nture. It was as a person having or claiming to have,
the sole property in the soil of the whole of the populous
borough of Aylesbury, that Lady Packington made her return;
and during two or three generations the Packington family
had, or had claimed to have, precisely that right.

* * * * *

It is thus made broad and clear that the right of woman to the
elective franchise was one of the best acknowledged and clearest
of common law rights; and that in the whole circle of English
authority the ghost of a dictum can alone be raised to question
it. So that if the force of its language compels you to construe
the XIV. Amendment as authorizing woman to vote, you will have
the satisfaction of knowing that it but restores her to her old
common law right in the persons of her American daughters.

THIRD. I am now to deal directly with the Amendments. The first
clause of Section 1 of the XIV Amendment I now read:

SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they
reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States.

Until this was promulgated there was no absolute standard or rule
of citizenship in the United States. Each State made a rule for
itself, and its rule was not always clearly expressed, as you
will see by these constitutions. Some of them say that the male
citizens of the State, being inhabitants, etc., shall vote, yet
do not declare in what citizenship shall consist. Others, that
citizens of the United States, etc., shall vote, while no person
was a citizen of the United States except as he had become a
citizen of a State. Many States permitted aliens, on a short
residence, to vote, without naturalization, and they, in that
indirect way, became citizens of such State, and hence of the
United States. This Amendment puts an end to doubt and cavil, and
broadly declares that all persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they
reside, etc....