women were exercising their right of self-government through voting,
certainly in the States of Massachusetts and New Jersey, if not in
Georgia and Delaware. These women sent their delegates or
representatives to assist in framing a Constitution.

Let us look at the Preamble of that instrument. It reads thus:

"We, the PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish _justice_, insure domestic tranquility,
provide for the _common_ welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish
this Constitution for the United States of America."

Here we have a statement as to _who_ established the Constitution. It
was not the thirteen States as States, not the government in its
sovereign capacity, but the people: not the white people alone, not the
native born alone, not the male people alone, but the people in a
collective sense. Justice was not established by this Constitution if
one half the people were left out from its provisions, neither was the
_common_ welfare considered unless all people in common, equally shared
the benefits of the Constitution. And moreover, the posterity of the
people of that time are female as well as male. Therefore not only by
our knowledge of the course of argument taken by the framers of the
Constitution, not only by our knowledge that women as well as men helped
elect delegates to that convention,--not only from the original
principles proclaimed in the Declaration, but also by and through this
Preamble to the Constitution do we find woman equally with man,
recognized as part of the governing power.

Although women do not rest their claim to self-government upon any human
instrument, it is well to show that even in the Declaration, and the
original Constitution, the "Constitution as it was," the rights of _all_
people were most emphatically and truly recognized.

Judge Story in his commentaries upon the Constitution, says, "The
importance of examining _the Preamble_ for the purpose of expounding the
language of a Statute has always been felt and universally conceded in
all judicial proceedings."

_Com. on Const., 1, 443-4._

Chief Justice Jay regarded the Preamble of the Constitution of the
United States as an authoritative guide to a correct interpretation of
that instrument.

2 _Dallas_, 414.

Coke says, "The Preamble of a Statute is a good means to find out the