constitutions of the several States and the organic laws of the
Territories, all alike propose to _protect_ the people in the exercise
of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights.

All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. To secure these, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the
governed.

Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, or exclusion of
any class from their full and equal enjoyment. Here is pronounced the
right of all men, and "consequently," as the Quaker preacher said, "of
all women," to a voice in the government. And here, in this first
paragraph of the Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of
all to the ballot; for how can "the consent of the governed" be given,
if the right to vote be denied? Again:

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to
institute a new government, laying its foundations on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Surely the right of the whole people to vote is here clearly implied;
for however destructive to their happiness this government might become,
a disfranchised class could neither alter nor abolish it, nor institute
a new one, except by the old brute force method of insurrection and
rebellion. One-half of the people of this nation today are utterly
powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write
there a new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with
this form of government, that enforces taxation without
representation--that compels them to obey laws to which they never have
given their consent--that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a
jury of their peers--that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of
their own persons, wages and children--are this half of the people who
are left wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct violation of
the spirit and letter of the declarations of the framers of this
government, every one of which was based on the immutable principle of
equal rights to all. By these declarations, kings, popes, priests,
aristocrats, all were alike dethroned and placed on a common level