Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 2.djvu/200

 1 82 ^^R VARD LA W RB VIE IV.

doctrine that a pardon is not valid until accepted, said : " A pardon may be conditional, and the condition may be more objectionable than the punishment inflicted by the judgment."

There seems to be little doubt that a condition precedent may validly be attached to the granting of a pardon ; that is, for example, that a final pardon can be granted on condition that the criminal promises never to use intoxicating liquors again. Of course, in such case, if he should subsequently break his promise, he would incur no penalty therefor. Can the condition *also be made in the form of a condition subsequent; that is, can a pardon be granted, analogous to a continuing respite, to hold good so long as the criminal does not, in fact, drink? It has been somewhat ingen- iously suggested that in this case the prisoner, on drinking, would not be hung for the murder, which had been pardoned, but for the drinking, or that, in other words, the governor is thereby given power to make intoxication a capital offence. This criticism, how- ever, overlooks the fact that the original crime has never been pardoned, but the punishment has merely been suspended on a certain condition, on the breaking of which the original judgment revives in full force.

On the whole, the more reasonable view would seem to be that such a pardon, with condition subsequent, is invalid, and that when once given upon whatever condition, the pardon should be final. The position of a condemned murderer, turned loose upon the community, subject to reimprisonment and execution in the event of drinking liquor, would be anomalous and absurd.

The Supreme Court of Washington Territory has just given an interesting decision in the case of Bloomer v. Toddy reported in 38 Alb. L. Jour. 288. It seems that, by a recent tenitorial act, the right of suffrage was extended to women. Under that act the plaintiff, a woman, tried to vote in a city election within the Territory ; but her ballot was refused by the election judges, and she brought suit against them. The defendants demurred to her complaint, and the demurrer was sustained in the District Court. The plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court of the Territory, who sustained the former judgment on the ground that the territorial act was void as being in conflict with § 5506 of the United States Revised Statutes, providing that "the qualifications of voters and of holding office . . . shall be such as shall be pre- scribed by the Legislative Assembly : provided, that the right of suffrage and of holding office shall be exercised only by citizens of the United States above the age of twenty-one." The basis of the decision was that by *' citizens " was meant only male citizens, since that was all that the framers of the statute had in mind when they drew it up.

In view, however, of the fact that there is a definition of the word any such limited meaning, the decision would seem to be wrong. The Fourteenth Amendment provides that " 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." Women clearly come within this definition of citizens. The amendment hav- ing thus given a legal meaning to the word " citizen," the presumption should be that it is used in that sense. Although this definition was
 * citizen " in an amendment to the U. S. Constitution, which negatives