Opinion of the court.

in the State for the space of one whole year next before the election, and who were of quiet and peaceable behavior. This was in 1791. The next year, 1792, Kentucky followed with a constitution confining the right of suffrage to free male citizens of the age of twenty-one years who had resided in the State two years or in the county in which they offered to vote one year next before the election. Then followed Tennessee, in 1796, with voters of freemen of the age of twenty-one years and upwards, possessing a freehold in the county wherein they may vote, and being inhabitants of the State or freemen being inhabitants of any one county in the State six months immediately preceding the day of election. But we need not particularize further. No new State has ever been admitted to the Union which has conferred the right of suffrage upon women, and this has never been considered a valid objection to her admission. On the contrary, as is claimed in the argument, the right of suffrage was withdrawn from women as early as 1807 in the State of New Jersey, without any attempt to obtain the interference of the United States to prevent it. Since then the governments of the insurgent States have been reorganized under a requirement that before their representatives could be admitted to seats in Congress they must have adopted new constitutions, republican in form. In no one of these constitutions was suffrage conferred upon women, and yet the States have all been restored to their original position as States in the Union.

Besides this, citizenship has not in all cases been made a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage. Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, may under certain circumstances vote. The same provision is to be found in the constitutions of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas.

Certainly, if the courts can consider any question settled, this is one. For nearly ninety years the people have acted upon the idea that the Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not necessarily confer the right of suffrage. If

Statement of the case.

uniform practice long continued can settle the construction of so important an instrument as the Constitution of the United States confessedly is, most certainly it has been done here. Our province is to decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be.

We have given this case the careful consideration its importance demands. If the law is wrong, it ought to be changed; but the power for that is not with us. The arguments addressed to us bearing upon such a view of the subject may perhaps be sufficient to induce those having the power, to make the alteration, but they ought not to be permitted to influence our judgment in determining the present rights of the parties now litigating before us. No argument as to woman's need of suffrage can be considered. We cau only act upon her rights as they exist. It is not for us to look at the hardship of withholding. Our duty is at an end if we find it is within the power of a State to withhold.

Being unanimously of the opinion that the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, and that the constitutions and laws of the several States which commit that important trust to men alone are not necessarily void, we

AFFIRM THE JUDGMENT.

MARSH V. WHITMORE.

1. An attorney cannot be charged with negligence when he accepts as a correct exposition of the law a decision of the Supreme Court of his State upon the question of the liability of stockholders of corporations of the State in advance of any decision thereon by this court.

2. Where an attorney sold bonds of a client at public sule, and bought them in himself, at their full value at the time, and the client was aware of the purchase and acquiesced in it for twelve years, it is then too late for the client to attempt to impeach the validity of the sale.

APPEAL from the Circuit Court for the District of Maine. On the 12th of March, 1869, Marsh, of Maryland, filed a

Statement of the case.

bill in the court below against Whitmore, an attorney and counsellor of Maine, to compel him to account for certain bonds of the Kennebec and Portland Railroad Company, and to charge him with certain notes of the same corpora tion, received from him, the complainant; and which bonds and notes the bill alleged that he, the complainant, had, in the year 1855, placed in the hands of the defendant as security for advances to be made by him in effecting a compromise with the complainant's creditors in Maine, and for a reasonable compensation to himself for his own services as counsel.

As to the bonds. The bill alleged that in the year 1856, they had been sold by the defendant at public auction in disregard of his duty, and at the sale were bid in by himself, through the intervention of third parties, at an amount greatly below their value at the time, which conduct the bill charged to have been in fraud of the complainant's rights, and not to have come to his knowledge “until lately.”

1

As to the notes. The bill alleged that at the time they were placed with the defendant, he was instructed to institute suits upon them and to attach certain personal property of the corporation pointed out to him, and if the notes were not thus paid, to collect them from the stockholders, who were personally liable; and that the defendant agreed to attend diligently to their collection; that they could have been collected of the company or stockholders, and that if they were not collected the failure was attributable to his gross neglect. The prayer of the bill was that the defendant might be charged with the full amount of the notes and interest, and might be decreed to surrender the bonds, or, if that was impossible, to pay their full value in money; or that such other or further relief might be granted as the justice of the case might require.

The bill called upon the defendant to answer its several allegations touching these two matters; and to answer also certain specific interrogatories which were annexed.

Among the interrogatories was this one, relating to the bonds:

Statement of the case.

“Did you or did you not represent to the complainant, after the sale of the bonds, that you had made such sale at public auction after advertising the same; and that such sale was bonâ fide?"

The answer denied that the bonds and notes were intrusted to the defendant for the purpose alleged in the bill, but averred

In regard to the bonds. That they were placed with him as security for any liabilities which one Paine and himself might incur for the complainant and for the payment of his three promissory notes, exceeding in amount $3000, and one note for $90, upon which the defendant was surety for the complainant; that the complainant never paid either of these notes, and that after having informed him, on the 27th of August, 1856 (the promissory notes of the complainant being then due and unpaid), that the bonds would be sold on the 1st of October following, and after repeated postponements, made at his request, the bonds, in June, 1857, after notice to him, were sold at publie auction in order to pay his, the complainant's, notes; that at the sale some of the bonds were purchased by third persons, but that the larger portion were bid in by the defendant; that the prices given were the full and fair value of the bonds at the time, and greater than their market value for years afterwards; that the amounts bid were indorsed on the notes of the complainant, and an account of the sales, showing the prices obtained and the names of the purchasers, was transmitted to him; that subsequently, in 1858, in an interview at Augusta, the defendant offered to obtain the bonds and return them to the complainant if he would pay his notes, and that he replied that the bonds were not then worth as much as they were sold for, and that the defendant must keep what was obtained, and if he were ever able he would pay the balance; that subsequently the bonds were greatly depreciated in the market, and in 1858 and 1859 were sold as low as at the rate of ten dollars for the hundred.

To the specific interrogatory, abovementioned, as having been put to him about the bonds, the defendant answered:

Statement of the case.

"I did after said sale send to the complainant the auctioneer's account of the sale, giving names of purchasers and prices for which the bonds sold, and afterwards, at the interview in Augusta, in 1858, I did state to the complainant, in substance, but not in the precise words, that I made the sale at auction after duly advertising the same, and that the sale was a good sale. I did not, to my recollection, use the words 'bonâ fide.' I then stated to the complainant the gross amount of the sale, and that it had been applied on the notes."

As to the notes. The defendant met the several allegations of the bill by direct denial, and averred that the corporation was hopelessly insolvent, and that all its property was mortgaged for more than it was worth, and that this fact was known to the complainant at the time the notes were placed in the defendant's hands; and that a suit was commenced against the corporation with a view of enforcing their collection from the stockholders, but was abandoned in consequence of a decision of the Supreme Court of the State of Maine, made in 1858,* that the stockholders were not liable; a decision which was subsequently, to wit, in 1864,† reversed in this court, but which previously had been by many acted on as practically ending controversy.

In respect to both bonds and notes. The material allegations of the answer were sustained by the evidence, except that one in regard to the bonds, which alleged that an account of the sales, showing the prices obtained, and the names of the purchasers, was transmitted to the complainant. That rested on the interrogatory and the answer to it.

The evidence showed also that no demand had been made on Whitmore to account, until January 23d, 1869, in which year, after the great depressions already mentioned in the answer to the price of the bonds, following the sale now in question, they suddenly rose in value.

The court below held:

As to the notes. That the insolvency of the company and the decision of the Supreme Court of Maine were a sufficient defence. It said:

*.46 Maine, 302.

Hawthorne v. Calef, 2 Wallace, 10.