every man
is not born a voter, he is not born with the right of becoming a
voter upon equal terms with other men? What else is the meaning
of the phrase which I find in the New York _Tribune_ of Monday,
and have so often found there, "The radical basis of government
is equal rights for all citizens." There are, as I think we shall
all admit, some kinds of natural rights. This summer air that
breathes benignant around our national anniversary, is vocal with
the traditional eloquence with which those rights were asserted
by our fathers. From all the burning words of the time, I quote
those of Alexander Hamilton, of New York, in reply, as my
honorable friend the Chairman of the Committee will remember, to
the Tory farmer of Westchester: "The sacred rights of mankind are
not to be rummaged for among old parchments or dusty records.
They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human
nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be
erased or obscured by mortal power." In the next year, Thomas
Jefferson, of Virginia, summed up the political faith of our
fathers in the Great Declaration. Its words vibrate through the
history of those days. As the lyre of Amphion raised the walls of
the city, so they are the music which sing course after course of
the ascending structure of American civilization into its place.
Our fathers stood indeed upon technical and legal grounds when
the contest with Great Britain began, but as tyranny encroached
they rose naturally into the sphere of fundamental truths as into
a purer air. Driven by storms beyond sight of land, the sailor
steers by the stars; and our fathers, compelled to explore the
whole subject of social rights and duties, derived their
government from what they called self-evident truths. Despite the
brilliant and vehement eloquence of Mr. Choate, they did not deal
in glittering generalities, and the Declaration of Independence
was not the passionate manifesto of a revolutionary war, but the
calm and simple statement of a new political philosophy and
practice.

The rights which they declared to be inalienable are indeed what
are usually called natural, as distinguished from political
rights, but they are not limited by sex. A woman has the same
right to her life, liberty and pr