rtion of the law-abiding citizens of the State were
disfranchised, without so much as the privilege of
signifying their acceptance or rejection of the barbarous
fiat which was to rob them of the sacred right of
self-protection by means of a voice in the government, and
to reduce them to the political level of the "pauper, idiot,
insane person, or person convicted of crime."

If this flagrant wrong, which was inflicted by one-half the
citizens of a free commonwealth on the other half, had been
aimed at any other than a non-aggressive and
self-sacrificing class, there would have been fierce
resistance, as in the case of the United Colonies under the
British yoke. It has long been borne in silence. "The right
of voting for representatives," says Paine, "is the primary
right, by which other rights are protected. To take away
this right is to reduce man to a state of slavery, for
slavery consists in being subject to the will of another,
and he that has not a vote in the electing of
representatives is in this condition." Benjamin Franklin
wrote: "They who have no voice nor vote in the electing of
representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely
enslaved to those who have votes and to their
representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors
whom other men have set over us, and be subject to laws made
by the representatives of others, without having had
representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf."
This is the condition of the women of New Jersey. It is
evident to every reasonable mind that these unjustly
disfranchised citizens should be reinstated in the right of
suffrage. Therefore, we, your memorialists, ask the
legislature at its present session to submit to the people
of New Jersey an amendment to the constitution, striking out
the word "male" from article 2, section 1, in order that the
political liberty which our forefathers so nobly bestowed on
men and women alike, may be restored to "all inhabitants" of
the populous and prosperous State into which their brave
young colony has grown.

[Illustration: Cornelia Collins Hussey]

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