This campaign cost us the friendship of Horace Greeley and the support of the New York Tribune, heretofore our most powerful and faithful allies. In an earnest conversation with Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, Mr. Greeley said: "This is a critical period for the Republican party and the life of the Nation. The word "white" in our Constitution at this hour has a significance which "male" has not. It would be wise and magnanimous in you to hold your claims, though just and imperative, I grant, in abeyance until the negro is safe beyond peradventure, and your turn will come next. I conjure you to remember that this is "the negro's hour," and your first duty now is to go through the State and plead his claims." "Suppose," we replied, "Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond and James Gordon Bennett were disfranchised; what would be thought of them, if before audiences and in leading editorials they pressed the claims of Sambo, Patrick, Hans and Yung Fung to the ballot, to be lifted above their own heads? With their intelligence, education, knowledge of the science of government, and keen appreciation of the dangers of the hour, would it not be treasonable, rather than magnanimous, for them, leaders of the metropolitan press, to give the ignorant and unskilled a power in government they did not possess themselves? To do this would be to place on board the ship of State officers and crew who knew nothing of chart or compass, of the safe pathway across the sea, and bid those who understand the laws of navigation to stand aside. No, no, this is the hour to press woman's claims; we have stood with the black man in the Constitution over half a century, and it is fitting now that the constitutional door is open that we should enter with him into the political kingdom of equality. Through all these years he has been the only decent compeer we have had. Enfranchise him, and we are left outside with lunatics, idiots and criminals for another twenty years." "Well," said Mr. Greeley, "if you persevere in your present plan, you need depend on no further help from me or the Tribune." And he kept his word. We have seen the negro enfranchised, and twenty long years pass away since the war, and still woman's turn has not yet come; her rights as a citizen of the United States are still unrecognized, the oft-repeated pledges of leading Republicans and Abolitionists have not been redeemed.

As soon as the Constitutional Convention was called by the Legislature of New York, Mrs. Stanton appeared before that body asking not only that the word "male" be stricken from Sec. 1, Art. 2, but that women be permitted to vote for members to that Convention, giving many precedents and learned opinions in favor of her demand. In the Assembly Chamber on the afternoon of Jan. 23, 1867, an immense audience of judges, lawyers, members of the Legislature, and ladies of fashion greeted her. On being introduced by the Hon. Chas. J. Folger,[92] Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, MRS. STANTON said:

Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee and Members of the Legislature:

I appear before you at this time, to urge on you the justice of securing to all the people of the State the right to vote for delegates to the coming Constitutional Convention. The discussion of this right involves the consideration of the whole question of suffrage; and especially those sections of your Constitution which interpose insurmountable qualifications to its exercise. As representatives of the people, your right to regulate all that pertains to the coming Constitutional Convention is absolute. It is for you to say when and where this convention shall be held; how many delegates shall be chosen, and what classes shall be represented. This is your right. It is the opinion of many of the ablest men of the country that, in a revision of a constitution, the State is, for the time being, resolved into its original elements, and that all disfranchised classes should have a voice in such revision and be represented in such convention. To secure this to the people of the State, is clearly your duty.

Says Judge Beach Lawrence, in a letter to Hon. Charles Sumner: "A State Constitution must originate with and be assented to by a majority of the people, including as well those whom it disfranchises as those whom it invests with the suffrage." And as there is nothing in the present Constitution of the State of New York to prevent women, or black men from voting for, or being elected as delegates to a Constitutional Convention, there is no reason why the Legislature should not enact that the people elect their delegates to said Convention irrespective of sex or color. The Legislatures of 1801 and 1821 furnish you a precedent for extending to disfranchised classes the right to vote for delegates to a Constitutional Convention. Though the Constitution of the State restricted the right of suffrage to every male inhabitant who possessed a freehold to the value of L20, or rented a tenement at the yearly value of forty shillings, and had been rated and actually paid taxes to the State, the Legislatures of those years passed laws setting aside all property limitations, and providing that all men—black and white, rich and poor—should vote for delegates to said Conventions. The act recommending a convention for the purpose of considering the parts of the Constitution of this State, respecting the number of Senators and Members of Assembly—and also for the consideration of the 23d article of said Constitution, relative to the right of nomination to office—"but with no other power or authority whatsoever," passed April 6, 1801. Session Laws 1801, chap. 69, page 190, sec. 2, says:

And be it further enacted, that the number of delegates chosen shall be the same as the number of Members of Assembly from the respective cities and counties of the State, and that all free male citizens of this State, of the age of twenty-one years and upward, shall be admitted to vote for such delegates, and that any person of that description shall be eligible.

The above law was passed by the Legislature of 1801, which derived its authority from the first Constitution of the State.

The act recommending a convention of the people of this State, passed March 13, 1821. Session Laws of 1821, act 90, page 83, sec. 1. "Persons entitled to vote":

All free male citizens, of the age of twenty-one years or upward, who shall possess a freehold in this State, or who shall have been actually rated and paid taxes to this State, or who shall have been actually enrolled in the militia of this State, or in a legal, volunteer, or uniform corps, and shall have served therein either as an officer or private, or who shall have been or now are, by law, exempt from taxation or militia duty, or who shall have been assessed to work on the public roads and highways, and shall have worked thereon, or shall have paid a commutation therefor according to law, shall be allowed during the three days of such election to vote by ballot as aforesaid in the town or ward in which they shall actually reside.

Extract from Sec. 6th, Act 90:

And be it further enacted, that the number of delegates to be chosen shall be the same as the number of Members of Assembly from the respective cities and counties of this State, and that the same qualification for voters shall be required on the election for delegates, as is prescribed in the first section of this act, and none other.... And that all persons entitled to vote by this law for delegates, shall be eligible to be elected.

