or speak your thoughts upon every occasion, except at the polls. There your lips shall be sealed. It is impossible that this can be American law!
Again, it is the opinion of some that suffrage is somehow lodged in the government, whence it is dispensed, or conferred upon the citizen, thus completely reversing the actual fact. Suffrage is never conferred by government upon the citizen. He holds it by a higher title. In this country government is the source of power, not of rights. These are vested in the individual—are personal and inalienable. Society can only acquire the authority to regulate these rights, or declare them forfeited, for cause. The time, place, and manner of their exercise are under governmental control, but their origin and source are in the individual himself.
I shall, therefore, says a writer on government, assume it as an incontrovertible position, as a first principle, that the right of private opinion, which is, in fact, no other than the right of private judgment upon any subject presented to the mind, is a sacred right, with which society can, on no pretense, authoritatively interfere, without a violation of the first principles of the law of nature. (Chipman on Government, chap. 5.)
Other liberties, says Erskine, are held under governments, but the liberty of opinion keeps governments themselves in due subjection to their duties. (Speech in defense of Thomas Paine.)
But this clause of the Missouri law further violates the XIII. Amendment, which declares that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States, except for crime, etc. This Amendment is a copy of the 6th clause of the famous Ordinance of 1787, which secured freedom for the Northwest Territory, and has now become the organic law for the entire Union. This Ordinance was drawn by the Hon. Nathan Dane, of Massachusetts.[1]
We say that this Missouri law violates this Amendment inasmuch as it places the plaintiff in a disfranchised condition, which is none other than a condition of servitude—of "involuntary servitude," because, although a citizen in the fullest acceptation of the term—a member of this body politic —one of the "people"—she has never consented to this law; has never been permitted to express either consent or dissent, nor given any opportunity to express her opinion thereon, in the manner pointed out by law, while at the same time she is taxed, and her property taken to pay the very men who sat in judgment upon and condemned her!
Finally—Such is the nature of this privilege—so individual—so purely personal is its character, that its indefinite extension detracts not in the slightest degree from those who already enjoy it, and by an affirmation of the plaintiff's claim all womanhood would be elevated into that condition of self-respect that perfect freedom alone can give.
RESUME—{Minor vs. Happersett, 21 Wallace Rep., p. 164.)
1st. As a citizen of the United States, the plaintiff is entitled to any and all the "privileges and immunities" that belong to such position however defined; and as are held, exercised, and enjoyed by other citizens of the United States.
2d. The elective franchise is a "privilege" of citizenship, in the highest sense of the word. It is the privilege preservative of all rights and privi-
- ↑ More recent investigation shows that this claese was originated by Mr. Jefferson in 1784. See The Nation for May 4, 1882, and authorities there referred to. See Bancroft's "History of the United States," Vol. II., p. 115.
