to the term "male" in the
constitution; and by the same force of reasoning, the expression
of the term "citizen" and the statement of the age of 21 years
would not necessarily exclude aliens and those under 21 years of
age from voting (6). Therefore, assuming that our organic law was
properly adopted without the participation of women either in
making or adopting it (7), that organic law controls.

_Third_--It follows, therefore, as a logical consequence that the
proposed reform cannot be accomplished except by an amendment of
the constitution ratified by two successive legislatures and the
people, or by a constitutional convention, whose work shall be
sanctioned by a vote of the people.

LESLIE W. RUSSELL, _Attorney-General_.[247]

Weak as was this document, and untenable as were its assertions, it
had great weight with many of the members of the legislature coming
as the opinion did from the attorney-general of the State. The
friends of the bill resolved to call for the vote when the bill
should be reached, and on May 16, the women were present in large
numbers, listening with intense interest to the brief speeches of
the members for and against, and watching and counting the vote as
the roll-call proceeded, which resulted in 54 ayes and 59 noes,
lacking three votes of a majority of those present and only eleven
of the requisite number, sixty-five. In view of the official
opinion against its constitutionality amounting to a legal
decision, this was a most gratifying vote.[248]

The presence of Leslie W. Russell in Albany, as attorney-general,
rendered it useless to reintroduce the bill to prohibit
disfranchisement on account of sex in the legislature of 1883, but
in its stead, Dr. John G. Boyd of New York introduced a proposition
to strike "male" from the suffrage clause of the constitution,
which, however, received only fifteen votes.

To pass from the State to the Church, the winter of 1883 was
notable for the delivery of a series of Lenten lectures on woman by
the Rev. Morgan Dix, D. D., rector of Trinity Church, New York,
afterwards published in book form under the title, "The Calling of
a Christian Woman and her Training to Fulfill it." The lectures
were delivered each Friday evening during Lent, in Trinity Chapel,
and at once attracted attention from their conservative,
reaectionary, almost monastic views of woman's position an