Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates — John Shaqi
Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost AdvocatesJohnson, Helen Kendrick
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Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates
Johnson, Helen Kendrick
Women -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
No native American, who by the very fact of that nativity is bound to
support the Constitution of the United States, and no foreign-born citizen
who has taken the oath of allegiance to it, has a right by his vote to do
anything that will imperil or impede the carrying out of its principles
and its commands. "The establishment of justice, the insurement of
domestic tranquillity, provision for the common defence, security in the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," cannot be perfected
or maintained without the present exercise and the reserve power of
manhood strength. This Government laid aside all "attribute of education,
or glamour of wealth, or prestige of birth," and committed its life to the
keeping of its defenders. In this land, the vote is the "insignia of
actual power," but it is only the insignia; the power to defend themselves
and those who make country and home worth defending, lies with the
individual defenders. To attempt to put it into the hands of those who are
not physically fitted to maintain the obligations that may result from any
vote or any legislative act, is to render law a farce, and to betray the
trust imposed upon them by the constitution they have sworn to uphold.
Universal manhood suffrage is the crowning result in the long evolution of
government. Our statesmen of the Revolutionary period did not contemplate
it. But stability was the thing for which they sought--the thing for which
all statesmen of all times have been searching. If a government is not
stable, it is of little consequence that it is full of noble ideals; and
the most far-reaching thought has now grasped the idea that manhood
strength is the natural and only defence of the state. This is the
underlying theory of our Government, the one solid rock on which it rests.
"When any question of governmental policy comes up, we virtually decide
it, sooner or later, by a manhood vote; and as the decision has a majority
of the men of the country behind it, there is no power that can overthrow
it. If we attempt to establish policies or execute laws to which a
majority of the men are opposed, we throw away our one assurance of
stability, and are in constant danger of revolution. Even in the
comparatively brief history of our Republic, there are plentiful instances
to show that a majority of men will not submit to a minority, no matter
how many non-combatants are joined with that minority. To give women a
position of apparent power, without its reality, would be to make our
Government forever unstable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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