The "consent of the governed" certainly meant something very different to our fathers, and to our statesmen, and to ourselves, from what it could mean to any other government on earth. Although the phrase itself may have been a euphemism which sprang from Jefferson's sympathy with the mighty rumblings of feeling that preceded the French Revolution, still, it was certainly meant that, so far as they could make it so, there should be vastly more consenting by popular vote than had been dreamed of in the mother country. But it did not mean that each and every individual in the state must consent to each and every law that governed him; for not only has no government ever been instituted which derived "just powers" in that way, but none ever will be, for there never can be such unanimity. It did not mean that every individual must consent to be governed somehow, by some scheme of government; for its laws were carefully framed so as to compel the external allegiance of those who never consent--the criminal and the anarchist. It did not mean even that consent, in the sense of agreement, was expected from a large body, or a small body, as the case might happen, of those who held views opposed to the policies that were controlling at any given time. It meant just what Jefferson meant in that other dictum of his: "The will of the majority is the natural law of every society, and the only sure guardian of the rights of man." Together they interpret each other, and are worthy of our Declaration and our Bill of Rights. The inalienable right to liberty in all mankind forbids the right of anarchy in any of mankind; and the question of woman suffrage, strange as it may appear, actually narrows itself down, as it seems to me, to the question whether we shall have democracy or anarchy. Democratic government is at an end when those who issue decrees are not identical with those who can enforce those decrees. But, after all, the claim to suffrage as a natural right has been practically abandoned by those who first made that claim. Their next proposition was, that it was a universal right, springing from the necessary conditions of organized society, and so should be granted to woman as a member of that society. They say in their Declaration: "He deprived her of the first right of a citizen--the elective franchise." Chief Justice Waite of the United States Supreme Court decided that citizenship carried with it no voting power or right. The same decision has been handed down by many courts in disposing of test cases.