e text writers.

By the pledge which was given by the dominant party of the
country in their last National Convention, by the allegiance
which Democrats themselves owe to the Constitution of the United
States, by the higher benefit which will be conferred upon
society, upon the women themselves who are struggling for a
chance in life, and upon men themselves by the purification of
society, I ask that this amendment be adopted.

Mr. BAYARD: I should like to ask the honorable Senator a question
before he takes his seat. I understand that he denies the power
of the Congress of the United States or of a State to exclude a
female from voting, to make an exclusion based upon sex, because
it would be an infringement of her rights as a citizen, under the
meaning of that word in the Constitution, according to the
construction given it by the courts. I should like to ask him
whether he considers that an exclusion by reason of age is not
just as arbitrary and unauthorized as the exclusion by reason of
sex, and by what right can it be that a State or the United
States shall arbitrarily fix a period in a person's life at which
he shall attain his civil rights? In most of the States, and by
the common law of England, the age of twenty-one years was fixed
as what they term the majority, when a person becomes _sui
juris_. Under the laws of the various States of this Union,
following the laws of other civilized communities of older date,
a period has been fixed in the life of man at which he attains
his civil rights. Ordinarily it is at the age of twenty-one
years; under the civil law it is twenty-five; it is so in France;
it is so in Spain; it is so in the French and Spanish Colonies.
Among the English-speaking people the age of twenty-one years is
the period fixed. If the rights which have been spoken of by the
Senator from Indiana and the Senator from California are
inalienable, natural rights, are part and parcel of those
"privileges and immunities" referred to by the Constitution of
the United States, how can it be that a law, a mere arbitrary
enactment by a State or by Congress, shall exclude a man who is
twenty years and six months old from exercising those inalienable
rights, those privileges and immunities which six months after,
by the mere di