possess and exercise this function of freemen? I quote briefly from
the report of the committee:

The rights for the maintenance of which human governments are
constituted are life, liberty, and property. These rights are
common to men and women alike, and whatever citizen or subject
exists as a member of any body-politic, under any form of
government, is entitled to demand from the sovereign power the
full protection of these rights.

This right to the protection of rights appertains to the
individual, not to the family alone, or to any form of
association, whether social or corporate. Probably not more than
five-eighths of the men of legal age, qualified to vote, are heads
of families, and not more than that proportion of adult women
are united with men in the legal merger of married life. It is,
therefore, quite incorrect to speak of the state as an aggregate
of families duly represented at the ballot-box by their male head.
The relation between the government and the individual is direct;
all rights are individual rights, all duties are individual
duties.

Government in its two highest functions is legislative and
judicial. By these powers the sovereignty prescribes the law,
and directs its application to the vindication of rights and the
redress of wrongs. Conscience and intelligence are the only forces
which enter into the exercise of this highest and primary function
of government. The remaining department is the executive or
administrative, and in all forms of government--the republican
as well as in tyranny--the primary element of administration is
force, and even in this department conscience and intelligence are
indispensable to its direction.

If now we are to decide who of our sixty millions of human beings
are to constitute the citizenship of this Republic and by virtue
of their qualifications to be the law-making power, by what tests
shall the selection be determined?

The suffrage which is the sovereignty is this great primary
law-making power. It is not the executive power proper at all. It
is not founded upon force. Only that degree of physical strength
which is essential to a sound body--the home of the healthy mental
and moral constitution--the sound soul in the sound body
is required in the performance of the function of primary
legislation.