Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete by Marietta Holley (the reader ebook .txt) 📖

ineligible to official positions, except by special provision of law. In harmony with this assumption, they have been made eligible, by special enactment, of the offices of steward, class-leader, and Sunday-school superintendent, and naturally the question arises as to whether the necessity for special legislation, in order to their eligibility to those specified offices, does not indicate similar necessity for special provision in order to their eligibility as delegates, and if so it is further to be considered that the offices of steward, class-leader, and Sunday-school superintendent may be created and filled by simple enactments of the General Conference itself; but to enter the General Conference, and form part of the law-making body of the Church, requires special provision in the Constitution, and, therefore, such provision as the General Conference alone cannot make.”

Now, sir, this language moves forward with a grasp of logic akin to that used by Chief Justice Marshall, or that eminent jurist, Cooley, from whom I beg leave to quote. Cooley, in his great work on “Constitutional Limitations,” says:

“A Constitution is not made to mean one thing at one time, and another at some subsequent time, when the circumstances may have changed as perhaps to make a different rule in the case seem desirable. A principal share of the benefit expected from written Constitutions would be lost, if the rules they establish were so flexible as to bend to circumstances, or be modified by public opinion.

“The meaning of the Constitution is fixed when it is adopted, and is not different at any subsequent time.”

This same great author says:

“Intent governs. The object of construction applied to a written constitution is to give effect to the intent of the people in adopting it. In the case of written laws it is the intent of the lawgiver that is to be enforced.

“But it must not be forgotten in construing our constitutions that in many particulars they are but the legitimate successors of the great charters of English liberty whose provisions declaratory of the rights of the subject have acquired a well understood meaning which the people must be supposed to have had in view in adopting them. We cannot understand these unless we understand their history.

“It is also a very reasonable rule that a State Constitution shall be understood and construed in the light, and by the assistance of the common law, and with the fact in view that its rules are still in force.

“It is a maxim with the Courts that statutes in derogation of the common law shall be construed strictly.”

Here, sir, we have the language of Judge Cooley himself. It is as clear as the noonday's sun, and he utterly repudiates the pernicious doctrine that the Constitution can grow and develop so as to mean one thing when it is adopted, and something else at another time. You can never inject anything into a Constitution by construction which was not in it when adopted. And you are bound, according to all rules of construction, to give it the construction which was intended when adopted. No man of common honesty and common sense dares to assert on this floor that it was the intent when the Constitution was amended to admit women as lay delegates. It follows inevitably that they are not constitutionally eligible, and to admit them is to violate the Constitution of the Church, which, as a Court, we are in honor bound not to do.

It has been asserted with gravity that the right to vote for a person for office carries with it the right to be voted for unless prohibited by positive enactment. This proposition is not true, and never has been. We have seen, when the Constitution and Restrictive Rules were amended, the intent was to admit men only as lay delegates. No General Conference can, by resolution or decision, change the Constitution and Restrictive Rules. Grant, if you please, that the General Conference, by its action in 1880, had power to make women eligible in the Quarterly Conference as stewards and class-leaders, this could not qualify her to become a lay delegate in the law-making body of the Church. The qualifications of lay delegates to this body must inhere in the Constitution and Restrictive Rules, according to their intent and meaning when adopted. It is fundamental law that where general disabilities exist, not simply by statute, but by common law, the removal of lesser disabilities does not carry with it the removal of the greater ones.

Legislation qualifying women to vote in Wyoming and elsewhere had to be coupled also with positive enactments qualifying her to be voted for, otherwise she would have been ineligible to office. This is so, and I defy any lawyer to show the contrary.

§3, Article I, Constitution of the United States, reads:

“The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six years. No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of the State for which he shall be chosen.”

These and no other qualifications are worded or found in the Constitution of the United States touching the qualification of Senators. Is there a layman on this floor who will dare assert that under the Constitution of the United States women are eligible as Representatives or Senators? Words of common gender are exclusively used as applied to the qualification of Senators. The words persons and citizens include women the same as they include men. Nevertheless, in the light of the past, I am bold to assert, that any man who would dare stand in the Senate of the United States, and contend that women are eligible to the office of United States Senators, would be regarded by the civilized world as a person of gush and void of judgment.

Article 14, United States Constitution, §1:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, 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 of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

(Tax case and what was decided.) (Mrs. Minor vs. Judges of Election. 53 Mo. 68.)

The first case indicates that the word citizen when affecting property rights includes corporations.

The second, that the word person, when it relates to the woman claiming the right to vote, does not confer upon her that right.

The language is: No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of any citizen of the United States. Nevertheless, a Republican Circuit Judge held this language did not entitle Mrs. Minor to vote. A democratic Supreme Court of Missouri held the same, and the Supreme Court of the United States, in an able opinion written by men known as the friends of women, conclusively demonstrated that these constitutional guarantees did not confer upon woman the right to vote. Why? Because, from time immemorial, this right had not obtained in favor of woman, and these words of common gender should not be so construed as to confer this right, since it was not intended when made to affect their status in this regard.