jects regarding which they were
unwilling amendments should be made. The understanding of the
States therefore must have been that as respects all subjects not
so withdrawn the right of amendment might be exercised whenever the
States desired to exercise it. Whenever they do see fit to exercise
it they are not breaking faith with each other, or doing anything
wrongfully.

The mode of amending the Constitution is in strict accordance with the
doctrine of State Rights. The amending power is not to be exercised
by the collective people of the United States acting as a majority. It
can only be exercised by three-fourths of the States acting as States
in their sovereign capacity. If three-fourths of the States desire to
amend the instrument then the one-fourth must submit to the will of
the three-fourths. There is no principle in the doctrine of State
Rights which is violated when the Constitution is amended by the
three-fourths, for all the states have agreed that the three-fourths
shall possess the power to do so and that the minority will consent
to be bound by action so taken. The principle that the minority must
submit to the majority is a principle which the States apply to the
government of their local communities and to the people of their
several commonwealths. And it is a principle which the States as
sovereigns have agreed shall be applied to themselves in their
relations to each other and to the Federal Government. In creating the
amending power the framers of the Constitution were careful to
remove it from the people of the nation and to lodge it in the State
sovereignties. That is all that the believers in the doctrine of State
Rights asked. They could not wisely ask, and they did not ask, more.
They only asked that in so important a matter as the amendment of the
fundamental law the minority should not be compelled to submit to a
mere majority, but only to three-fourths of the whole.

If it be assumed simply for the purpose of this discussion, that the
amendment of the Constitution is not wholly a political question, no
one can seriously contend that the amendment the National American
Woman Suffrage Association urges violates any principle of law,
written or unwritten. Mr. Tucker makes no such claim. His argument,
as I understand it, is that woman suffrage by Federal Amendment is a
departure from the original thought of the makers of the Constitution;
that they left the subject of suffrage along with most o