Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/760

726 claim the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; to institute and maintain actions of every 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 imposition than are paid by the citizens of the other State, may be mentioned as some of the particular privileges and immunities of citizens, which are clearly embraced by the general description of privileges deemed to be fundamental; to which may be added, the elective franchise, as regulated and established by the laws or Constitution of the State in which it is to be exercised (Corfield vs. Corryell, 4 Wash. C.C., 380). Cited and approved in Dunham vs. Lamphere, 3 Gray, 276 (Mass.); Bennett vs. Boggs, Baldwin Rep., 72.

A proper construction of Art. 1, Sec. 2, of the Constitution of the United States will further demonstrate the proposition we are endeavoring to uphold. That section is as follows:

This section consists of two clauses, but in neither is there a word as to the sex of the elector. He, or she, must be one of the people, or "citizens," as they are designated in the Constitution, that is all.—(Story's Comms. § 579.)

The "people" are to elect. This clause fixes the class of voters; the other clause is in subordination to that, and merely provides, that as touching qualifications, there shall be one and the same standard for the Federal and for the State elector. Both are mentioned and neither is or can be excluded by the other.

The right to vote is very different from the qualification necessary in a voter. A person may have the right to vote, and yet not possess the necessary qualifications for exercising it. In this case, the right to vote is derived from the Federal Constitution, which designates the class of persons who may exercise it, and provides that the Federal elector shall conform to the regulations of the State, so far as time, place, and manner of exercising it are concerned. But it is clear that under this authority the State has no right to lay down an arbitrary and impossible rule. As before stated by the Chief-Justice of Nevada: "To make the enjoyment of a right depend upon an impossible condition, is equivalent to an absolute denial of it under any condition."

In conclusion, we will consider, as briefly as possible, the points made by the Supreme Court of Missouri. We quote from the opinion:

Undoubtedly the practice in the different States, as we have before said, is against the claim made by the plaintiff, although, as we shall show, in the early days of the Republic this practice was by no means universal. But when the Court states that the right of the States to do this can not be questioned, it assumes the very point in controversy, and it fails to notice the distinction between "the rights of citizenship which a State may confer within its own limits, and the rights of citizenship as a member of the Union." (Chief-Justice Taney in Scott vs. Sandford, 19 Howard, 405.)