Extracts from the first Constitution of the State of New York, under and by virtue of which the Legislatures sat, which passed the acts of 1801 and 1821, from which the extracts above are taken. Sec. 7. Qualification of electors:

That every male inhabitant of full age, who shall have personally resided for six months within one of the counties of this State, immediately preceding the day of election, shall at such election be entitled to vote for representatives of the said county in Assembly, if during the time aforesaid, he shall have been a freeholder possessing a freehold of the value of L20, within the said county, or have rented a tenement therein of a yearly value of forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes to this State.

SEC. 10. And this Convention doth further, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this State, ordain, determine, and declare that the Senate of the State of New York shall consist of twenty-four freeholders, to be chosen out of the body of the freeholders, and they be chosen by the freeholders of this State, possessed of freeholds of the value of L100 over and above all debts charged thereon.

By section 17, the qualifications for voters for Governor are made the same as those for Senators.

The laws above quoted show this striking fact: Those men, black and white, prohibited from voting for members of the Assembly, were permitted to vote for delegates to said Conventions; and more than this, on each occasion they were eligible to seats in the body called to frame the fundamental law—the fundamental law from which Governors, Senators, and Members derive their existence.

The Constitutional Convention of Rhode Island, in 1842, affords another precedent of the power of the Legislature to extend the suffrage to disfranchised classes.

The disfranchisement of any class of citizens is in express violation of the spirit of our own Constitution. Art. 1, sec. 1:

No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land and the judgment of his peers.

Now, women, and negroes not worth two hundred and fifty dollars, however weak and insignificant, are surely "members of the State." The law of the land is equality. The question of disfranchisement has never been submitted to the judgment of their peers. A peer is an equal. The "white male citizen" who so pompously parades himself in all our Codes and Constitutions, does not recognize women and negroes as his equals; therefore, his judgment in their case amounts to nothing. And women and negroes constituting a majority of the people of the State, do not recognize a "white male" minority as their rightful rulers. On our republican theory that the majority governs, women and negroes should have a voice in the government of the State; and being taxed, should be represented.

In the recent debate in the Senate of the United States, on the question of suffrage, Senator Anthony, of Rhode Island, said:

Nor is it a fair statement of the case to say, that the man represents the woman, because it is an assumption on the part of the man—it is an involuntary representation on the part of the woman. Representation implies a certain delegated power, and a certain responsibility on the part of the representative toward the party represented. A representation to which the represented party does not assent, is no representation at all; but is adding insult to injury. When the American Colonies complained that they ought not to be taxed unless they were represented in the British Parliament, it would have been rather a singular answer to tell them that they were represented by Lord North, or even by the Earl of Chatham. The gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber, who say that the States lately in rebellion are entitled to immediate representation in this Chamber, would hardly be satisfied if we should tell them that my friend from Massachusetts represented South Carolina, and my friend from Michigan represented Alabama. They would hardly be satisfied with that kind of representation. Nor have we any more right to assume that the women are satisfied with the representation of the men. Where has been the assembly at which this right of representation was conferred? Where was the compact made? It is wholly an assumption.

"White males" are the nobility of this country; they are the privileged order, who have legislated as unjustly for women and negroes as have the nobles of England for their disfranchised classes. The existence of the English House of Commons is a strong fact to prove that one class can not legislate for another. Perhaps it may be necessary, in this transition period of our civilization, to create a Lower House for women and negroes, lest the dreadful example of Massachusetts, nay, worse, should be repeated here, and women, as well as black men, take their places beside our Dutch nobility in the councils of the State. If the history of England has proved that white men of different grades can not legislate with justice for one another, how can you, Honorable Gentlemen, legislate for women and negroes, who, by your customs, creeds and codes, are placed under the ban of inferiority? If you dislike this view of the case, and claim that woman is your superior, and, therefore, you place her above all troublesome legislation, to shield her by your protecting care from the rough winds of life, I have simply to say, your statute books are a sad commentary on that position. Your laws degrade, rather than exalt woman; your customs cripple, rather than free; your system of taxation is alike ungenerous and unjust.

In demanding suffrage for the black man of the South, the dominant party recognizes the fact that as a freedman he is no longer a part of the family therefore his master is no longer his representative, and as he will now be liable to taxation, he must also have representation. Woman, on the contrary, has never been such a part of the family as to escape taxation. Although there has been no formal proclamation giving her an individual existence, unmarried women have always had the right to property and wages; to make contracts and do business in their own name. And even married women, by recent legislation in this State, have been secured in some civil rights, at least as well secured as those classes can be who do not hold the ballot in their own hands. Woman now holds a vast amount of property in the country, and pays her full proportion of taxes, revenue included; on what principle, then, do you deny her representation? If you say women are "virtually represented" by the men of their household, I give you Senator Sumner's denial, in his great speech on Equal Rights in the First Session of the 39th Congress. Quoting from James Otis, he says: "No such phrase as virtual representation was known in law or constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd. We must not be cheated by any such phantom or any other fiction of law or politics, or any monkish trick of deceit or hypocrisy."

