[Footnote 23: That is, male persons. The constitution, whenever it uses the pronoun, in speaking of the president, uniformly uses the masculine gender--from which it may be inferred that male persons only were intended to be made eligible to the office.] [Footnote 24: Somerset was not a citizen of England, or entitled, as such, to the protection of the English law. The privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_ was granted to him on the ground simply of his being a man.] [Footnote 25: From whom come these objections to the "propriety" of the general government's interfering to maintain republicanism in the states? Do they not come from those who have ever hitherto claimed that the general government was bound to interfere to _put down republicanism_? And that those who were _republicans_ at the north, might with perfect "propriety" and consistency, pledge their assistance to the despots of the south, to sustain the worst, the meanest and most atrocious of tyrannies? Yes, from the very same. To interfere to assist one half of the people of a state in the cowardly, cruel and fiendish work of crushing the other half into the earth, corresponds precisely with their chivalrous notions of "propriety;" but it is insufferable officiousness for them to form any political compacts that will require them to interfere to protect the weak against the tyranny of the strong, or to maintain justice, liberty, peace and freedom.] [Footnote 26: Eli Whitney.] CHAPTER IX. THE INTENTIONS OF THE CONVENTION.