Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/438

422 of electors to the several States, it nowhere gives them the right to deprive any citizen of the elective franchise; they may regulate, but not prohibit the franchise. The Constitution of the United States expressly declares that no State shall make or enforce any law that shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; hence those provisions of the several State constitutions that exclude women from the franchise are in direct violation of the Federal Constitution. Even the preamble recognizes, in the phrase "We, the people," the true origin of all just government.

Are not women people?

How can that form of government be republican, when one-half the people are forever deprived of all participation in its affairs?

The Constitution tells us, too, who are citizens. The XIV. Amendment says:

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.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

It has just been decided by the Supreme Court that a foreign born woman is naturalized by marriage to a native. Therefore, as birth and marriage secure the right of citizenship to large numbers, the remaining classes of foreign unmarried women should secure naturalization papers, that we may all test our right to vote in the courts. As the subject of naturalization is expressly withheld from the States, and as the States would clearly have no right to deprive of the franchise naturalized citizens, among whom women are expressly included, still more clearly have they no right to deprive native born women citizens of this right.

The States have the right to regulate but not to prohibit the elective franchise to citizens of the United States. Thus the States may determine the qualifications of electors. They may require the elector to be of a certain age, to have had a fixed residence, to be of a sane mind, and unconvicted of crime, etc.; but to go beyond this, and say to one-half the citizens of the State, notwithstanding you possess all these qualifications, you shall never vote, is of the very essence of despotism. It is a bill of attainder of the most odious character.

On this point the Constitution says:

., Sec. 9. No bill of attainder, or ex post facto law shall be passed.

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States.

No State shall pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, impairing the obligations of contracts, or grant any title of nobility. (See Cummings vs. the State of Mo., 4th Wallace Rep 278, and Exparte Garland, same volume.)