Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/353

Rh taken. In The Revolution of January 16, 1868, we find the following well-considered report on woman's enfranchisement, presented by a minority of the Committee on Constitutional Amendments to the legislature of Connecticut at its session of 1867:

The undersigned members of the committee believe that the prayer of the petitioners ought to be granted. It would be much easier for us to reject the petition and silently to acquiesce in the opinions of the majority upon the subject to which it relates, but our attention was challenged and an investigation invited by the bold axioms upon which the cause of suffrage for woman was claimed to rest, and the more we have examined the subject the more convinced we have become that the logic of our institutions requires a concession of that right. It is claimed by some that the right to vote is not a natural right, but that it is a privilege which some have acquired, and which may be granted to others at the option of the fortunate holders. But they fail to inform us how the possessors first acquired the privilege, and especially how they acquired the rightful power to withhold that privilege from others, according to caprice or notions of expediency. We hold this doctrine to be pernicious in tendency, and hostile to the spirit of a republican government; and we believe that it can only be justified by the same arguments that are used to justify slavery or monarchy—for it is an obvious deduction of logic that if one thousand persons have a right to govern another thousand without their consent, one man has a right to govern all.

Mr. Lincoln tersely said, "If slavery is not wrong nothing is wrong." So it seems to us that if the right to vote is not a natural right, there is no such thing as a natural right in human relations. The right to freedom and the right to a ballot both spring from the same source. The right to vote is only the right to a legitimate use of freedom. It is plain that if a man is not free to govern himself, and to have a voice in the taxation of his own property, he is not really free in any enlightened sense. Even Edward I. of England said, "It is a most equitable rule that what concerns all should be approved by all." This must rightfully apply to women the same as to men. And Locke, in his essay on civil government, said, "Nothing is more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal, one with another, without subordination or subjection." Talleyrand said, as an argument for monarchy, "The moment we reject an absolutely universal suffrage, we admit the principle of aristocracy." The founders of this nation asserted with great emphasis and every variety of repetition, the essential equality of human rights as a self-evident truth. The war of the Revolution was justified by the maxim, "Taxation without representation is tyranny"; and all republics vindicate their existence by the claim that "Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed." Yet woman, in Connecticut, is governed without her consent, and taxed without representation.

Lord Camden, one of England's ablest jurists, long ago declared, "My position is this—taxation and representation are inseparable. The position is founded in a law of nature—nay more, it is itself an eternal law of nature." Our forefathers held to this principle, and fought seven years to establish it. They maintained their favorite theory of government against immense odds, and transmitted to their posterity the great work of putting it logically into practice. It is acknowledged by this legislature that "taxation without representation is tyranny," and that "governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed." If these phrases are anything more than the meaningless utterances of demagogues, anything more than the hypocritical apologies of rebellious colonies in a strait—then we submit that a primâ facie case for woman's right to vote has already been made out. To declare that a voice in the government is the right of all, and then give it to less than half, and that to the frac-