“That every man of the commonalty (excepting infants, insane persons, and criminals) is of common right and by the laws of God a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. That liberty, or freedom, consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who frame the laws, and who are 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 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 enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes, 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 representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.”[[16]]
[16]. Sparks’s Franklin, ii. 372.
In quoting these words of Dr. Franklin, his latest biographer feels moved to add, “These principles, so familiar to us now and so obviously just, were startling and incredible novelties 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 the theory, they limit the application by some such device as “virtual representation.” Here, again, James Otis is ready for them; and Charles Sumner is ready to quote Otis, as thus:—
“No such phrase as virtual representation was ever known in law or constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd. We must not be cheated by any such phantom, or any other fiction of law or politics, or any monkish trick of deceit or blasphemy.”
These are the sharp words used by the patriot Otis, speaking of those who were trying to convince American citizens that they were virtually represented in Parliament. Sumner applied the same principle to the freedmen: it is now applied to 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 revoke the maxims of the American Revolution, or you must enfranchise woman. Stuart Mill well says in his autobiography, “The interest of woman is included in that of man exactly as much (and no more) as that of subjects in that of kings.”
LXXVI.
FOUNDED ON A ROCK.
Gov. Long’s letter on woman suffrage is of peculiar value, as recalling us to the simple principles of “right,” on which alone the agitation can be solidly founded. The ground once taken by many, that women as women would be sure to act on a far higher political plane than men as men, is now urged less than formerly: the very mistakes and excesses of the agitation itself have partially disproved it. No cause can safely sustain itself on the hypothesis that all its advocates are saints and sages; but a cause that is based on a principle rests on a rock.
If there is any one who is recognized as a fair exponent of our national principles, it is our martyr-president Abraham Lincoln; whom Lowell calls, in his noble Commemoration Ode at Cambridge,—
“New birth of our new soil, the first American.”
What President Lincoln’s political principle was, we know. On his journey to Washington for his first inauguration, he said, “I have never had a feeling that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration 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 join them in celebrating Jefferson’s birthday, in April, 1859. It was well called by Charles Sumner “a gem in political literature;” and it seems to me almost as admirable, in its way, as the Gettysburg address.