In regard to taxation without representation, Lord Coke says: "The supreme power can not take from any man any part of his property without his consent in person or by representation. Taxes are not to be laid on the people" (are not women and negroes people?) "without their consent in person or by representation. The very act of taxing those who are not represented appears to me to deprive them of one of their most essential rights as freemen, and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right; for what one civil right is worth a rush, after a man's property is subject to be taken from him without his consent?" In view of such opinions, is it too much to ask the men of New York, either to enfranchise women of wealth and education, or else release them from taxation? If we can not be represented as individuals, we should not be taxed as individuals. If the "white male" will do all the voting, let him pay all the taxes. There is no logic so powerful in opening the eyes of men to their real interests as a direct appeal to their pockets. Such a release from taxation can be supported, too, by your own Constitution. In Art. 2, Sec. 1, you say, "And no person of color shall be subject to direct taxation, unless he shall be seized and possessed of such real estate as aforesaid," referring to the $250 qualification. Now, a poor widow who owns a lot worth a hundred dollars or less, is taxed. Why this partiality to the black man? He may live in the quiet possession of $249 worth of property, and not be taxed a cent. Is it on the ground of color or sex, that the black man finds greater favor in the eyes of the law than the daughters of the State? In order fully to understand this partiality, I have inquired into your practice with regard to women of color. I find that in Seneca Falls there lives a highly estimable colored woman, by the name of Abby Gomore, who owns property to the amount of a thousand dollars, in village lots. She now pays, and always has paid, from the time she invested her first hundred dollars, the same taxes as any other citizen—just in proportion to the value of her property, or as it is assessed. After excluding women and "men of color" not worth $250, from representation, your Constitution tells us what other persons are excluded from the right of suffrage. Art. 2, Sec. 2.

Laws may be passed excluding from the right of suffrage all persons who have been or may be convicted of bribery, or larceny, or of any infamous crime, and for depriving every person who shall make, or become directly or indirectly interested in any bet or wager depending upon the result of any election, from the right to vote at such election.

How humiliating! For respectable and law-abiding women and "men of color," to be thrust outside the pale of political consideration with those convicted of bribery, larceny, and infamous crime; and worse than all, with those who bet on elections—for how lost to all sense of honor must that "white male citizen" be who publicly violates a wise law to which he has himself given an intelligent consent. We are ashamed, Honored Sirs, of our company. The Mohammedan forbids a "fool, a madman, or a woman" to call the hours for prayers. If it were not for the invidious classification, we might hope it was tenderness rather than contempt that moved the Mohammedan to excuse woman from so severe a duty. But for the ballot, which falls like a flake of snow upon the sod, we can find no such excuse for New York legislators. Art. 2, Sec. 3, should be read and considered by the women of the State, as it gives them a glimpse of the modes of life and surroundings of some of the privileged classes of "white male citizens" who may go to the polls:

For the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a residence by reason of his presence or absence while employed in the service of the United States; nor while engaged in navigating the waters of the State, or of the United States, or of the high seas; nor while a student of any seminary of learning; nor while kept at any alms-house or other asylum, at public expense; nor while confined in any public prison.

What an unspeakable privilege to have that precious jewel—the human soul—in a setting of white manhood, that thus it can pass through the prison, the asylum, the alms-house, the muddy waters of the Erie canal, and come forth undimmed to appear at the ballot-box at the earliest opportunity, there to bury its crimes, its poverty, its moral and physical deformities, all beneath the rights, privileges, and immunities of a citizen of the State. Just imagine the motley crew from the ten thousand dens of poverty and vice in our large cities, limping, raving, cringing, staggering up to the polls, while the loyal mothers of a million soldiers whose bones lay bleaching on every Southern plain, stand outside sad and silent witnesses of this wholesale desecration of republican institutions. When you say it would degrade woman to go to the polls, do you not make a sad confession of your irreligious mode of observing that most sacred right of citizenship? The ballot-box, in a republican government, should be guarded with as much love and care as was the Ark of the Lord among the Children of Israel. Here, where we have no heaven-anointed kings or priests, law must be to us a holy thing; and the ballot-box the holy of holies; for on it depends the safety and stability of our institutions. I, for one, gentlemen, am not willing to be thus represented. I claim to understand the interests of the nation better than yonder pauper in your alms-house, than the unbalanced graduate from your asylum and prison, or the popinjay of twenty-one from your seminary of learning, or the traveler on the tow-path of the Erie canal. No wonder that with such voters as Art. 2, Sec. 3 welcomes to the polls, we have these contradictory laws and constitutions. No wonder that with such voters, sex and color should be exalted above loyalty, virtue, wealth and education. I warn you, legislators of the State of New York, that you need the moral power of wise and thoughtful women in your political councils, to outweigh the incoming tide of poverty, ignorance, and vice that threatens our very existence as a nation. Have not the women of the republic an equal interest with yourselves in the government, in free institutions, in progressive ideas, and in the success of the most liberal political measures? Remember, in your last election, the republican majority in this State was only fourteen thousand, all told. If you would not see the liberal party swamped in the next Presidential campaign, treble your majority by enfranchising those classes who would support it in all just and merciful legislation....

