Fallacies of the Law Book

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This is an OCR edition with typos.
Excerpt from book:
CHAPTER II. UNJUST DISCRIMINATIONS. Laws that discriminate between members of a community should have a just reason for such discrimination. Consider a few illustrations: About half of our population is denied equal rights at the ballot-box on account of sex. In most of the states the members of the female sex have no right to vote whatever; in some they vote for candidates for certain offices, and in a very few they have full suffrage. The function of voting is not a sex function. The necessary qualifications are intellectual and moral, and not sexual. Why then should the best and wisest woman be disfranchised and the lowest grade of male intelligence be given the ballot ? Note another sex discrimination: a female arrives at lawful age at eighteen; a male must wait until he is twenty-one. The ability to manage one's own affairs depends on intelligence instead of sex. Why should the girl who may never get old enough to vote become competent to make a legal contract three years earlier than her brother?There are also laws relating to property and laws punishing certain acts of immorality where a like discrimination is made on account of sex. Why should not all rights conferred by law on man be allowed to woman on the same terms ? Sex does not change the character of the matter which is the subject of legislation. Kinship is another reason given for discrimination. The laws of many nations bestow political power upon persons on account of kinship. We consider this practice unjust, and yet we tolerate laws that distribute the property of deceased persons to their next of kin. Without the aid of government no one could possess more property than he could defend by his own prowess, and at his death his dominion over it would cease. Our laws protect the holder of property in...