restrictions, is very significant of the belief in her right to the
ballot-box." My comment is, that the same lesson we have learned in Europe
is repeated here with wonderful emphasis. Under the transported
aristocracy of churchly power in the state, they shared the undemocratic
rule. When freedom broadened a little, and, under a system that still
acknowledged allegiance to the British Crown, all property-holders or
other "duly qualified" colonists could vote, they still had the voice that
England grants to-day, the voice of an estate. When liberty took another
step and a league was formed of "firm friendship" in which each Colony was
to be independent and yet banded for offensive and defensive aid, the
women were retired from the special vote on the result of which lay the
actual execution of the law. But this country was not yet a republic, or
even a nation. Washington himself said that the state of things under the
Articles of Confederation was hardly removed from anarchy. In 1789 a
constitution was adopted, which made the American people a nation. Its
preamble read: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a
more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure
the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Under this
Constitution the last vestiges of churchly political rule, and of
property-qualification for voting, have gradually disappeared. New Jersey
was the last State to repeal her property-qualification laws. In 1709 she
made "male freeholders" who held a certain amount of property the only
voters. In 1790 her Constitution, through an error in wording, admitted
"all inhabitants" with certain property to vote. This was in force until
1807, when an act was passed conferring the suffrage upon "free white male
citizens twenty-one years of age worth fifty pounds proclamation money,
clear estate," etc. From 1790 to 1807 a good many women, generally from
the Society of Friends, took part in elections. After 1807 they attempted