s, the whole
face of affairs might have been different, and the "erring
sisters" permitted to "go in peace"! The "lost cause" may not be
"lost," after all.

But to resume: The Court tells us in its opinion in this case,
that "there can not be a Nation without a people," but it seems
there may be a Nation without voters! Now the people of the
United States may not have a very profound knowledge of their
institutions, but their intelligence certainly rises to the level
of comprehending that a republican government can not be
established or maintained without voters. It would be a manifest
absurdity to say that in a government created by the people, they
are not voters. Inasmuch, then, as it is admitted by the Court,
if the right of suffrage be a privilege of the citizen of the
United States, that the State Constitution and laws confining it
to men are in violation of the Constitution of the United States
and, consequently, void; as contended for by the plaintiff in
this case, we have really only to examine this single point: Does
the Constitution of the United States recognize the right of
suffrage as belonging to its citizens?

Future generations will look with astonishment at the fact that
such a question could be asked seriously. Not only was the
subject debated in the convention that framed the instrument, but
one of its ablest members, Alexander Hamilton, in the
fifty-second number of the _Federalist_, says:

The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly
regarded as a fundamental article of republican government.
It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and
establish this right in the Constitution. To have left it
open for the occasional regulation of the Congress, would
have been improper for the reason just mentioned. To have
submitted it to the legislative discretion of the States,
would have been improper for the same reason; and for the
additional reason, that it would have rendered too dependent
on the State Governments that branch of the Federal
Government which ought to be dependent on the people alone.
To have reduced the different qualifications in the
different States to one uniform rule, would probably have
been as dissat