The extension of suffrage is the political idea of our day, agitating alike the leading minds of both continents. The question of debate in the long past has been the rights of races. This, in our country, was settled by the war, when the black man was declared free and worthy to bear arms in defense of the republic, and the last remnants of aristocracy were scattered before our northern hosts like chaff in the whirlwind. We have now come to the broader idea of individual rights. An idea already debated ably in Congress and out, by Republicans, Democrats and Abolitionists, who, in common with the best writers and thinkers of the day the world over, base all rights of society and government on those of the individual. Each one of you has a right to everything in earth and air, on land and sea, to the whole world of thought, to all that is needful for soul and body, and there is no limit to the exercise of your rights, but in the infringement of the rights of another; and the moment you pass that limit you are on forbidden ground, you violate the law of individual life, and breed disorder and confusion in the whole social system. Where, gentlemen, did you get the right to deny the ballot to all women and black men not worth $250? If this right of suffrage is not an individual right, from what place and body did you get it? Is this right of franchise a conventional arrangement, a privilege that society or government may grant or withhold at pleasure? In the Senate of the United States, in the recent discussion on the "bill to regulate the elective franchise in the District of Columbia," GRATZ BROWN said:

Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and, as a matter of fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of race or sex. I will go farther and say, that I recognize the right of franchise as being intrinsically a natural right. I do not believe that society is authorized to impose any limitations upon it that do not spring out of the necessities of the social state itself. Sir, I have been shocked, in the course of this debate, to hear Senators declare this right only a conventional and political arrangement, a privilege yielded to you and me, and others; not a right in any sense, only a concession! Mr. President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine; whenever you crystallize that idea in the public mind of this country, you ring the death-knell of American liberties!!

The demand we to-day make, is not the idiosyncrasy of a few discontented minds, but a universal movement. Woman is everywhere throwing off the lethargy of ages, and is already close upon you in the whole realm of thought—in art, science, literature and government. Everything heralds the dawn of the new era when moral power is to govern nations. In asking you, Honorable Gentlemen, to extend suffrage to woman, we do not press on you the risk and responsibility of a new step, but simply to try a measure that has already proved wise and safe the world over. So long as political power was absolute and hereditary, woman shared it with man by birth. In Hungary and some provinces of France and Germany, women holding this inherited right confer their right of franchise on their husbands. In 1858, in the old town of Upsal, the authorities granted the right of suffrage to fifty women holding real estate, and to thirty-one doing business in their own name. The representative their votes elected was to sit in the House of Burgesses. In Ireland, the Court of Queen's Bench, Dublin, restored to women, in 1864, the old right of voting for town commissioners. In 1864, too, the government of Moravia decided that all women who are tax-payers had the right to vote. In Canada, in 1850, an electoral privilege was conferred on women, in the hope that the Protestant might balance the Roman Catholic power in the school system. "I lived," says a friend of mine, "where I saw this right exercised for four years by female property holders, and never heard the most cultivated man, even Lord Elgin, object to its results." Women vote in Austria, Australia, Holland and Sweden, on property qualifications. There is a bill now before the British Parliament, presented by John Stuart Mill, asking for household suffrage, accompanied by a petition from eleven thousand of the best educated women in England.

Would you be willing to admit, gentlemen, that women know less, have less virtue, less pride and dignity of character under Republican institutions than in the despotisms and monarchies of the old world? Your Codes and Constitutions savor of such an opinion. Fortunately, history furnishes a few saving facts, even under our Republican institutions. From a recent examination of the archives of the State of New Jersey we learn that, owing to a liberal Quaker influence, women and negroes exercised the right of suffrage in that State thirty-one years—from 1776 to 1807—when "white males" ignored the constitution, and arbitrarily assumed the reins of government. This act of injustice is sufficient to account for the moral darkness that seems to have settled down upon that unhappy State. During the dynasty of women and negroes, does history record any social revolution peculiar to that period? Because women voted there, was the institution of marriage annulled, the sanctity of home invaded, cradles annihilated, and the stockings, like Governor Marcy's pantaloons, mended by the State? Did the men of that period become mere satellites of the dinner-pot, the wash-tub, or the spinning-wheel? Were they dwarfed and crippled in body and soul, while their enfranchised wives and mothers became giants in stature and intellect? Did the children, fully armed and equipped for the battle of life, spring, Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers? Were the laws of nature suspended? Did the sexes change places? Was everything turned upside down? No, life went on as smoothly in New Jersey as in any other State in the Union. And the fact that women did vote there, created so slight a ripple on the popular wave, and made so ordinary a page in history, that probably nine-tenths of the people of this country never heard of its existence, until recent discussions in the United States Senate brought out the facts of the case. In Kansas, women vote for school officers and are themselves eligible to the office of trustee. There is a resolution now before the Legislature of Ohio to strike the words "white male" from the Constitution of that State. The Hon. Mr. Noel, of Missouri, has presented a bill in the House of Representatives to extend suffrage to the women of the District of Columbia.

I think, Honorable Gentlemen, I have given you facts enough to show that you need not hesitate to give the ballot to the women of New York, on the ground that it is a new thing; for, as you see, the right has long ago been exercised by certain classes of women in many countries. And if it were a new thing, and had never been heard of before, that would be no argument against the experiment. Had the world never done a new thing, Columbus would not have discovered this country, nor the ocean telegraph brought our old enemy—Great Britain—within friendly speaking distance. When it was proposed to end slavery in this country, croakers and conservatives protested because it was a new thing, and must of necessity produce a social convulsion. When it was proposed to give woman her rights of property in this State, the same classes opposed that on the same ground; but the spirit of the age carried both measures over their heads and "nobody was hurt."

