the jus suffragii, at least, if not also of the jus honorum, is the principle which governs at this day in defining citizenship in the countries deriving their jurisprudence from the civil law. (Wheaton's International Law, p. 892).
The Dutch publicist, Thorbecke, says:
What constitutes the distinctive character of our epoch is the development of the right of citizenship. In its most extended, as well as its most restricted sense, it includes a great many properties. The right of citizenship is the right of voting in the government of the local, provincial, or national community of which one is a member. In this last sense, the right of citizenship signifies a participation in the right of voting, in the general government, as member of the State. (Rev. & Fr. Etr., tom. v, p. 383).
In a recent work of some research, written in opposition to female suffrage, the author takes the ground that women are not citizens, and urges that as a reason why they can properly be denied the elective franchise, his theory being that if full citizens they would be entitled to the ballot. He uses the following language:
It is a question about which there may be some diversity of opinion, what constitutes citizenship or who are citizens. In a loose and improper sense the word citizen is sometimes used to denote any inhabitant of the country, but this is not a correct use of the word. Those, and no others, are properly citizens who were parties to the original compact by which the government was formed, or their successors who are qualified to take part in the affairs of government by their votes in the election of public officers. Women and children are represented by their domestic directors or heads in whose wills theirs is supposed to be included. They, as well as others not entitled to vote, are not properly citizens, but are members of the State, fully entitled to the protection of its laws. A citizen, then, is a person entitled to vote in the elections. He is one of those in whom the sovereign power of the State resides. (Jones on Suffrage, p. 48.)
But all such fallacious theories as this are swept away by the XIV. Amendment, which abolishes the theory of different grades of citizenship, or different grades of rights and privileges, and declares all persons born in the country or naturalized in it to be citizens, in the broadest and fullest sense of the term, leaving no room for cavil, and guaranteeing to all citizens the rights and privileges of citizens of the republic. We think we are justified in saying that the weight of authority sustains us in the view we take of this question. But considering the nature of it, it is a question depending much for its solution upon a consideration of the government under which citizenship is claimed. Citizenship in Turkey or Russia is essentially different in its rights and privileges from citizenship in the United States. In the former, citizenship means no more than the right to the protection of his absolute rights, and the "citizen" is a subject; nothing more. Here, in the language of Chief Justice Jay, there are no subjects. All, native-born and naturalized, are citizens of the highest class; here all citizens are sovereigns, each citizen bearing a portion of the supreme sovereignty, and therefore it must necessarily be that the right to a voice in the Government is the right and privilege of a citizen as such, and that which is undefined in the Constitution is undefined because it is self-evident.
Could a State disfranchise and deprive of the right to a vote all citizens who have red hair; or all citizens under six feet in height? All will consent that the States could not make such arbitrary distinctions the ground for denial of political privileges; that it would be a violation of the first article of the XIV. Amendment; that it would be abridging the privileges of citizens. And yet the denial of the elective franchise to citizens on account of sex is