" to a voice in the government. And here, in this very first
paragraph of the declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of
all to the ballot; for, how can "the consent of the governed" be given,
if the right to vote be denied. Again:

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a
new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their safety and happiness."

Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is here clearly implied.
For however destructive to their happiness this government might
become, a disfranchised class could neither alter nor abolish it, nor
institute a new one, except by the old brute force method of
insurrection and rebellion. One-half of the people of this nation to-day
are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or
to write there a new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are
with this form of government, that enforces taxation without
representation,--that compels them to obey laws to which they have never
given their consent,--that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a
jury of their peers, that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of
their own persons, wages and children,--are this half of the people left
wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct violation of the spirit
and letter of the declarations of the framers of this government, every
one of which was based on the immutable principle of equal rights to
all. By those declarations, kings, priests, popes, aristocrats, were all
alike dethroned, and placed on a common level, politically, with the
lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, men, as such, were deprived
of their divine right to rule, and placed on a political level with
women. By the practice of those declarations all class and caste
distinction will be abolished; and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman,
all alike, bound from their subject position to the proud platform of
equality.

The preamble of the federal constitution says:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure _domestic_ tranquility,
provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do
ordain and establis