ed
States to vote, without regard to sex.

And your memorialist will ever pray. VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.

New York City, Dec. 19, 1870.

ADDRESS OF VICTORIA C. WOODHULL JANUARY 11, 1871.

_To the Honorable the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives of the Congress of the United States:_

Having most respectfully memorialized Congress for the passage of
such laws as in its wisdom shall seem necessary and proper to
carry into effect the rights vested by the Constitution of the
United States in the citizens to vote, without regard to sex, I
beg leave to submit to your honorable body the following in favor
of my prayer in said memorial which has been referred to your
Committee.

The public law of the world is founded upon the conceded fact
that sovereignty can not be forfeited or renounced. The sovereign
power of this country is perpetually in the politically
organized people of the United States, and can neither be
relinquished nor abandoned by any portion of them. The people in
this republic who confer sovereignty are its citizens: in a
monarchy the people are the subjects of sovereignty. All citizens
of a republic by rightful act or implication confer sovereign
power. All people of a monarchy are subjects who exist under its
supreme shield and enjoy its immunities. The subject of a monarch
takes municipal immunities from the sovereign as a gracious
favor; but the woman citizen of this country has the inalienable
"sovereign" right of self-government in her own proper person.
Those who look upon woman's status by the dim light of the common
law, which unfolded itself under the feudal and military
institutions that establish right upon physical power, can not
find any analogy in the status of the woman citizen of this
country, where the broad sunshine of our Constitution has
enfranchised all.

As sovereignty can not be forfeited, relinquished, or abandoned,
those from whom it flows--the citizens--are equal in conferring
the power, and should be equal in the enjoyment of its benefits
and in the exercise of its rights and privileges. One portion of
citizens have no power to deprive another portion of rights and
privileges such as are possessed and exercised by themselves. The
male citizen has no more right