theft, and admits the taking of the property, which is clearly proved to

have belonged to another, it is yet a good defence that he really

believed that he had a right to take it, or that he took it by mistake.

Just so in a case where, as sometimes occurs, the laws regulating the

right to vote in a State are of doubtful meaning, and a voter is

uncertain whether he has a right to vote in one town or another, and,

upon taking advice from good counsel, honestly makes up his mind that he

has a right to vote in the town of A. In this belief he applies to the

registrars of that town, who upon the statement of the facts, are of the

opinion that he has a right to vote there, and place his name upon the

list, and on election day he votes there without objection. Now, if he

should be prosecuted for illegal voting, it would not be enough that he

acknowledged the fact of voting, and that the judge was of the opinion

that his view of the law was wrong. There would remain another and most

vital question in the case, and that is, did he intend to vote

unlawfully? Now, precisely the wrong that would be done to the voter in

the case we are supposing, by the judge ordering a verdict of guilty to

be entered up, was done by that course in Miss Anthony's case. She

thoroughly believed that she had a right to vote. In addition to this

she had consulted one of the ablest lawyers in Western New York, who

gave it as his opinion that she had a right to vote, and who testified

on the trial that he had given her that advice. The Act of Congress upon

which the prosecution was founded uses the term "knowingly,"--"shall

knowingly vote or attempt to vote in the name of any other person, or

more than once at the same election for any candidate for the same

office, or vote at a place where he may not be lawfully entitled to

vote, or without having a lawful right to vote." Here most manifestly

the term "knowingly" does not apply to the mere _act_ of voting. It is

hardly possible that a man should vote, and not know the fact that he

is voting. The statute will bear no possible construction but that which

makes the term "knowingly" apply to the _illegality_ of the act. Thus,

"shall knowingly vote without having a lawful right to vote," can only

mean, shall vote knowing that there is no lawful right to vote. This

being so, there was manifestly a most vital question beyond that of the

fact of voting, and of the conclusion of the judge that the voting was

illegal, viz., did Miss Anthony vote, knowing that she had no right to

vote.

Now, many people will say that Miss Anthony ought to have known that she

had no right to vote, and will perhaps regard it as an audacious attempt

for mere effect, to assert a right that she might think she ought to

have, but could not really have believed that she had. But whatever

degree of credit her claim to have acted honestly in the matter is

entitled to, whether to much, or little, or none, it was entirely a

question for the jury, and they alone could pass upon it. The judge had

no right even to express an opinion on the subject to the jury, much

less to instruct them upon it, and least of all to order a verdict of

guilty without consulting them.

There seems to have been an impression, as the writer infers from

various notices of the matter in the public papers, that the case had

resolved itself into a pure question of law. Thus, a legal correspondent

of one of our leading religious papers, in defending the course of Judge

Hunt, says: "There was nothing before the Court but a pure question of

law. Miss Anthony violated the law of the State intentionally and

deliberately, as she openly avowed, and when brought to trial her only

defence was that the law was unconstitutional. Here was nothing whatever

to go to the jury." And again he says: "In jury trials all questions of

law are decided by the judge." This writer is referred to only as

expressing what are supposed to be the views of many others.

To show, however, how entirely incorrect is this assumption of fact, I

insert here the written points submitted by Miss Anthony's counsel to

the Court, for its instruction to the jury.

First--That if the defendant, at the time of voting, believed that she

had a right to vote, and voted in good faith in that belief, she is not

guilty of the offence charged.

Second--In determining the question whether she did or did not believe

that she had a right to vote, the jury may take into consideration, as

bearing upon that question, the advice which she received from the

counsel to whom she applied.

Third--That they may also take into consideration, as bearing upon the

same question, the fact that the inspectors considered the question, and

came to the conclusion that she had a right to vote.

Fourth--That the jury have a right to find a general verdict of guilty

or not guilty, as they shall believe that she has or has not been guilty

of the offense prescribed in the statute.

This certainly makes it clear that the question was not "a pure question

of law," and that there was "something to go to the jury." And this

would be so, even if, as that writer erroneously supposes, Miss Anthony

had openly avowed before the Court that she voted.

But even if this point be wholly laid out of the case, and it had been

conceded that Miss Anthony had knowingly violated the law, if she should

be proved to have voted at all, so that the only questions before the

Court were, first--whether she had voted as charged, and

secondly--whether the law forbade her voting; and if in this state of

the case a hundred witnesses had been brought by the government, to

testify that she had "openly avowed" in their presence that she had

voted, so that practically the question of her having voted was proved

beyond all possible question, still, the judge would have no right to

order a verdict of guilty. The proof that she voted would still be

_evidence_, and _mere evidence_, and a judge has no power whatever to

deal with evidence. He can deal only with the law of the case, and the

jury alone can deal with the facts.