You Republicans can not oppose our demand on that ground, for your present party-cry "negro suffrage" is a new thing, and startling too, in the ears of the Southern States, and a very inconsistent thing, so long as the $250 qualification remains in your Constitution. "If you would know your faults," says Cicero, "ask your enemies." Hear his Excellency Andrew Johnson, in his veto on the District of Columbia Bill; he says: "It hardly seems consistent with the principles of right and justice, that representatives of States where suffrage is either denied the colored man or granted to him on qualifications requiring intelligence or property, should compel the people of the District of Columbia to try an experiment which their constituents have thus far shown an unwillingness to try for themselves." Senator Sumner, a leading radical, expresses the same opinion. In the debate on the admission of Nebraska, he says: "When we demand equal rights of the Southern States, we must not be so inconsistent as to admit any new State with a constitution disfranchising citizens on account of color. Congress must be itself just, if it would recommend it to others. Reconstruction must begin at home." Consistency is a jewel. Every thoughtful person must see that Northern representatives are in no condition to reconstruct the South until their own State Constitutions are purged of all invidious distinctions among their citizens. As the fountain rises no higher than its source, how can New York press on South Carolina a civilization she has never tried herself. But say you, we can coerce the South to do what we have no right to force on a loyal State. Has not each State a right to amend her own Constitution and establish a genuine republic within her own boundaries? "Let each man mend one," says the old proverb, "and the world is mended." Let each State bring its own Constitution into harmony with the Federal Constitution, and the Union will be a republic.

We are soon to hold a convention to revise the Constitution of the State of New York; and it is the duty of the people to insist that it be so amended as to make all its citizens equal before the law. Could the Empire State now take the lead in making herself a genuine republic, all the States would, in time, follow her example, and the problem of reconstruction be thus settled to the satisfaction of all. Example is more powerful than precept in all cases. Were our constitutions free from all class distinctions, with what power our representatives could now press their example on the Southern States. Is there anything more rasping to a proud spirit than to be rebuked for shortcomings by those who are themselves guilty of the grossest violations of law and justice? Does the North think it absurd for its women to vote and hold office, the South thinks the same of its negroes. Does the North consider its women a part of the family to be represented by the "white male citizen," so views the South her negroes. And thus viewing them, the South has never taxed her slaves; but our chivalry never fails to send its tax-gatherers to the poorest widow that owns a homestead. Would you press impartial suffrage on the South, recognize it first at home. Would you have Congress do its duty in the coming session, let the action of every State Legislature teach it what that duty is. The work of this hour is a broader one than the reconstruction of the Rebel States. It is the lifting of the entire nation into higher ideas of justice and equality. It is the realization of what the world has never yet seen, a GENUINE REPUBLIC.

As the ballot is the key to reconstruction, a right knowledge of its use and power is the first step in the work before us. Hence, the consideration of the question of suffrage is the duty of every American citizen.

The legal disabilities to the exercise of suffrage (for persons of sound mind and body) in the several States, are five—age, color, sex, property and education. As age depends on a fixed law, beyond the control of fallible man, viz., the revolution of the earth around the sun, it must be impartial, for, nolens volens, all men must revolve with their native planet; and as no Republican or Democratic majority can make the earth stand still, even for a Presidential campaign, they must in time perform that journey often enough to become legal voters. As the right to the ballot is not based on intelligence, it matters not that some boys of eighteen do know more than some men of thirty. Inasmuch as boys are not bound by any contract—except marriage—can not sell a horse, or piece of land, or be sued for debt until they are twenty-one, this qualification of age seems to be in harmony with the laws of the land, and based on common sense.

As to color and sex, neither time, money or education can make black white, or woman man; therefore such insurmountable qualifications, not to be tolerated in a republican government, are unworthy our serious consideration. "Qualifications," says Senator Sumner, "can not be in their nature permanent or insurmountable. Color can not be a qualification any more than size, or quality of the hair. A permanent or insurmountable qualification is equivalent to a deprivation of the suffrage. In other words, it is the tyranny of taxation without representation; and this tyranny, I insist, is not intrusted to any State in the Union."

As to property and education, there are some plausible arguments in favor of such qualifications, but they are all alike unsatisfactory, illogical and unjust. A limited suffrage creates a privileged class, and is based on the false idea that government is the natural arbiter of its citizens, while in fact it is the creature of their will. In the old days of the colonies when the property qualification was five pounds—that being just the price of a jackass—Benjamin Franklin facetiously asked, "If a man must own a jackass in order to vote, who does the voting, the man or the jackass?" If reading and money-making were a sure gauge of character, if intelligence and virtue were twin sisters, these qualifications might do; but such is not the case. In our late war black men were loyal, generous and heroic without the alphabet or multiplication table, while men of wealth, educated by the nation, graduates of West Point, were false to their country and traitors to their flag. There was a time in England's history, when the House of Lords even, could neither read nor write. Before the art of printing, were all men fools? Were the Apostles and martyrs worth $250? The early Christians, the children of art, science and literature, have in all ages struggled with poverty, while they blessed the world with their inspirations. The Hero of Judea had not where to lay His head!! As capital has ever ground labor to the dust, is it just and generous to disfranchise the poor and ignorant because they are so? If a man can not read, give him the ballot, it is schoolmaster. If he does not own a dollar give him the ballot, it is the key to wealth and power. Says Lamartine, "universal suffrage is the first truth and only basis of every national republic." "The ballot," says Senator Sumner, "is the columbiad of our political life, and every citizen who has it is a full-armed monitor."

But while such grand truths are uttered in the ears of the world, by an infamous amendment of the Federal Constitution, the people have sanctioned the disfranchisement of a majority of the loyal citizens of the nation. With sorrow we learn that the Legislature of New York has ratified this change of the Constitution.

Happily for the cause of freedom, the organization we represent here to-day, "THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION," has registered its protest in the archives of the State against this desecration of the last will and testament of the Fathers. It was a mistake for you to confirm to-day what Congress proposed a year ago. Recent debates in the Senate show a hearty repentance for their past action, and an entire revolution in their opinions on this whole question. It was gratifying to find in the discussion of the District Franchise Bill, how unanimously the Senate favored the extension of suffrage. The thanks of the women of the Nation are especially due to Senator Cowan for his motion to strike out the word "male," and to the nine distinguished Senators who voted for his amendment. It was pleasant to see into what fraternal relations this question at once brought all opposing elements. The very able and exhaustive manner in which both Republicans and Democrats pressed their claims to the ballot, through two entire sessions of the Senate, is most encouraging to the advocates of the political rights of women.

