believe that the Convention which framed the Constitution had no view to the admission of females, either single women or widows, to elect the public officers. But such is the phraseology of the Constitution that it seems a violation of it not to admit their votes. The best constitutions have guarded against mistakes on this head. Those of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Vermont, etc., do not admit of female electors. Whether this be right or wrong, the objection to our Constitution is, that it does not settle the point one way or the other with an absolute certainty. The practice is variable. The generally received opinion, however, is that the Constitution permits it. In this state of the matter it is not competent for the Legislature to interfere. Nothing short of a constitutional declaration can decide the question; which is, in fact, an important one, and is growing more and more so to the country in proportion as the towns and villages increase in numbers and population. For, independent of the theoretic question, it is evident that the admission of these votes gives a vast advantage to the thickly settled places over the more dispersed population of the country.
In another note the author says: "Mr. Fox in his late harangue in the British House of Commons, in favor of more equal suffrage, concedes the unfitness of females to share in elections. He says no instance of their participation of public suffrage in any government can be shown; and that this right (which many of his party hold to be a natural one, though he affects to stop short of that) is properly denied to the fairest productions of nature. Of widows and spinsters above twenty-one, there can not, I imagine, be fewer than 10,000. It is certainly not unimportant to leave doubtful the rights of so great a number of people."
Mr. Whitehead's report clearly shows three unjust inferences from the facts stated:
First. That all the corruptions of that special election in Essex County could be traced to the women.
Second. That the quiet, good order, and dignity of the State could be secured only by the restriction of the suffrage to "free white male citizens worth fifty pounds."
Third. "The unreasonableness of the demand" for representation by women tax-payers.
1st. Tradition shows that the voting early and often in varied feminine costume, was done by men five feet four, "picked men," not for their bravery, but for their inferiority. Depriving women of their right to vote, because the men abused their privilege, under cover of sex, in 1807, was, however, on the same principle that politicians in 1881 propose to disfranchise the women of Utah, because of their polygamous relations. That is, punish the women who claim a right to only one-sixth part of a man's time and affections, because the men claim six wives apiece. The question naturally suggests itself to any fair mind, why not deprive the men of the suffrage, and let the women vote themselves each one husband? Who doubts the fate of the system under such legislation? Every woman in her normal condition, unless wholly perverted by the religious dogma of self-sacrifice and self-crucifixion, desires to own the man she loves as absolutely and completely, as every man desires to consecrate to himself alone the woman he loves. So to deprive the women of Essex of their right to vote to have the county buildings in Elizabeth, because of the undue excitement and dishonesty of the men, was to punish the best class of citizens for the crimes of the worst.
2d. The assumption that "free white male citizens worth fifty pounds," could legislate for "aliens, women, and negroes," better than those classes could for themselves, is to deny the fundamental principle of republicanism; Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; and to reassert the despotic ideas of the old world that national safety depends on the wisdom of privileged orders—nobles, kings, and czars. The experiment in Wyoming has fully proved that when "free white male citizens" reigned supreme, the polls there were scenes of drunkenness, violence, and death; men knocking each other down and putting bullets through each other's brains were of annual occurrence. But when the suffrage was extended, and women admitted to the polling booths, quiet, good order, and dignity were inaugurated.
3d. "Taxation without representation is tyranny." James Otis said: "To tax a man's property without his consent, is in effect disfranchising him of every civil right. For what one civil right is worth a rush, after a man's property is subject to be taken from him at the pleasure of another?" Is not such injustice as grievous to woman as man? Does the accident of sex place woman outside of all ordinary principles of law and justice? It is the essence of cruelty and tyranny to take her hard earnings without her consent, blocked as her way is to wealth and independence, to make sidewalks, highways, and bridges; to build jails, prisons, and alms-houses, the legitimate outgrowth of the whisky traffic, which she abhors. On what principle of republican government is one class of tax-payers thus defrauded of one of the most sacred rights of citizenship? What logical argument can be made to prove "the unreasonableness of this demand," for one class above all others? Principles of justice, to have any value or significance, must be universal in their application to all humanity.
4th. As to the point made by "Eumenes," "that women are not fit persons to take part in government," "that they do not even pretend to any judgment on the subject," we have simply to say that the writer's prejudices contradict all the facts of our common experience. Women are so pre-eminently fitted for government, that the one fear in all ages among men has been lest by some chance they should be governed by women; and the smaller the man the greater the fear.
Blackstone says "the elements of sovereignty are three: 'Wisdom, Goodness, and Power.'" Admitting for the sake of argument that "Power" in this connection means physical force, the distinctive point of male superiority, and not moral power, which may be equal in both sexes, all must concede the remaining necessary elements to woman as well as man. Who so bold, or blind, as to deny wisdom and goodness, the chief elements of beneficent government, to woman, with the long record of illustrious and saintly characters gilding every page of history before him?
Whatever doubts the women known to the author of "Eumenes" might have had as to their own capacities; the women of to-day do assume to know that they are more capable of self-government than men are, and that they understand the principles that underlie a republic far better than the vast majority of foreigners now crowding our shores, the Right Honorable James Charles Fox to the contrary notwithstanding. Yea, without danger of contradiction, we may say there are women in this nation even now, who understand the political issues of this hour quite as well as those who stand at the head of our government.
We are very apt to accept popular assertions ofttimes repeated as truisms, and in this way man's superiority has passed into a proverb, and the sex in general believe it. When Milton penned the line, "God, thy will, thou mine," and made his Eve thus reverently submissive to her Adam, he little thought of bright girls in the nineteenth century, well versed in science, philosophy, and the languages, sitting in the senior class of a college of the American republic, laughing his male conceit to scorn.
76 The New York Tribune, Feb. 19, 1881, gives the following interesting facts: "William Franklin, the illegitimate son of Benjamin, who was long a resident of New York and hereabout, conducted in person his father's postal system. At Amboy, or Perth Amboy, a little town of once high aristocratic standing, which dozes on the edge of the Jersey hills and overlooks the oyster groves of Prince's Bay, began the Post-Office of North America under John Hamilton in 1694. It was a private patent, and he sold it to the Government. Many years afterward William Franklin settled at the same place, where once his father passed in Hamilton's day a footsore vagrant pressing from Boston to Philadelphia to get bread. There the younger Franklin reared a 'palace,' and lived in it as Governor of New Jersey till his adherence to the Crown, that had done better for him than his father—made him an exile and a captive. He was sent under guard to East Windsor, Conn., and his jail was made in the house of Captain Ebenezer Grant there, of the family of President Grant's ancestors, and he was prohibited the use of pen, ink, and paper—a needless punishment to a man who had delivered so many letters to others."
