ording to the intent of the framers thereof:
Therefore," etc., etc.
This act confined the right of suffrage to free white male
citizens twenty-one years of age, worth fifty pounds proclamation
money, clear estate; and disposed of the property qualification
by declaring that every person otherwise entitled to vote whose
name should be enrolled on the last tax-lists for the State or
County should be considered as worth the fifty pounds, thus by
legislative enactment determining the meaning of the Constitution
and settling the difficulty. The law remained unchanged until the
adoption of the new Constitution a few years since, which
instrument is equally restrictive as to persons who shall vote,
and removes the property qualification altogether.
Very recently a refusal to respond to a demand for taxes legally
imposed, was received from a distinguished advocate of "Woman's
Rights" in one of the northern counties; who gave as her reasons
"that women suffer taxation, and yet have no representation,
which is not only unjust to one-half of the adult population, but
is contrary to our Theory of Government"--and that when the
attention of men is called to the wide difference between their
theory of government and its practice in this particular, that
they can not fail to see the mistake they now make, by imposing
taxes on women when they refuse them the right of suffrage.[79]
Similar arguments were advanced by a sister of Richard Henry Lee,
in 1778,[80] when, if ever, they were calculated to receive due
consideration, yet the distinguished Virginian did not hesitate
to show the unreasonableness of the demand; in the course of his
able answer remarking that (setting aside other motive for
restricting the power to males) "perhaps 'twas thought rather out
of character for women to press into those tumultuous assemblages
of men where the business of choosing representatives is
conducted!" And as it is very evident that when in times past the
right was, not only claimed, but exercised in New Jersey, it
never accorded with public sentiment; so it maybe safely
predicted that, as was the case in 1807, "the safety, quiet,
good order, and dignity of the State," will ever call for its
explicit disavowal in times to come.
In his speech at the Woman's Rights
|