al preacher about his new religious organization. "Who votes
under it?" said I. "Oh," (he said, triumphantly,) "we go for
progress and liberty; anybody and everybody votes." "What!" said
I, "women?" "No," said he, rather startled; "I did not think of
them when I spoke." Thus quietly do we all talk of "anybody and
everybody," and omit half the human race. Indeed, I read in the
newspaper, this morning, of some great festivity, that "all the
world and his wife" would be there! Women are not a part of the
world, but only its "wife." They are not even "the rest of
mankind"; they are womankind! All these things show the results
of that inconsistency with the first principles of our
Constitution of which the friends of this Convention justly
complain.

II. So much for the general statement of the Massachusetts Bill
of Rights in its Preamble. But one clause is even more explicit.
In Section 9, I find the following:

"All the inhabitants of this Commonwealth, having such
qualifications as they shall establish by their form of
government, have an equal right to elect officers," etc.

As "they" shall establish. Who are _they_? Manifestly, the
inhabitants as a whole. No part can have power, except by the
consent of the whole, so far as that consent is practicable.
Accordingly, you submit your Constitution for ratification--to
whom? Not to the inhabitants of the State, not even to a majority
of the native adult inhabitants; for it is estimated that at any
given moment--in view of the great number of men emigrating to
the West, to California, or absent on long voyages--the majority
of the population of Massachusetts is female. You disfranchise
the majority, then; the greater part of "the inhabitants" have no
share in establishing the form of government, or assigning the
qualifications of voters. What worse can you say of any
oligarchy? True, your aristocracy is a large one--almost a
majority, you may say. But so, in several European nations, is
nobility almost in a majority, and you almost hire a nobleman to
black your shoes; they are as cheap as generals and colonels in
New England. But the principle is the same, whether the
privileged minority consists of one or one million.

It is said that a tacit consent has been hitherto given by the
ab