The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony

lack the capacity to consent. But the exclusion of this class from the suffrage deprives them of the power of assent to representation even when they possess the requisite ability.... The Czar represents his whole people, just as much as voting men represent women who do not vote at all.

      True it is that the voting men, in excluding women and other classes from the suffrage, by that act charge themselves with the trust of administering justice to all, even as the monarch whose power is based upon force is bound to rule uprightly. But if it be true that "all just government is founded upon the consent of the governed," then the government of woman by man, without her consent given in a sovereign capacity, even if that government be wise and just in itself, is a violation of natural right and an enforcement of servitude against her on the part of man. If woman, like the infant or the defective classes, be incapable of self-government, then republican society may exclude her from all participation in the enactment and enforcement of the laws under which she lives. But in that case, like the infant and the idiot and the unconsenting subject of tyrannical forms of government, she is ruled and not represented by man. This much I desire to say in the beginning in reply to the broad assumption of those who deny women the suffrage by saying that they are already represented by their fathers, their husbands, their brothers and their sons.

      The common ground upon which all agree may be stated thus: All males having certain qualifications are in reason and in law entitled to vote. These qualifications affect either the body or the mind or both. The first is the attainment of a certain age. The age in itself is not material, but maturity of mental development is material, although soundness of body in itself is not essential, and want of it never works forfeiture of the right. Age as a qualification for suffrage is by no means to be confounded with age as a qualification for service in war. Society has well established the distinction, and also that one has no relation whatever to the other—the one having reference to physical prowess, while the other relates only to the mental state. This is shown by the ages fixed by law, that of eighteen years as the commencement of the term of presumed fitness for military service and forty-five as the period of its termination; while the age of presumed fitness for the suffrage, which requires no physical superiority certainly, is set at twenty-one years when still greater strength of body has been attained than at the period when liability to the dangers and hardships of war begins. There are at least three million more male voters in our country than of the population liable by law to the performance of military duty. It is still further to be observed that the right of suffrage continues as long as the mind lasts, while ordinary liability to military service ceases at a period when the physical powers, though still strong, are beginning to wane. The truth is that there is no legal or natural connection between the liability to fight and the right to vote.

      The right to fight may be exercised voluntarily, or the liability to fight may be enforced by the community, whenever there is need for it, and the extent to which the physical forces of society may be called upon in self-defense or in justifiable revolution is measured not by age or sex, but by necessity, which may go so far as to call into the field old men and women and the last vestige of physical force. It can not be claimed that woman has no right to vote because she is not liable to fight, for she is so liable, and the freest government on the face of the earth has the reserved power under the call of necessity to place her in the forefront of the battle itself; and more than this, woman has the right, and often has exercised it, to go there. If any one could question the existence of this reserved power to call woman to the common defense, either in the hospital or the field, it would be woman herself, who has been deprived of participation in the Government and in shaping public policies which have resulted in dire emergency to the State. But in all times, and under all forms of government and of social existence, woman has given her body and her soul to the common defense.

      The qualification of age, then, is imposed for the purpose of securing mental and moral fitness for the suffrage on the part of those who exercise it. It has no relation to the possession of physical powers at all.

      The property qualification for suffrage is, to my mind, an invasion of natural right, which elevates mere property to an equality with life and personal liberty, and it ought never to be imposed. But, however that may be, its application has no relation to sex, and its only object is to secure the exercise of the suffrage under a stronger sense of obligation and responsibility. The same is true of the qualifications of sanity, education and obedience to the laws, which exclude dementia, ignorance and crime from participation in the sovereignty. Every condition or qualification imposed upon the exercise of the suffrage, save sex alone, has for its only object or possible justification the possession of mental and moral fitness, and has no relation to physical power.

      The question then arises why is the qualification of masculinity required? The distinction between human beings by reason of sex is a physical distinction. The soul is of no sex. If there be a distinction of soul by reason of the physical difference, woman is the superior of man. In proof of this see the minority report of this committee with all the eulogiums of woman pronounced by those who, like the serpent of old, would flatter her vanity that they may continue to wield her power. I repeat that the soul is of no sex, and that so far as the possession and exercise of human rights and powers are concerned, sex is but a physical property, whose possession renders the female just as important as the male, and in just as great need of power in the government of society. If there be a difference, however, her average physical inferiority is really compensated for by a superior mental and moral fitness to give direction to the course of society and to the policy of the State. If, then, there be a distinction between the souls of human beings resulting from sex, woman is better fitted for the exercise of the suffrage than man.

      It is asserted by some that the suffrage is an inherent natural right, and by others that it is merely a privilege extended to the individual by society at its discretion. However this may be, its extension to any class must come through the exercise of the suffrage by those who already possess it. Therefore, the appeal by those who have it not must be made to those who are asked to part with a portion of their own power. It is only human nature that the male sex should hesitate to yield one-half of its power to those whose cause, however strong in reason and justice, lacks that physical force by which so largely the masses of men themselves have wrung their own rights from rulers and kings.

      It is not strange that when overwhelmed with argument and half won by appeals to his better nature, and ashamed to refuse blankly that which he finds no reason for longer withholding, man avoids the dilemma by a pretended elevation of woman to a higher sphere, where, as an angel, she has certain gauzy, ethereal resources and superior attributes and functions which render the possession of mere earthly, every-day powers and privileges non-essential to her, however mere mortal men may find them indispensable to their own freedom and happiness. But to the denial of her right to vote, whether that denial be the blunt refusal of the ignorant or the polished evasion of the refined courtier and politician, woman can oppose only her most solemn and perpetual appeal to the reason of man and to the justice of Almighty God. She must continually point out the nature and object of the suffrage and the necessity that she possess it for her own and the public good.

What, then, is the suffrage, and why is it necessary that woman should possess and exercise this function of freemen? I quote briefly from the majority report of the Senate Committee:33

      "The rights for the maintenance of which human governments are constituted are life, liberty and property. These rights are common to men and women alike and both are entitled to the sovereign power to protect these rights. This right to the protection of rights appertains to the individual, not to the family, or to any form of association, whether social or corporate. Probably not more than five-eighths of the men of legal age, qualified to vote, are heads of families, and not more than that proportion of adult women are united with men in the legal merger of married life. It is, therefore, quite incorrect to speak of the State as an aggregate of families duly represented at the ballot-box by their male head. The relation between the government and the individual is direct; all rights are individual rights, all duties are individual duties.

      "Government in its two highest functions is legislative and judicial. By these powers the sovereignty prescribes the law and directs its application to the vindication of rights and the redress of wrongs.