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Friday, October 27, 2023

Wrapping Up Loughridge/Butler

I wanted to do one more brief post on the remarkable dissent of Representatives Loughridge and Butler on the issue of women's suffrage in 1871. As I said in a prior post, I may write a paper about this House report down the line. Near the close, they say this:

We are told that the acquiescence by the people, since the adoption of the Constitution, in the denial of political rights to women citizens, and the general understanding that such denial was in conformity with the Constitution, should be taken to settle the construction of that instrument . . . But, as a general principle, this theory is fallacious. It would stop all political progress; it would put an end to all original thought, and put the people under that tyranny with which the friends of liberty have always had to contend--the tyranny of precedent.

From the beginning, our Government has been right in theory, but wrong in practice. 

 

Posted by Gerard Magliocca on October 27, 2023 at 09:13 AM | Permalink

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