Now, women may be voters or not, citizens or not; but that they are a part of the people, no one has denied in Christendom—­however it may be in Japan, where, as Mrs. Leonowens tells us, the census of population takes in only men, and the women and children are left to be inferred.  “WE THE PEOPLE,” then, includes women.  Be the superstructure what it may, the foundation of the government clearly provides a place for them:  it is impossible to state the national theory in such a way that it shall not include them.  It is impossible to deny the natural right of women to vote, except on grounds which exclude all natural right.

The fundamental charters are on our side.  There are certain statute limitations which may prove greater or less.  But these are temporary and trivial things, always to be interpreted, often to be modified, by reference to the principles of the Constitution.  For instance, when a constitutional convention is to be held, or new conditions of suffrage to be created, the whole people should vote upon the matter, including those not hitherto enfranchised.  This is the view insisted on, many years since, by that eminent jurist, William Beach Lawrence.  He maintained, in a letter to Charles Sumner and in opposition to his own party, that if the question of “negro suffrage” in the Southern States of the Union were put to vote, the colored people themselves had a natural right to vote on the question.  The same is true of women.  It should never be forgotten by advocates of woman suffrage, that the deeper their reasonings go, the stronger foundation they find; and that we have always a solid fulcrum for our lever in that phrase of our charters, “We the people.”

THE USE OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

When young people begin to study geometry, they expect to begin with hard reasoning on the very first page.  To their surprise, they find that the early pages are not occupied by reasoning, but by a few simple, easy, and rather commonplace sentences, called “axioms,” which are really a set of pegs on which all the reasoning is hung.  Pupils are not expected to go back in every demonstration and prove the axioms.  If Almira Jones happens to be doing a problem at the blackboard on examination day, at the high school, and remarks in the course of her demonstration that “things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another,” and if a sharp questioner jumps up, and says, “How do you know it?” she simply lays down her bit of chalk, and says fearlessly, “That is an axiom,” and the teacher sustains her.  Some things must be taken for granted.