Who can say our forefathers _intended_ to include
Chinamen, or Sandwich Islanders, or the Norwegian, Russian, or Italian
in its benefits? Yet they do all share in it as soon as they become
citizens. How absurd we should think the assertion that it was not the
Lord's intention to hold the people of the United States under the law
of the Ten Commandments, as they were given to the Jews alone, some four
thousand years before the United States existed as a nation.
Massachusetts never abolished slavery by legislative act; never
intentionally abolished it. In 1780 that State adopted a new
Constitution with a Bill of Rights, declaring "All men born free and
equal." Upon this, some slaves demanded their freedom, and their masters
granted it. The slavery of men and _women_, both, was thus destroyed in
Massachusetts without intention on the part of the framers of the
Constitution, and this, because it is a legal rule to argue down from
generals to particulars, and that the "words of a statute ought not to
be interpreted to destroy natural justice;" but as Coke says, "Whenever
the question of liberty runs doubtful, _the decision must be given in
favor of liberty_."
_Digest C.L._
When a Charter declares "all men born free and equal," it means,
intends, and includes all women, too; it means all mankind, and this is
the _legal interpretation_ of the language.
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