In view of this liberal discussion in the Senate, and the recent action of Congress on the Territories, it is rather singular that our Republican Governor, in referring to the Constitutional Convention in his late message, while recommending consideration of many minor matters, should have failed to call attention to Art. 2d, Sec. 1, of the Constitution, which denies the fundamental rights of citizenship. As the executive head of the party in this State whose political capital is "negro suffrage," it would have been highly proper for our worthy Governor to have given his opinion on that odious $250 clause in the Constitution. No doubt our judiciary, our criminal legislation, our city governments need reforming; our railroads, prisons and schools need attention; but all these are of minor consideration to the personal and property rights of the man himself. Said Lalor Shiels, in the House of Commons, "strike the Constitution to the center and the lawyer sleeps in his closet. But touch the cobwebs in Westminster Hall and the spiders start from their hiding places."

I have called your attention, gentlemen, to some of the flaws in your Constitution that you may see that there is more important work to be done in the coming Convention than any to which Governor Fenton has referred in his message. I would also call your attention to the fact, that while His Excellency suggests the number of delegates at large to be chosen by the two political parties, he makes no provision for the representatives of women and "men of color" not worth $250. I would, therefore, suggest to your honorable body that you provide for the election of an equal number of delegates at large from the disfranchised classes. But a response to our present demand does not legitimately thrust on you the final consideration of the whole broad question of suffrage, on which many of you may be unprepared to give an opinion. The simple point we now press is this: that in a revision of our Constitution, when the State is, as it were, resolved into its original elements, ALL THE PEOPLE should be represented in the Convention which is to enact the laws by which they are to be governed the next twenty years. Women and negroes, being seven-twelfths of the people, are a majority; and according to our republican theory, are the rightful rulers of the nation. In this view of the case, honorable gentlemen, is it not a very unpretending demand we make, that we shall vote once in twenty years in revising and amending our State Constitution?

But, say you, the majority of women do not make the demand. Grant it. What then? When you proclaimed emancipation, did you go to slaveholders and ask if a majority of them were in favor of freeing their slaves? When you ring the changes on "negro suffrage" from Maine to California, have you proof positive that a majority of the freedmen demand the ballot? On the contrary, knowing that the very existence of republican institutions depends on the virtue, education and equality of the people, did you not, as wise statesmen, legislate in all these cases for the highest good of the individual and the nation? We ask that the same far-seeing wisdom may guide your decision on the question now before you. Remember, the gay and fashionable throng who whisper in the ears of statesmen, judges, lawyers, merchants, "We have all the rights we want," are but the mummies of civilization, to be brought back to life only by earthquakes and revolutions. Would you know what is in the soul of woman, ask not the wives and daughters of merchant princes; but the creators of wealth—those who earn their bread by honest toil—those who, by a turn in the wheel of fortune, stand face to face with the stern realities of life.

"If you would enslave a people," says Cicero, "first, through ease and luxury, make them effeminate." When you subsidize labor to your selfish interests, there is ever a healthy resistance. But, when you exalt weakness and imbecility above your heads, give it an imaginary realm of power, illimitable, unmeasured, unrecognized, you have founded a throne for woman on pride, selfishness and complacency, before which you may well stand appalled. In banishing Madame De Stael from Paris, the Emperor Napoleon, even, bowed to the power of that scepter which rules the world of fashion. The most insidious enemy to our republican institutions, at this hour, is found in the aristocracy of our women. The ballot-box, that great leveler among men, is beneath their dignity. "They have all the rights they want." So, in his spiritual supremacy, has the Pope of Rome! But what of the multitude outside the Vatican!!!

This speech was published in full by the Metropolitan press and many of the leading journals[93] of the State, with fair editorial comments.

On June 4th, 1867, the Constitutional Convention assembled in Albany, and on the 10th Mr. Graves of Herkimer, moved "that a committee of five be appointed by the chair to report at an early day whether the Convention should provide that when a majority of women voted that they wanted the right of suffrage, they should have it," and on the 19th the President, William A. Wheeler, appointed the committee[94] on the "right of suffrage, and the qualifications for holding office."

The first petition brought before the committee in favor of suffrage for women was presented by George William Curtis, of Richmond Co., sent by the friends of Human Progress from their Annual meeting at Waterloo.

Martin I. Townsend next presented a petition from William Johnson, Chairman of the "Colored Men's State Committee," praying for "equal manhood suffrage." Similar petitions, without any concert of action between the parties, were presented simultaneously whenever any discussion arose on the suffrage question. But in this Convention the demands made by the women were more pressing and multitudinous.

Mr. GRAVES, June 21st, 1867, moved to take up his resolution, "That a committee of five be appointed by the chair to report to the convention at as early a day as possible, whether, in their opinion, a provision should be incorporated in the Constitution authorizing the women in this State to exercise the elective franchise, when they shall ask that right by a majority of all the votes given by female citizens over twenty-one years of age, at an election called for that purpose, at which women alone shall have the right to vote."

