or that they
lack the capacity to consent. But the exclusion of this class
from the suffrage deprives them of the power of assent to
representation even when they possess the requisite ability....
The Czar represents his whole people, just as much as voting men
represent women who do not vote at all.

True it is that the voting men, in excluding women and other
classes from the suffrage, by that act charge themselves with the
trust of administering justice to all, even as the monarch whose
power is based upon force is bound to rule uprightly. But if it
be true that "all just government is founded upon the consent of
the governed," then the government of woman by man, without her
consent given in a sovereign capacity, even if that government be
wise and just in itself, is a violation of natural right and an
enforcement of servitude against her on the part of man. If
woman, like the infant or the defective classes, be incapable of
self-government, then republican society may exclude her from all
participation in the enactment and enforcement of the laws under
which she lives. But in that case, like the infant and the idiot
and the unconsenting subject of tyrannical forms of government,
she is ruled and not represented by man. This much I desire to
say in the beginning in reply to the broad assumption of those
who deny women the suffrage by saying that they are already
represented by their fathers, their husbands, their brothers and
their sons.

The common ground upon which all agree may be stated thus: All
males having certain qualifications are in reason and in law
entitled to vote. These qualifications affect either the body or
the mind or both. The first is the attainment of a certain age.
The age in itself is not material, but maturity of mental
development is material, although soundness of body in itself is
not essential, and want of it never works forfeiture of the
right. Age as a qualification for suffrage is by no means to be
confounded with age as a qualification for service in war.
Society has well established the distinction, and also that one
has no relation whatever to the other--the one having reference
to physical prowess, while the other relates only to the mental
state. This is shown by the ages fixed by law, that of ei