ring the obligations of contracts, or grant any
title of nobility. (See Cummings vs. the State of Mo., 4th
Wallace Rep 278, and Exparte Garland, same volume.)

Opposed to this provision of the Constitution, by the XV.
Amendment you have established an aristocracy of sex, sanctioning
the unjust legislation of the several States, which make all men
nobles, all women serfs. Justice and equity can only be attained
by having the same laws for men and women in the District as well
as the State.

A further investigation of the subject will show that the
language of the constitutions of all the States, with the
exception of those of Massachusetts and Virginia, on the subject
of suffrage is peculiar. They almost all read substantially
alike. "White male citizens, etc., shall be entitled to vote,"
and this is supposed to exclude all other citizens. There is no
direct exclusion, except in the two States above named. Now the
error lies in supposing that an enabling clause is necessary at
all. The right of the people of a State to participate in a
government of their own creation requires no enabling clause;
neither can it be taken from them by implication. To hold
otherwise, would be to interpolate in the constitution a
prohibition that does not exist. In framing a constitution the
people are assembled in their sovereign capacity; and being
possessed of all rights and all powers, what is not surrendered
is retained. Nothing short of a direct prohibition can work a
deprivation of rights that are fundamental.

In the language of John Jay to the people of New York, urging the
adoption of the Constitution of the United States, "silence and
blank paper neither give nor take away anything," and Alexander
Hamilton says (_Federalist_, No. 83), "Every man of discernment
must at once perceive the wide difference between silence and
abolition." The mode and manner in which the people shall take
part in the government of their creation may be prescribed by the
constitution, but the right itself is antecedent to all
constitutions. It is inalienable, and can neither be bought, nor
sold, nor given away. But even if it should be held that this
view is untenable, and that women are disfranchised by the
several State Constitutions directly, or by implicat