Mr. GRAVES said:—Mr. President. I do not desire at this time to discuss the merits of the resolution; but allow me to suggest that there are four classes of persons interested in the questions involved in it. The first class is what is opprobriously known as "strong-minded women," who claim the right to vote upon the ground that they are interested and identified with ourselves in the stability and permanency of our institutions, and that their property is made liable for the maintenance of our Government, while they have no right to choose the law-makers or select the persons who are to assess the value of their property liable to taxation. They claim that they are not untaught in the science of government to which the right of administration is denied to them.

The second class includes both males and females who sympathize with the first class, and who claim that there is no disparity in the intellect of men and women, when an equal opportunity is afforded by education for progress and advancement. They also claim that our country is diminishing all the time in moral integrity and virtue, and ask that a new element be introduced into our governmental affairs by which crime shall be lessened and the estimate of moral virtue be made higher.

The third class urges that there should be no distinction between males and females in the exercise of the elective franchise, and they claim that it is anti-democratic that there should be a minority in this country to rule its destinies.

There is a fourth class who believe that the right to exercise the elective franchise is not inherent, but permissive, and that the people are the Government, and that this power of the elective franchise is under their immediate control, and they claim the right to become part and parcel of the Government which they help to support and maintain.

Now these four classes, differing in opinion upon this great question, constitute a very large body of worthy, high-minded, and intelligent men and women of this State who have long sought to enlarge the elective franchise, and they claim the deliberate consideration of this body upon the ground of equality, as their innumerable petitions[95] to this Convention fully show. This resolution gives to women themselves the power of discussing and comparing of minds to settle the question whether they will avail themselves of the desired right to exercise the power of voting. And as it differs from all other questions which have originated here with reference to this right of women to vote, I submit it is a proper resolution to be referred to a select committee to be appointed for that purpose.

Mr. Graves' resolution was referred to the Committee on Suffrage.

June 27th Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were granted a hearing[96] before the Convention, and at the close of their addresses were asked by different members to reply to various objections that readily suggested themselves. Among others, Mr. Greeley said: "Ladies, you will please remember that the bullet and ballot go together. If you vote, are you ready to fight?" "Certainly," was the prompt reply. "We are ready to fight, sir, just as you fought in the late war, by sending our substitutes." The colloquy between the members and the ladies, prolonged until a late hour, was both spicy and instructive.[97] On the 10th of July a hearing was granted to Lucy Stone,[98] which called out deep interest and consideration from the members of that body. Later still, George Francis Train[99] was most cordially received by the Convention.

C. C. DWIGHT, June 26th, offered a resolution that "The Standing Committee on the Right of Suffrage be instructed to provide for women to vote as to whether they wanted the right to vote after the adoption of the New Constitution.

Mr. MERRITT, July 11th, moved that "The question of Woman Suffrage be submitted at the election of 1868 or 1869. Referred to the Committee of the Whole.

Horace Greeley, Chairman of the Committee, in his report, after recommending universal "manhood suffrage," said:

Having thus briefly set forth the considerations which seem to us decisive in favor of the few and moderate changes proposed, we proceed to indicate our controlling reasons for declining to recommend other and in some respects more important innovations. Your committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to women. However defensible in theory, we are satisfied that public sentiment does not demand and would not sustain an innovation so revolutionary and sweeping, so openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as venerable and pervading as government itself, and involving transformations so radical in social and domestic life. Should we prove to be in error on this head, the Convention may overrule us by changing a few words in the first section of our proposed article.

Nor have we seen fit to propose the enfranchisement of boys above the age of eighteen years. The current ideas and usages in our day, but especially in this country, seem already to set too strongly in favor of the relaxation, if not total overthrow of parental authority, especially over half-grown boys. With the sincerest good-will for the class in question, we submit that they may spend the hours which they can spare from their labors and their lessons more usefully and profitably in mastering the wisdom of the sages and philosophers who have elucidated the science of government, than in attendance on midnight caucuses, or in wrangling around the polls.

ALBANY, June 28, 1867.

HORACE GREELEY, Chairman, WM. H. MERRILL, LESLIE W. RUSSELL, GEO. WILLIAMS.

Mr. Cassidy presented a minority report urging a separate submission of the question of negro suffrage, in which he said:

If the regeneration of political society is to be sought in the incorporation of this element into the constituency, it must be done by the direct and explicit vote of the electors. We are foreclosed from any other course by the repeated action[100] of the State.... It would be unfair to the people to declare that whereas they have again and again refused to accept this change, therefore we will incorporate it into the Constitution, and compel them either to repeal that instrument, or to accept this measure.... As to the extension of suffrage to women, the undersigned reserve, for the present, any expression of opinion.

WILLIAM CASSIDY, JOHN G. SCHUMAKER.

The petitions[101] for woman suffrage were presented in the Convention until they reached in round numbers 20,000. The morning Mr. Greeley gave his report the galleries were crowded with ladies, and every member present, Democrat as well as Republican, was supplied with a petition. As it had been rumored about that Mr. Greeley's report would be against suffrage for women, the Democrats entered with great zest into the presentation. George William Curtis, at the special request[102] of the ladies, reserved his for the last, and when he arose and said: "Mr. President, I hold in my hand a petition from Mrs. Horace Greeley and three hundred other women citizens of Westchester, asking that the word 'male' be stricken from the Constitution," the sensation throughout the house was as profound as unexpected. Mr. Greeley's chagrin was only equaled by the amusement of the other members, and of the ladies in the gallery. As he arose to read his report, it being the next thing in order, he was evidently embarrassed in view of such a flood of petitions from all parts of the State; from his own wife, and most of the ladies in his immediate social circle, by seeming to antagonize the measure.

