for Woman Suffrage ever made, in her "Vindication of the Rights of Woman."

"Revolutionary Clubs," such as those in France, were started in England, and some of them invented the word "citizeness" as an equivalent for "citoyenne." But the French Revolution exploded, and all English sympathizers with it, and its principles encountered an overthrowing reaction. But in popular movements in the more recent organizations which abounded in England after 1815, women were very active.

In 1867 appeals were made to the highest courts of England against more than 5,000 women who had appealed against the decisions of the revising barris. ters. The Lord Chief Justice declared that the Act of 1832, which confined the franchise in boroughs to male persous, had sanctioned the exclusion of women; that if the legislators of 1867 wished to introduce so important an alteration as the extension of the franchise to women, it is difficult to believe that they would have done it by using the word "mau." The Lord Justice declared therefore that he (the legislator of 1867) used the word "man" in the same sense as "male persons" in the former act; that it amounted to the express provision in conformity with Lord Brougham's Act, that every man, as distinguished from women, possessing the qualification, was to have the franchise. The other judges concurred with His

Lordship's opinion, but further affirmed "that the exclusion of women from the suffrage was not on account of their intellectual inferiority but from a desire to promote decorum; in this way it was rather a privilege and a homage paid to the sex, 'honestatis privilegium,' as the great Selden remarked."

A bill for granting Woman Suffrage was introduced into Parliament in 1870. The affirmative was ably maintained and the negative also. But the measure was rejected. Several similar attempts have been made since that date, but the project has not met with success.,

V

WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE UNITED STATES

T

HE effort to add to the number of legal

voters women born in the United States,

twenty-one years of age, and to make all women born in foreign countries and domiciled in the United States, eligible to vote on the same conditions required of male foreigners under similar circumstances, has experienced many vicissitudes.

It may be said to have begun in earnest and with considerable support in the middle of the last century, in connection with the anti-slavery agitation, with which it at first identified itself. The first conventions were held at Seneca Falls and Rochester in 1848, the principal figures being Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, and Frederick Douglas. Lucretia Mott, Paulina Wright Davis, Ernestine L. Rose and Frances D. Gage early affiliated themselves with the movement.

In 1851 Susan B. Anthony, supported by Lucy Stone (afterwards Lucy Stone Blackwell), and Antoinette L. Brown, presided at a convention in Syracuse, N. Y. Annual conventions were held at New York from 1852 until 1861. Susan B. Anthony organized the Loyal Woman's League in 1863, and several

other organizations arose, chiefly in New England. Mary A. Livermore and Julia Ward Howe were the principal organizers of the American Suffrage Asso ciation. The National Woman's Suffrage Association was founded in 1865. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was elected president at its ninth annual meeting. Vicepresidents were chosen representing every state in the Union. Among the other officers were Susan B. Anthony, Laura Curtis Bullard and Lillie Devereux Blake.

After the Civil War, negroes, whether they had been slaves or not, obtained the legal right to vote in all the states and territories. Immediately, women desiring the franchise, and their supporters among men, demanded with renewed zeal and confidence similar privileges and rights; but did not attain their object.

On the ground that they were not allowed to vote certain women refused to pay taxes. In several states, in fact, persons refused to pay their taxes before as well as after 1865. As the constitutions of all the states reserved the franchise to male citizens, under the presidency of Grant the advocates of Woman Suffrage claimed that the provisions of the several states should be considered null and void, on the alleged ground that they were contrary to the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibited the states from "passing laws which restricted the privilege and immunities of citizenship,"

and that the right of suffrage is one of these privi. leges. The text of that article is :

"All persons boru or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person whatsoever of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Also the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution gives Congress power to reduce the representation of any state in the House of Representatives "when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, representatives in Congress, executive and judicial officers of the state, or the members of the legislature thereof is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime."

Further limitation upon the power of the states over suffrage is found in the Fifteenth Amendment, which provides "that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the