Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/269

Rh We see the result of this in our general mode of speaking of woman, We forget to speak of her as an individual being, only as a thing. A political writer coolly says, that in Massachusetts, "except criminals and paupers, there is no class of persons who do not exercise the elective franchise." Women are not even a "class of persons." And yet, most readers would not notice this extraordinary omission. I talked the other day with a young radical preacher about his new religious organization. "Who votes yonder it?" said I. "Oh," (he said, triumphantly,) "we go for progress and liberty; anybody and everybody votes." "What!" said I, "women?" "No," said he, rather startled; "I did not think of them when I spoke." Thus quietly do we all talk of "anybody and everybody," and omit half the human race. Indeed, I read in the newspaper, this morning, of some great festivity, that "all the world and his wife" would be there! Women are not a part of the world, but only its "wife." They are not even "the rest of mankind"; they are womankind! All these things show the results of that inconsistency with the first principles of our Constitution of which the friends of this Convention justly complain.

II. So much for the general statement of the Massachusetts Bill of Rights in its Preamble. But one clause is even more explicit. In Section 9, I find the following:

"All the inhabitants of this Commonwealth, having such qualifications as they shall establish by their form of government, have an equal right to elect officers," etc.

As "they" shall establish. Who are they? Manifestly, the inhabitants as a whole. No part can have power, except by the consent of the whole, so far as that consent is practicable. Accordingly, you submit your Constitution for ratification — to whom? Not to the inhabitants of the State, not even to a majority of the native adult inhabitants; for it is estimated that at any given moment — in view of the great number of men emigrating to the West, to California, or absent on long voyages — the majority of the population of Massachusetts is female. You disfranchise the majority, then; the greater part of "the inhabitants" have no share in establishing the form of government, or assigning the qualifications of voters. What worse can you say of any oligarchy? True, your aristocracy is a large one — almost a majority, you may say. But so, in several European nations, is nobility almost in a majority, and you almost hire a nobleman to black your shoes; they are as cheap as generals and colonels in New England. But the principle is the same, whether the privileged minority consists of one or one million.

It is said that a tacit consent has been hitherto given by the absence of open protest? The same argument may be used concerning the black majority in South Carolina. Besides, your new Constitution is not yet made, and there has been no opportunity to assent to it. It will not be identical with the old one; but, even if it were, you propose to ask a renewed consent from men, and why not from women? Is it because a lady's "Yes" is always so fixed a certainty, that it never can be transformed to a "No," at a later period?

But I am compelled, by the fixed period of adjournment (10 ), to