If women are legally competent to hold minor offices, I would be glad to have the rule of law, or of propriety, shown which should exclude them from higher offices, and which marks the line between those which they may and those which they may not hold.

Another objection is that women cannot serve as soldiers.  To this I answer that capacity for military service has never been made a test of the right to vote.  If it were, young men from sixteen to twenty-one would be entitled to vote, and old men from sixty and up-wards would not.  If that were the test, some women would present much stronger claims than many of the male sex.

Another objection is that engaging in political controversies is not consistent with the feminine character.  Upon that subject, women themselves are the best judges, and if political duties should be found inconsistent with female delicacy, we may rest assured that women will either effect a change in the character of political contests, or decline to engage in them.  This subject may be safely left to their sense of delicacy and propriety.

If any difficulty on this account should occur, it may not be impossible to receive the votes of women at their places of residence.  This method of voting was practiced in ancient Rome under the republic; and it will be remembered that when the votes of the soldiers who were fighting our battles in the Southern States were needed to sustain their friends at home, no difficulty was found in the way of taking their votes at their respective camps.

I humbly submit to your honor, therefore, that on the constitutional grounds to which I have referred, Miss Anthony had a lawful right to vote; that her vote was properly received and counted; that the first section of the fourteenth amendment secured to her that right, and did not need the aid of any further legislation.

But conceding that I may be in error in supposing that Miss Anthony had a right to vote, she has been guilty of no crime, if she voted in good faith believing that she had such right.

This proposition appears to me so obvious, that were it not for the severity to my client of the consequences which may follow a conviction, I should not deem it necessary to discuss it.

To make out the offence, it is incumbent on the prosecution to show affirmatively, not only that the defendant knowingly voted, but that she so voted knowing that she had no right to vote.  That is, the term “knowingly,” applies, not to the fact of voting, but to the fact of want of right.  Any other interpretation of the language would be absurd.  We cannot conceive of a case where a party could vote without knowledge of the fact of voting, and to apply the term “knowingly” to the more act of voting, would make nonsense of the statute.  This word was inserted as defining the essence of the offence, and it limits the criminality to cases where the voting is not only without right, but where