e to be the guardians of every man's life, property, and peace; for the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of a

and to their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and be subject to laws made by the represe

HE P

ands of one of the older scholars. I remember nothing else about the newspaper, or about the boy, except that the title of the sheet he used to unfold

the permanent fixing of this phrase in our memories. It seemed very natural, in later years, to come upo

, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our pos

ne do agree," etc.--C

E, is founded in their consent, and instituted for

'by which THE WHOLE PEOPLE covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people,

ence Plantations ... do ordain and establish this cons

iberties, rights, and privileges which they have derived from their ancestors, hereby ordain and

for the people." There is no escaping it. To question this is to deny the foundations of the American government. Granted that those who framed these provis

on takes in only men, and the women and children are left to be inferred. "WE THE PEOPLE," then, includes women. Be the superstructure what it may, the foundation of the government clearly provides a place for

created, the whole people should vote upon the matter, including those not hitherto enfranchised. This is the view insisted on, many years since, by that eminent jurist, William Beach Lawrence. He maintained, in a letter to Charles Sumner and in opposition to his own party, that if the question of "negro suffrage" in the Southern States of the Union w

DECLARATION O

set of pegs on which all the reasoning is hung. Pupils are not expected to go back in every demonstration and prove the axioms. If Almira Jones happens to be doing a problem at the blackboard on examination day, at the high school, and remarks in the course of her demonstration that

onstitution itself only puts into organic shape the application,--we must all begin with them. It is a great advantage, and saves great trouble in all reforms. To the Abolitionists, for instance, what an inestimable labor-saving machine was the Declaration of Independence! Let them have that, and they asked no more. Even the brillia

s as among "self-evident" truths the fact of governments "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," then that point may be considered as settled. In this school-examination of maturer life,

s an abstract question; but the practical question is a very simple one. "Governments owe their just powers to the consent of the governed." Either that axiom is false, or, whenever women as a class refuse their consent to the present exclusively masculine government, it can no longer claim just powers. The remedy then may be rightly demanded, which the D

r men, they mean something for women. If men deride the axioms, it is a concession, like that of Rufus Choate, that these fundamental principles are very much in their way. But so long as the sentences stand in that document they can be made useful. If men try to get away from the arg

FASHIONED

state from foreign power. It is fortunate that this criticism has been made, for it has led to a more careful examination of passages; and this has made it clear, beyond dispute, th

as early as 1764, "The Rights of the Colonies Vindicated," he thu

inued, seems to be, in effect, an entire disfranchisement of every civil right. For what one civil right is worth a rush, after a man's property is subject to be taken

in another contest; for it was quoted by Mr. Sumner i

tter depend upon the right of suffrage, which by a neologism of our day is known as a political right instead of a civil right. Then, to give point to this argument, the patriot insists that in determining taxation, 'every man must be his own assessor, in pers

found among his papers, and called "Declaration of those Rights of the Commonalty of Grea

the guardians of every man's life, property, and peace; for the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more need, to have representatives in the legislature than the rich one. That they who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives do not

ties in 1770, abhorrent to nearly all Englishmen, and to great numbers of Americans." Their fair application is still abhorrent to a great many; or else, not willing quite to deny th

her a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd. We must not be cheated by any such p

women. "Taxation without representation is tyranny." "Virtual representation is altogether a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd." No ingenuity, no evasion, can give any escape from these plain principles. Either you must

s, Rights of the

Sparks's Fran

ED ON

national principles, it is our martyr-president Abraham Lincoln;

r new soil, the

claration of Independence." To find out what was his view of those sentiments, we must go back several years earlier, and consider that remarkable letter of his to the Boston Republicans who had invited him to

evaded with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them 'glittering generalities.' Another bluntly

d restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against th

orecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm

s, as some one has well interpreted it, equally men. I do not see how any person but a dreamy recluse can deny that the strength of our republic rests on these principles; which are so thoroughly embedded in the average American mind that they take in it, to some extent, the place occupied in the average English mind by the emotion of pers

ally made is not that the Jeffersonian maxim excludes women, but that "the consent of the governed" is substantially given by the general consent of women. That this argument has a certain plausibility may be conceded; but it is equally clear that the minority of women, those who do wish to vote, includes on the whole the natural leaders,- -those who are foremost in activity of mind, in literature, in art, in good works of charity. It

OF THE

son were republicans, and the daughter was a Bonapartist. Asking the mother why the young lady thus held to a different creed from the rest, I was

rkman, for instance, once gravely put it in "The North American Review,"--"The real issue is this: Is the object of government the good of the governed, or is it not?" Taken in a general sense, there is probably no dispositi

hy organizes better, does its work better, cleans the streets better. Nevertheless De Tocqueville, a monarchist, sees this advantage in a republic, that when all this is done by the people for themselves, although the work done may be less perfect, yet the people themselves are more enlightened, better satisfied, and, in the end, their good is better served. Thus in on

t they seem to vegetate rather than to live; when, on the other hand, I observe the activity, the information, and the spirit of enterprise which keeps society in perpetual labor, in these American townships, whose budgets are drawn up with smal

n's, and that he uses it to show that there is something to be looked at beyond good laws,--namely

of society acquires a certain degree of self-respect; and, as he possesses authority, he can command the services of minds much more enlightened than his own. He is canvassed by a multitude of applicants, who seek to deceive him in a thousand different ways, but who instruct him by their deceit.... Democracy does not confer the most skilful kind of gov

eople" means good laws and good administration, and that, if these are only provided, it makes no sort of difference whether they themselves make the laws, or whether some Caesar or Louis Napoleon provides them. All the traditions of the early and later

s; and that "the end of a good government is to insure the welfare of a people," in this far wider sense. That advantage which the French writer admits in democracy, that it develops force, energy, and self-respect, is as essentially a part of "the good of the governed" as

Sparks's Fran

Tocqueville, vol

AT SE

s Churchill, wrote a verse which will do someth

all; and mini

ors of women f

t as sovereigns

erned well at

nce being too noble to be governed by a woman," as it said. Accordingly the history of France shows one long line of royal mistresses ruling in secret

are in the power of man,--for of that omnipotent Nature will not suffer her to be defrauded,--but it should be a chartered power, too fully recognized to be abused." We have got to meet, at any rate, this fact of feminine influence in the world. Demost

ve; and when she wants more money for more fine clothes, and finds her husband out of humor, she coaxes, cheats, and lies. Many a woman half ruins her husband by her extravagance, simply because he has never told her frankly what his income is, or treated her, in money matters, like a rational being. Bankruptcy, perhaps, brings both to thei

ncy the position of a pure young girl, wishing innocently to make herself beautiful in the eyes of her husband, and persuaded to go into his house with a trick like this upon her consc

that woman, in mind as in body, was-born to be upright. The women of Charles Reade--never by any possibility moving in a straight line where it is possible to find a crooked one--are distorted women; and Nature is no more responsible for them than for the figure