some scheme of government; for its laws were carefully framed so as to
compel the external allegiance of those who never consent--the criminal
and the anarchist. It did not mean even that consent, in the sense of
agreement, was expected from a large body, or a small body, as the case
might happen, of those who held views opposed to the policies that were
controlling at any given time. It meant just what Jefferson meant in that
other dictum of his: "The will of the majority is the natural law of every
society, and the only sure guardian of the rights of man." Together they
interpret each other, and are worthy of our Declaration and our Bill of
Rights.

The inalienable right to liberty in all mankind forbids the right of
anarchy in any of mankind; and the question of woman suffrage, strange as
it may appear, actually narrows itself down, as it seems to me, to the
question whether we shall have democracy or anarchy. Democratic government
is at an end when those who issue decrees are not identical with those who
can enforce those decrees.

But, after all, the claim to suffrage as a natural right has been
practically abandoned by those who first made that claim. Their next
proposition was, that it was a universal right, springing from the
necessary conditions of organized society, and so should be granted to
woman as a member of that society. They say in their Declaration: "He
deprived her of the first right of a citizen--the elective franchise."
Chief Justice Waite of the United States Supreme Court decided that
citizenship carried with it no voting power or right. The same decision
has been handed down by many courts in disposing of test cases.

It seems to me quite as evident that what is now called universal manhood
suffrage does not rest upon any belief by the state that this is "the