Wesley Corpus

19. And by what right, (setting the Scriptures aside, on which you do not choose to rest the point,) by what right do you exclude women, any more than men, from choosing their own Governors? Are they not free agents, as well as men? I ask a serious question, and demand a serious answer. Have they not “a will of their own?” Are they not “members of the state?” Are they not part of “the individuals that compose it?” With what consistency, them, can any who assert the people, in the above sense, to be the origin of power, deny them the right of choosing their Governors, and “giving their suffrages by their representatives?” “But do you desire or advise that they should do this?” Nay, I am out of the question. I do not ascribe these rights to the people; therefore, the difficulty affects not me; but, do you get over it how you can, without giving up your principle. 20. I ask a second question: By what right do you exclude men who have not lived one-and-twenty years from that “unalienable privilege of human nature,” choosing their own Governors? Is not a man a free agent, though he has lived only twenty years, and ten or eleven months? Can you deny, that men from eighteen to twenty-one are “members of the state?” Can any one doubt, whether they are a part of “the individuals that compose it?” Why then are not these permitted to “choose their Governors, and to give their suffrages by their representatives?” Let any who say these rights are inseparable from the people, get over this difficulty, if they can; not by breaking an insipid jest on the occasion, but by giving a plain, sober, rational answer. If it be said, “O, women and striplings have not wisdom enough to choose their own Governors;” I answer, Whether they have or no, both the one and the other have all the rights which are “inseparable from human nature.” Either, therefore, this right is not inseparable from human nature, or both women and striplings are partakers of it. 21. I ask a third question: By what authority do you exclude a vast majority of adults from choosing their own Governors, and giving their votes by their representatives, merely because they have not such an income; because they have not forty shillings a year?