When a Charter declares "all men born free and equal," it means, intends, and includes all women, too; it means all mankind, and this is the _legal interpretation_ of the language. To go back to the Constitution of the United States, let us examine if women were not intended. The first amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." No mention is there made of women, but who will deny it was not intended for them to enjoy the right of worshipping as they choose? Were they not to be protected in freedom of speech, and in the right of assembling to petition the government for a redress of grievances? Not a man before me will deny that women were included equally with men in the intention of the framers. The Sixth Amendment reads, "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and District wherein the crime shall have been committed, which District shall have been previously ascertained by law; and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against _him_; to have compulsory processes for obtaining witnesses in _his_ favor; and to have the existence of counsel in _his_ defense." The words "him" and "his," are three times mentioned in this amendment, yet no one can be found wild enough to say women were not intended to be included in its benefits. Miss Anthony, herself, has already come under its provisions, and were she denied a speedy and open trial, she could appeal to the protection of this very amendment, which not only does not say women, or her, but does alone say _him_ and _his_, and this, notwithstanding the other legal adage, that laws stand as they are written. This whole question of constitutional rights, turns on whether the United States is a nation. If the United States is a nation, it has _national_ powers. What is the admitted basis of our nation? We reply, equality of political rights. And what, again, is the basis of political rights? Citizenship. Nothing more, nothing less. National sovereignty is only founded upon the political sovereignty of the individual, and national rights are merely individual rights in a collective form. The acknowledged basis of rights in each and every one of the thirty-seven States, is citizenship,--not State citizenship alone, as that alone cannot exist, but first, national citizenship. _National_ rights are the fundamental basis of _State_ rights. If this is not true, we are then no nation, but merely a confederacy, held together by our own separate wills, and the South was right in its war of secession. Every sovereign right of the United States exists solely from its existence as a nation.