a Constitution confining the right
of suffrage to free male citizens of the age of twenty-one years,
who had resided in the State two years, or, in the county in
which they offered to vote, one year next before the election.
Then followed Tennessee in 1796, with voters of freemen of the
age of twenty-one years and upward, possessing a freehold in the
county wherein they may vote, and being inhabitants of the State
or freemen being inhabitants of any one county in the State six
months immediately preceding the day of election. But we need not
particularize further. No new State has ever been admitted to
the Union which has conferred the right of suffrage upon women,
and this has never been considered a valid objection to her
admission. On the contrary, as is claimed in the argument, the
right of suffrage was withdrawn from women as early as 1807 in
the State of New Jersey, without any attempt to obtain the
interference of the United States to prevent it. Since then the
governments of the insurgent States have been reorganized under a
requirement that, before their Representatives could be admitted
to seats in Congress, they must have adopted new Constitutions,
republican in form. In no one of these Constitutions was suffrage
conferred upon women, and yet the States have all been restored
to their original position as States in the Union.

Besides this, citizenship has not in all cases been made a
condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage.
Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared
their intention to become citizens of the United States, may
under certain circumstances vote. The same provision is to be
found in the Constitutions of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida,
Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas.

Certainly if the courts can consider any question settled, this
is one. For near ninety years the people have acted upon the idea
that the Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not
necessarily confer the right of suffrage. If uniform practice
long continued can settle the construction of so important an
instrument as the Constitution of the United States confessedly
is, most certainly it has been done here. Our province is to
decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be.