The true principle is, that all government over persons deprived of any
voice in such government, is tyranny. That is the principle of the
declaration of independence. We were slow in allowing its application to
the African race, and have been still slower in allowing its application
to women; but it has been done by the fourteenth amendment, rightly
construed, by a definition of "citizenship," which includes women as
well as men, and in the declaration that "the privileges and immunities
of citizens shall not be abridged." If there is any privilege of the
citizen which is paramount to all others, it is the right of suffrage;
and in a constitutional provision, designed to secure the most valuable
rights of the citizen, the declaration that the privileges and
immunities of the citizen shall not be abridged, must, as I conceive, be
held to secure that right before all others. It is obvious, when the
entire language of the section is examined, not only that this
declaration was designed to secure to the citizen this _political_
right, but that such was its principal, if not its sole object, those
provisions of the section which follow it being devoted to securing the
_personal_ rights of "life, liberty, property, and the equal protection
of the laws.
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