In the New York Constitutional Convention of 1867, Mr. George William Curtis defended the proposition so to amend the Constitution as to extend the suffrage to women. In the course of his eloquent remarks he said: "The Chairman of the Committee asked Miss Anthony whether, if suffrage was a natural right, it could be denied to children? Her answer seemed to me perfectly satisfactory. She said simply, 'All that we ask is an equal and not an arbitrary regulation. If _you_ have the right, _we_ have it.'" To me it seems to discredit the logical powers both of Miss Anthony and of Mr. Curtis that one should have made this reply and the other should have rested content with it. That was a pertinent question, and it was not answered at all. To say "if you have the right, we have it," is not to tell whether one thinks children should have it. As a matter of fact, an agitation of "the rights of minors" arose from the discussion of "natural right," and also an agitation for "minority representation" that is continued to this day. Mr. Curtis added: "The honorable Chairman would hardly deny that to regulate the exercise of a right according to obvious reason and experience is one thing, to deny it absolutely and forever is another." To regulate a law is to abolish it, either relatively or absolutely, for some, and to maintain it for others. When the State of New York says that no alien who has not been naturalized shall vote, that no boy under twenty-one shall vote, that no person resident in one town or ward shall vote in another, that no criminal or pauper shall vote,--it acts on the natural principle of self-defence, which contravenes the dogma of a natural right of any one to the suffrage. On that principle it would be impossible for the Congress to impeach a President; to forbid, as it did, those who had been in rebellion from voting; or to deny the suffrage to a child or to any human being. Government itself becomes impossible. Judge Story, whom Suffrage writers claim as favorable to their cause on other grounds, says that the right of voting has always been treated as a granted and not a natural right, derived from and regulated by each country according to its ideas of government. Both Federal and State courts have decided again and again that there is no such thing as a natural right to suffrage.