But we will go further than this. We will suppose that in New York, as

in some of the States, a defendant in a criminal case is allowed to

testify, and that Miss Anthony had gone upon the stand as a witness, and

had stated distinctly and unequivocally that she did in fact vote as

charged. We must not forget that, if this had actually occurred, she

would at the same time have stated that she voted in the full belief

that she had a right to vote, and that she was advised by eminent

counsel that she had such right; a state of the case which we have

before referred to as presenting a vital question of fact for the jury,

and which excludes the possibility of the case being legally dealt with

by the judge alone; but this point we are laying out of the case in the

view we are now taking of it. We will suppose that Miss Anthony not only

testified that she voted in fact, but also that she had no belief that

she had any right to vote; making a case where, if the Court should

hold as matter of law that she had no right to vote, there would seem to

be no possible verdict for the jury to bring in but that of "guilty."

Even in this case, which would seem to resolve itself as much as

possible into a mere question of law, there is yet no power whatever on

the part of the judge to order a verdict of guilty, but it rests

entirely in the judgment and conscience of the jury what verdict they

will bring in. They may act unwisely and unconscientiously, perhaps by

mere favoritism, or a weak sympathy, or prejudice, or on any other

indefensible ground; but yet they have entire _power_ over the matter.

It is for them finally to say what their verdict shall be, and the judge

has no power beyond that of instruction upon the law involved in the

case.

The proposition laid down by the writer before referred to, that "in

jury trials all questions of law are decided by the judge," is not

unqualifiedly true. It is so in civil causes, but in criminal causes it

has been holden by many of our best courts that the jury are judges of

the law as well as of the facts. Pages could be filled with authorities

in support of this proposition. The courts do hold, however, that the

judges are to _instruct_ the jury as to the law, and that it is their

duty to take the law as thus laid down. But it has never been held that

if the jury assume the responsibility of holding a prisoner not guilty

in the face of a charge from the judge that required a verdict of

guilty, where the question was wholly one of law, they had not full

power to do it.

The question is one ordinarily of little practical importance, but it

here helps to make clear the very point we are discussing. Here the

judge laid down the law, correctly, we will suppose, certainly in terms

that left the jury no doubt as to what he meant; and here, by all the

authorities, the jury ought, as a matter of proper deference in one

view, or of absolute duty in the other, to have adopted the view of the

law given them by the judge. But it was in either case the _jury only_

who could apply the law to the case. The judge could _instruct_, but the

jury only could _apply the instruction_. That is, the instruction of the

judge, no matter how authoritative we may regard it, could find its way

to the defendant _only through the verdict of the jury_.

It is only where the confession of facts is _matter of record_, (that

is, where the plea filed or recorded in the case _admits_ them), that

the judge can enter up a judgment without the finding of a jury. Thus,

if the defendant pleads "guilty," there is no need of a jury finding him

so. If, however, he pleads "not guilty," then, no matter how

overwhelming is the testimony against him on the trial, no matter if a

hundred witnesses prove his admission of all the facts, the whole is not

legally decisive like a plea of guilty; but the question still remains a

question of fact, and the jury alone can determine what the verdict

shall be. In other words, it is no less a question of fact for the

reason that the evidence is all one way and overwhelming, or that the

defendant has in his testimony admitted all the facts against himself.

The writer has intended this article for general rather than

professional readers, and has therefore not encumbered it with

authorities; but he has stated only rules and principles that are well

established and familiar to all persons practising in our courts of law.

This case illustrates an important defect in the law with regard to the

revision of verdicts and judgments in the United States Circuit Court.

In almost all other courts, an application for a new trial on the ground

of erroneous rulings by the judge, is made to a higher and independent

tribunal. In this court, however, an application for a new trial is

addressed to and decided by the same judge who tried the case, and whose

erroneous rulings are complained of. Such a motion was made and argued

by Miss Anthony's counsel before Judge Hunt, who refused to grant a new

trial. Thus it was Judge Hunt alone who was to decide whether Judge Hunt

was wrong. It is manifest that the opportunity for securing justice even

before the most honest of judges, would be somewhat less than before an

entirely distinct tribunal, as the judge would be prejudiced in favor of

his own opinion, and the best and most learned of judges are human and

fallible; while if a judge is disposed to be unfair, it is perfectly

easy for him to suppress all attempts of a party injured by his decision

to set it aside.

The only remedy for a party thus wronged is by an appeal to the public.

Such an appeal, as a friend of justice and of the law, without regard to

Miss Anthony's case in any other aspect, the writer makes in this

article. The public, thus the only appellate tribunal, should willingly

listen to such a case, and pass its own supreme and decisive judgment

upon it.

The writer cannot but regard Judge Hunt's course as not only irregular

as a matter of law, but a very dangerous encroachment on the right of

every person accused to be tried by a jury. It is by yielding to such

encroachments that liberties are lost.

An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872, and on the Trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, the Inspectors of Election by Whom Her Vote was Received. · 第 4 / 4 章

Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, nor exclusion of