Common Sense About Women

by Thomas Wentworth Higginson

“The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals; it is a social compact, by which THE WHOLE PEOPLE covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.”—Constitution of Massachusetts.

“We the People of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations ... do ordain and establish this constitution of government.”—Constitution of Rhode Island.

“The People of Connecticut do, in order more effectually to define, secure, and perpetuate the liberties, rights, and privileges which they have derived from their ancestors, hereby ordain and establish the following constitution and form of civil government.”—Constitution of Connecticut.

And so on through the constitutions of almost every State in the Union. Our government is, as Lincoln said, “a government of the people, by the people, 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 provisions may not have understood the full extent of the principles they announced. No matter: they gave us those principles; and, having them, we must apply them.

Now, women may be voters or not, citizens or not; but that they are a part of the people, no one has denied in Christendom—however it may be in Japan, where, as Mrs. Leonowens tells us, the census of population 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 them: it is impossible to state the national theory in such a way that it shall not include them. It is impossible to deny the natural right of women to vote, except on grounds which exclude all natural right. Dr. Bushnell, in annihilating, as he thinks, the claims of women to the ballot, annihilates the rights of the community as a whole, male or female. He may not be consistent enough to allow this, but Mr. Wasson is. That keen destructive strikes at the foundation of the building, and aims to demolish “We the people” altogether.

The fundamental charters are on our side. There are certain statute limitations which may prove greater or less. But these are temporary and trivial things, always to be interpreted, often to be modified, by reference to the principles of the Constitution. For instance, when a constitutional convention is to be held, or new conditions of suffrage to be created, the whole people should vote upon the matter, including those not hitherto enfranchised. This is the view insisted on, a few 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 were put to vote, the colored people themselves had a natural right to vote on the question. The same is true of women. It should never be forgotten by advocates of woman suffrage, that, the deeper their reasonings go, the stronger foundation they find; and that we have always a solid fulcrum for our lever in that phrase of our charters, “We the people.”

LXXIII.
THE USE OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

When young people begin to study geometry, they expect to begin with hard reasoning on the very first page. To their surprise, they find that the first few pages are not occupied by reasoning, but by a few simple, easy, and rather commonplace sentences, called “axioms,” which are really a 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 “things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another,” and if a sharp questioner jumps up, and says, “How do you know it?” she simply lays down her bit of chalk, and says fearlessly, “That is an axiom,” and the teacher sustains her. Some things must be taken for granted.

The same service rendered by axioms in the geometry is supplied, in regard to government, by the simple principles of the Declaration of Independence. Right or wrong, they are taken for granted. Inasmuch as all the legislation of the country is supposed to be based in them,—they stating the theory of our government, while the Constitution itself only puts into organic shape the application,—we must all begin with them. It is a great convenience, 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 brilliant lawyer Rufus Choate, when confronted with its plain provisions, could only sneer at them as “glittering generalities,” which was equivalent to throwing down his brief, and throwing up his case. It was an admission, that, if you were so foolish as to insist on applying the first principles of the government, it was all over with him.

Now, the whole doctrine of woman suffrage follows so directly from these same political axioms, that they are especially convenient for women to have in the house. When the Declaration of Independence enumerates 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, in this grown-up geometry-class, the student is not to be called upon by the committee to prove that. She may rightfully lay down her demonstrating chalk, and say, “That is an axiom. You admit that yourselves.”