DIX.

ADDRESS OF

SUSAN B. ANTHONY,

Delivered in twenty-nine of the Post Office Districts of Monroe, and
twenty-one of Ontario, in her canvass of those Counties, prior to her
trial in June, 1873.

* * *

_Friends and Fellow-citizens_: I stand before you to-night, under
indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last
Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall
be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting, I not only
committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my _citizen's right_,
guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National
Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.

Our democratic-republican government is based on the idea of the natural
right of every individual member thereof to a voice and a vote in making
and executing the laws. We assert the province of government to be to
secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw
to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before
governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed
the right to protect his own life, liberty and property. And when 100 or
1,000,000 people enter into a free government, they do not barter away
their natural rights; they simply pledge themselves to protect each
other in the enjoyment of them, through prescribed judicial and
legislative tribunals. They agree to abandon the methods of brute force
in the adjustment of their differences, and adopt those of civilization.

Nor can you find a word in any of the grand documents left us by the
fathers that assumes for government the power to create or to confer
rights. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution,
the constitutions of the several states and the organic laws of the
territories, all alike propose to protect the people in the exercise of
their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights.

"All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. That to secure these, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, nor exclusion of
any class from their full and equal enjoyment. Here is pronounced the
right of all men, and "consequently," as the Quaker preacher said, "of
all women,