Samantha among the Brethren — Volume 7 by Marietta Holley (desktop ebook reader TXT) 📗

elected, be an inhabitant of the State for which he shall be chosen."

These and no other qualifications are worded or found in the Constitution of the United States touching the qualification of Senators. Is there a layman on this floor who will dare assert that under the Constitution of the United States women are eligible as Representatives or Senators? Words of common gender are exclusively used as applied to the qualification of Senators. The words persons and citizens include women the same as they include men. Nevertheless, in the light of the past, I am bold to assert, that any man who would dare stand in the Senate of the United States, and contend that women are eligible to the office of United States Senators, would be regarded by the civilized world as a person of gush and void of judgment.

Article 14, United States Constitution, �1:

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

(Tax case and what was decided.) (Mrs. Minor vs. Judges of Election. 53 Mo. 68.)

The first case indicates that the word citizen when affecting property rights includes corporations.

The second, that the word person, when it relates to the woman claiming the right to vote, does not confer upon her that right.

The language is: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of any citizen of the United States. Nevertheless, a Republican Circuit Judge held this language did not entitle Mrs. Minor to vote. A democratic Supreme Court of Missouri held the same, and the Supreme Court of the United States, in an able opinion written by men known as the friends of women, conclusively demonstrated that these constitutional guarantees did not confer upon woman the right to vote. Why? Because, from time immemorial, this right had not obtained in favor of woman, and these words of common gender should not be so construed as to confer this right, since it was not intended when made to affect their status in this regard.

THE END

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Samantha Among the Brethren, Part 7. by Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)