I.

SUMMARY OF VOTING LAWS RELATING TO WOMEN, FROM 1691 TO 1822.

PROVINCE Charter, A. D. 1691, 3d year of William and Mary.-"The great and general Court shall consist of the Governor and Council (or assistants for the time being) and of such freeholders as shall be, from time to time, elected or deputed by the major part of the freeholders and other inhabitants of the respective towns or places, who shall be present at such elections."

Constitution, 1820, Part II, Chap. 1, Sect. II, Art. II, gives the right of voting for Senators and Councillors to every male inhabitant 21 years of age, having a freehold estate in the Commonwealth of the annual income of £3, or any estate of the value of £60. (Motion in Constitutional Convention to strike out the word male).

Constitution, Part II, Chap. 1, Sect. III. Art. IV.-Qualifi cation for a voter for Representatives, varies from the above by requiring that the voter shall own a freehold estate within the town where he resides. (Motion in Constitutional Convention to strike out the word male).

Constitution, Part 11, Chap. 2, Sect. I, Art. III, also Sect. II. Art. I.-The persons who can vote for Senators or Representatives, can vote for Governor and Lieut. Governor. (Motion in Constitutional Convention to strike out the word male).

Constitution, Part II, Chap. 1, Sect. I, Art. IV.-The Legislature has power to name and settle annually, or provide by fixed laws for the naming and settling, all civil officers within said Commonwealth, the election and consti tution of whom are not hereafter in this form of government otherwise provided.

By Statute, 1785, Chap. 75, Sect. 11, passed March 23,

• Property representation for Senators was abolished in 1840.

1786.-Town officers are to be chosen by the freeholders and other inhabitants of each town who shall pay to one single tax, besides the poll-tax, a sum equal to two-thirds of a single poll-tax. The selectmen are only required to be inhabitants of the town-not required to be voters.

Statute, 1809, Chap. 25, Sects. II. and III., allows any persons who are inhabitants of the towns, and citizens of the United States, who have paid taxes within a town for two years, to vote for town officers.

Statute, 1809, Chap. 39, repeals the foregoing.

Statute, 1811, Chap. 9, Sect. I., allows every male citizen of the Commonwealth, 21 years of age, liable to be taxed, who has resided one year in any town, to vote in the election of all town officers.

Constitutional Amendment, 1820.-Regulates the right of voting for Governor, Representatives, etc.

Statute, 1822, Chap. 104, Sect. I.-The same regulation was adopted in regard to voting at town meetings, as in regard to all other State officers.

SUMMARY.

1. Women were not excluded from voting from 1691 to 1780.

2. Women were excluded from voting only for certain offices from 1780 to 1785.

3. Three distinct sets of qualifications for voting till 1820. 4. Two distinct sets of qualifications for voting till 1822. 5. Qualifications for voting for town officers more liberal than for Governor and Legislature.

6. Qualifications for voting for all State, county and town officers, were first made uniform by Statute in 1822, and may be again enlarged by Statute, except where specified in the Constitution.

[Under the Province Charter, 1695-96, all self-supporting single women were obliged to pay a poll tax of two shillings each, except such as through age or extreme poverty were unable to do so.]

J.

EARLY LEGISLATIVE HEARINGS ON WOMAN'S RIGHTS. MARY U. FERRIN. REV. OLYMPIA BROWN.

THE first Hearing on the question of woman's rights in Massachusetts, so far as I have been able to learn, was before the Committee on the Qualifications of Voters, of the Constitutional Convention, June 3, 1853. This Hear ing was held in answer to the 2,000 petitioners, who had asked for the recognition of woman's legal and property rights in the proposed amendments to the Constitution of the state. The Committee was addressed by Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips and Thomas W. Hig. ginson. An appeal to the citizens of Massachusetts, from the petitioners, had been issued in April 1853, in which woman's right to property and political equality was ably presented. This appeal was signed by Abby May Alcott, Abby Kelley Foster, Lucy Stone, Thomas W. Higginson, Anne Greene Phillips, Wendell Phillips, Anna Q. T. Parsons, Theodore Parker, William I. Bowditch, Samuel E. Sewall, Ellis Gray Loring, Charles K. Whipple, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriot K. Hunt, Thomas T. Stone, John W. Browne, Francis Jackson, Josiah F. Flagg, Mary Flagg, Elizabeth Smith, Eliza Barney, Abby H. Price, William C. Nell, Samuel May Jr., Robert F. Walcott, Robert Morris and A. Bronson Alcott.

In 1857 a Hearing was held before the Committee on the Judiciary of the Massachusetts Legislature to listen to

• From the Una, a woman's paper published in Providence, R. I., in 1853. The editor of this paper was Paulina Wright Davis. One of the contributors was Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Among its correspond. ents were Caroline H. Dall, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth P. Peabody, Thomas W. Higginson, Ednah D. Cheney and other Massachusetts writers. See "The History of Woman Suffrage." Stanton, Anthony, and Gage, Editors. New York: Fowler and Wella. See Addenda

arguments in favor of the petition of Lucy Stone and others for equal property rights for women and for the "right of suffrage." The Representatives' Hall was well filled with interested listeners; Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Wendell Phillips and Lucy Stone made eloquent speeches.

Another Hearing was held in the same place in February, 1858, before the Joint Special Committee on the Qualifica tions of Voters. In one of "Warrington's" letters to the New York Tribune the following account of this Hearing is given: "Among the speakers were Mr. Phillips, Mr. Samuel E. Sewall, Harriot K. Hunt, M. D., and others. The Committee aforesaid were giving a hearing to the peti tioners for the extension of the right of suffrage to women. One of the petitioners is Sarah E. Wall of Worcester, who, like Dr. Hunt and Lucy Stone, is a 'taxpayer,' and who now petitions the Legislature, as she says, 'for the third and last time,' in behalf of the great principle that taxation and representation are inseparable. She argues the ques tion, and winds up by saying:

'We do not expect to remedy all the evils of society, or that the defects of woman will be speedily corrected; she will commit her follics still, as man does; she will sometimes make a mistake in voting, as many wise men have done; but with all her follies, and all her mistakes, she cannot possibly bring on the country a more perverted state of the moral atmosphere .han the present, or a worse financial crisis than that through which we are now passing. We do not send our petitions to you year after year, merely for you to report "leave to withdraw;" we demand action, immediate action. If it cannot be done in the name of affection, in the name of justice it must be done. If, in the absence of every argument, after the removal of every objection, you still persist in refusing her appeal, but one step remains for her to take, and that is, to refuse to pay taxes, and she will do it.'

Dr. Hunt gave the Committee, and the men generally, a