To those who with old English ideas, constantly pressed property representation, it was replied that "taxation and representation ought to go together in so far that a person not represented ought not to be taxed."
This Constitutional Convention was in session a number of months; its delegates were partially elected by women's votes, as at that date women were exercising their right of self-government through voting, certainly in the States of Massachusetts and New Jersey, if not in Georgia and Delaware. These women sent their delegates or representatives to assist in framing a Constitution.
Let us look at the Preamble of that instrument. It reads thus:
"We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Here we have a statement as to who established the Constitution. It was not the thirteen States as States, not the government in its sovereign capacity, but the people: not the white people alone, not the native born alone, not the male people alone, but the people in a collective sense. Justice was not established by this Constitution if one half the people were left out from its provisions, neither was the common welfare considered unless all people in common, equally shared the benefits of the Constitution. And moreover, the posterity of the people of that time are female as well as male. Therefore not only by our knowledge of the course of argument taken by the framers of the Constitution, not only by our knowledge that women as well as men helped elect delegates to that convention,—not only from the original principles proclaimed in the Declaration, but also by and through this Preamble to the Constitution do we find woman equally with man, recognized as part of the governing power.
Although women do not rest their claim to self-government upon any human instrument, it is well to show that even in the Declaration, and the original Constitution, the "Constitution as it was," the rights of all people were most emphatically and truly recognized.
Judge Story in his commentaries upon the Constitution, says, "The importance of examining the Preamble for the purpose of expounding the language of a Statute has always been felt and universally conceded in all judicial proceedings."
Com. on Const., 1, 443-4.
Chief Justice Jay regarded the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States as an authoritative guide to a correct interpretation of that instrument.
2 Dallas, 414.