Samantha among the Brethren — Volume 7Holley, Marietta
General
Samantha among the Brethren — Volume 7
Holley, Marietta
Methodism -- Humor; Women in church work -- Methodist church -- Humor; Women's rights -- Humor
Now, what does the right of suffrage do? It carries with it the right
to hold office. Where women have the privileges of voting on the school
question, they are granted the privilege of being school directors,
holding the office of superintendents, and the restriction on them stops
at that point under statute law. If you go a little further you will
find that when the freedmen were enfranchised, and they sent men of
their own color to the House of Representatives, did that body say
"stop!" "we protest, you cannot come in because of illegality"? No. They
were admitted on the face of their credentials because they had first
been granted the right of suffrage. When men of their color went to the
United States Senate and submitted their credentials, they were not
protested against, but they were admitted as members of the United
States Senate on the face of their credentials. And why? Because
the right of suffrage granted to the freedmen of the South under a
constitutional amendment of the nation, carried with it the right of
the men whom we fought to free, and did free, in an awful war, to hold
office in the nation. Now, sir, you must interpret the law somewhat by
the spirit of the times in which you live. That is a mistaken notion
to say that you must always go to the men that made the law to get the
interpretation of it. If that were true, would it not always be wise
for legislators to give their affidavits and place on file their
interpretation of the law they had confirmed, and placed on the statute
books? There are legal gentlemen in this body who will tell you that it
goes for very little when you come to interpret law. And yet you will
find this to be true, that a law must be interpreted somewhat by the
spirit of the time in which you live. Why, twenty years ago, when the
General Conference handed the question of lay delegation down to the
Annual Conferences, and the members of our Church, there was not a
woman practising law in the Supreme Court of the United States. Go back
through the history of jurisprudence of this country and in England, and
you will find that it had never been known that a woman practised law in
the Supreme Court of this country or England. But to-day women have been
admitted to practise law in the Supreme Court of the United States. No
amendment to the Constitution of the United States had to be adopted
in order to secure this privilege for them. But this is true, that the
judges of the Supreme Court, by a more liberal interpretation of the
Constitution of the United States, said, "Women may be officers of the
Supreme Court, and may practise law there." The same kind of a spirit,
in interpreting the Discipline and the Restrictive Rules of the
Discipline of the Church, will place these women delegates in this body
where they have been sent. The same thing is true of the Supreme Court
of Pennsylvania and in the Courts of Philadelphia. There is no way out,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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