immunities to which the section
refers. Among these privileges and immunities may doubtless be classed
the right to life and liberty, to the acquisition and enjoyment of
property, and to the free pursuit of one's own welfare, so far as such
pursuit does not interfere with the rights and welfare of others; but
what security has any one for the enjoyment of these rights when denied
any voice in the making of the laws, or in the choice of those who make,
and those who administer them? The possession of this voice, in the
making and administration of the laws--this _political_ right--is what
gives security and value to the other rights, which are merely personal,
not political. A person deprived of political rights is essentially a
slave, because he holds his personal rights subject to the will of those
who possess the political power. This principle constitutes the very
corner-stone of our government--indeed, of all republican government.
Upon that basis our separation from Great Britain was justified.
"Taxation without representation is tyranny." This famous aphorism of
James Otis, although sufficient for the occasion when it was put forth,
expresses but a fragment of the principle, because government can be
oppressive through means of many appliances besides that of taxation.
The true principle is, that all government over persons deprived of any
voice in such government, is tyranny. That is the principle of the
declaration of independence. We were slow in allowing its application to
the African race, and have been still slower in allowing its application
to women; but it has been done by the fourteenth amendment, rightly
construed, by a definition of "citizenship," which includes women as
well as men, and in the declaration that "the privileges and immunities
of citizens shall not be abridged." If there is any privilege of the
citizen which is paramount to all others, it is the right of suffrage;
and in a constitutional provision, designed to secure the most valuable
rights of the citizen, the declaration that the privileges and
immunities of the citizen shall not be abridged, must, as I conceive, be
held to secure that right before all others. It is obvious, when the
entire language of the section is examined, not only that this
declaration was designed to secure to the citizen this _political_
right, but that such was its principal, if not its sole object, those
provisions of the section which follow it being devoted t