This Act was passed after the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, and is designed to be in accordance with the Constitution.  It does not say black citizens shall be entitled and allowed to vote; it does not say male citizens shall be entitled and allowed to vote—­it merely says CITIZENS.  It covers the right of women citizens to vote, and yet United States officials claim to find in this very act, their authority for prosecuting Miss Anthony and those fourteen other women citizens of Rochester for the alleged crime of voting.  When Miss Anthony voted, what did she do?  She merely exercised her citizen’s right of suffrage—­a right to which she, and all women citizens are entitled by virtue of their citizenship in the nation—­a right to which they are entitled because individual political rights are the basis of the government.  The United States has no other foundation.  If that right is trampled upon, we have no nation.  We may hang together in a sort of anarchical way for a time, but our dissolution draws near.  Can the United States destroy rights on account of sex?  In the original Constitution, before even the first ten amendments were added, States were forbidden to pass bills of attainder.  By the fourteenth amendment, the right of voting was forbidden to be abridged, unless for crime.  Is it a crime to be a woman?  “In the beginning God created man, male and female, created he them.”  A bill of attainder inflicts punishment, creates liabilities or disabilities, on account of parentage, birth, or descent.  Do United States officials presume to create a disability, or inflict a punishment, on account of birth as a woman, and this in direct defiance of the Constitution?  When the Constitution of the United States presents no barrier, no lesser power has such authority.  “The Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land.”

Says article sixth:  “Any law of Congress not made in pursuance of, or in unison with the Constitution, is an illegal and void law.”  Coke declared an Act of Parliament against Magna Charta was null and void.

But United States officials declare it a crime for a United States citizen to vote.  If it is a crime for a native-born citizen, it ought to be a still greater crime for a foreign-born citizen.  But the fact that citizenship carries with it the right of voting, is shown in the act of naturalization.  A foreigner, after a certain length of residence in this country, proceeds to take out papers of citizenship.  To become a citizen, is all that he needs to make of him a voter.  At one and the same time he picks up a ballot, and his naturalization papers.  Nothing more than his becoming a citizen is needed for him to vote—­nothing less will answer.  Susan B. Anthony is a native-born citizen.  She had to take out no papers to make her a citizen—­she was born in the United States—­she is educated,