e
of forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes
to this State.

SEC. 10. And this Convention doth further, in the name and
by the authority of the good people of this State, ordain,
determine, and declare that the Senate of the State of New
York shall consist of twenty-four freeholders, to be chosen
out of the body of the freeholders, and they be chosen by
the freeholders of this State, possessed of freeholds of the
value of L100 over and above all debts charged thereon.

By section 17, the qualifications for voters for Governor
are made the same as those for Senators.

The laws above quoted show this striking fact: Those men, black
and white, prohibited from voting for members of the Assembly,
were permitted to vote for delegates to said Conventions; and
more than this, on each occasion they were eligible to seats in
the body called to frame the fundamental law--the fundamental law
from which Governors, Senators, and Members derive their
existence.

The Constitutional Convention of Rhode Island, in 1842, affords
another precedent of the power of the Legislature to extend the
suffrage to disfranchised classes.

The disfranchisement of any class of citizens is in express
violation of the spirit of our own Constitution. Art. 1, sec. 1:

No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived
of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen
thereof, unless by the law of the land and the judgment of
his peers.

Now, women, and negroes not worth two hundred and fifty dollars,
however weak and insignificant, are surely "members of the
State." The law of the land is equality. The question of
disfranchisement has never been submitted to the judgment of
their peers. A peer is an equal. The "white male citizen" who so
pompously parades himself in all our Codes and Constitutions,
does not recognize women and negroes as his equals; therefore,
his judgment in their case amounts to nothing. And women and
negroes constituting a majority of the people of the State, do
not recognize a "white male" minority as their rightful rulers.
On our republican theory that the majority governs, women and
negroes should have a voice in the government