The mode of amending the Constitution is in strict accordance with the doctrine of State Rights.  The amending power is not to be exercised by the collective people of the United States acting as a majority.  It can only be exercised by three-fourths of the States acting as States in their sovereign capacity.  If three-fourths of the States desire to amend the instrument then the one-fourth must submit to the will of the three-fourths.  There is no principle in the doctrine of State Rights which is violated when the Constitution is amended by the three-fourths, for all the states have agreed that the three-fourths shall possess the power to do so and that the minority will consent to be bound by action so taken.  The principle that the minority must submit to the majority is a principle which the States apply to the government of their local communities and to the people of their several commonwealths.  And it is a principle which the States as sovereigns have agreed shall be applied to themselves in their relations to each other and to the Federal Government.  In creating the amending power the framers of the Constitution were careful to remove it from the people of the nation and to lodge it in the State sovereignties.  That is all that the believers in the doctrine of State Rights asked.  They could not wisely ask, and they did not ask, more.  They only asked that in so important a matter as the amendment of the fundamental law the minority should not be compelled to submit to a mere majority, but only to three-fourths of the whole.

If it be assumed simply for the purpose of this discussion, that the amendment of the Constitution is not wholly a political question, no one can seriously contend that the amendment the National American Woman Suffrage Association urges violates any principle of law, written or unwritten.  Mr. Tucker makes no such claim.  His argument, as I understand it, is that woman suffrage by Federal Amendment is a departure from the original thought of the makers of the Constitution; that they left the subject of suffrage along with most other subjects to be regulated by State action and that their decision upon that question was wise and should not be disturbed.  The same argument exactly was made against the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and without effect.  It can be made against any amendment which can be proposed which deprives the States of any power which they now possess.

When the Constitution was adopted it is true it did not confer the right of suffrage upon any class, but left the subject to each state to regulate in its own way.  The members of the House of Representatives were to be chosen by the people of the several States and it was simply provided that “the electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.”  Senators were to be chosen by the State Legislatures.  The President and Vice-President were to be chosen by electors, who