After Mr. Greeley's report, Mr. Graves made several efforts to get his resolution adopted in time for the women to vote upon it in the spring of 1868. Mr. Weed, of Clinton, also desired that the vote for the measure should consist of the majority of the women of the State. The great event of the Convention was the speech of George William Curtis on the report of the "Committee on the right of suffrage and the qualifications to hold office."

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS offered the following amendment:[103]

"In the first section, strike out the word 'man'; and wherever in that section the word 'he' occurs, add 'or she'; and wherever the word 'his' occurs, add 'or her.'"

Mr. CURTIS said: In proposing a change so new to our political practice, but so harmonious with the spirit and principles of our Government, it is only just that I should attempt to show that it is neither repugnant to reason nor hurtful to the State. Yet I confess some embarrassment; for, while the essential reason of the proposition seems to me to be clearly defined, the objection to it is vague and shadowy. From the formal opening of the general discussion of the question in this country, by the Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, down to the present moment, the opposition to the suggestion, so far as I am acquainted with it, has been only the repetition of a traditional prejudice, or the protest of mere sentimentality; and to cope with these is like wrestling with a malaria, or arguing with the east wind. I do not know, indeed, why the Committee have changed the phrase "male inhabitant or citizen," which is uniformly used in a constitutional clause limiting the elective franchise. Under the circumstances, the word "man" is obscure, and undoubtedly includes women as much as the word "mankind." But the intention of the clause is evident, and the report of the Committee makes it indisputable. Had they been willing to say directly what they say indirectly, the eighth line and what follows would read, "Provided that idiots, lunatics, persons under guardianship, felons, women, and persons convicted of bribery, etc., shall not be entitled to vote." In their report, the Committee omit to tell us why they politically class the women of New York with idiots and criminals. They assert merely that the general enfranchisement of women would be a novelty, which is true of every step of political progress, and is therefore a presumption in its favor; and they speak of it in a phrase which is intended to stigmatize it as unwomanly, which is simply an assumption and a prejudice. I wish to know, sir, and I ask in the name of the political justice and consistency of this State, why it is that half of the adult population, as vitally interested in good government as the other half, who own property, manage estates, and pay taxes, who discharge all the duties of good citizens, and are perfectly intelligent and capable, are absolutely deprived of political power, and classed with lunatics and felons. The boy will become a man and a voter; the lunatic may emerge from the cloud and resume his rights; the idiot, plastic under the tender hand of modern science, may be moulded into the full citizen; the criminal, whose hand still drips with the blood of his country and of liberty, may be pardoned and restored; but no age, no wisdom, no peculiar fitness, no public service, no effort, no desire, can remove from woman this enormous and extraordinary disability. Upon what reasonable grounds does it rest? Upon none whatever. It is contrary to natural justice, to the acknowledged and traditional principles of the American Government, and to the most enlightened political philosophy. The absolute exclusion of women from political power in this State is simply usurpation. "In every age and country," says the historian Gibbon, nearly a hundred years ago, "the wiser or at least the stronger of the two sexes has usurped the powers of the State, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life."

The historical fact is that the usurping class, as Gibbon calls them, have always regulated the position of women by their own theories and convenience. The barbaric Persian, for instance, punished an insult to the woman with death, not because of her but of himself. She was part of him. And the civilized English Blackstone only repeats the barbaric Persian when he says that the wife and husband form but one person—that is the husband. Sir, it would be extremely amusing, if it were not tragical, to trace the consequences of this theory on human society and the unhappy effect upon the progress of civilization of this morbid estimate of the importance of men. Gibbon gives a curious instance of it, and an instance which recalls the spirit of the modern English laws of divorce. There was a temple in Rome to the goddess who presided over the peace of marriages. "But," says the historian, "her very name, Viriplaca—the appeaser of husbands—shows that repentance and submission were always expected from the wife," as if the offense usually came from her. In the "Lawe's resolution of Women's Rights," published in the year 1632, a book which I have not seen, but of which there are copies in the country, the anonymous and quaint author says, and with a sly satire: "It is true that man and woman are one person, but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little river incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the Thames, the poor rivulet looseth her name; it is carried and recarried with the new associate—it beareth no sway—it possesseth nothing during coverture. A woman as soon as she is married is called covert—in Latine, nupta—that is, veiled; as it were overclouded and shadowed; she hath lost her streame. I may more truly, farre away, say to a married woman, her new self is her superior; her companion her master.... See here the reason of that which I touched before—that women have no voice in Parliament; they make no laws; they consent to none; they abrogate none. All of them are understood either married or to be married, and their desires are to their husbands."

From this theory of ancient society, that woman is absorbed in man; that she is a social inferior and a subordinate part of man; springs the system of laws in regard to women which in every civilized country is now in course of such rapid modification, and it is this theory which so tenaciously lingers as a traditional prejudice in our political customs. But a State which, like New York, recognizes the equal individual rights of all its members, declaring that none of them shall be disfranchised unless by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers, and which acknowledges women as property-holders and taxable, responsible citizens, has wholly renounced the old Feudal and Pagan theory, and has no right to continue the evil condition which springs from it. The honorable and eloquent gentleman from Onondaga said that he favored every enlargement of the franchise consistent with the safety of the State. Sir, I heartily agree with him, and it was the duty of the Committee in proposing to continue the exclusion of women, to show that it is necessary to the welfare and safety of the State that the whole sex shall be disfranchised. It is in vain for the Committee to say that I ask for an enlargement of the franchise and must, therefore, show the reason. Sir, I show the reason upon which this franchise itself rests, and which, in its very nature, forbids arbitrary exclusion; and I urge the enfranchisement of women on the ground that whatever political rights men have women have equally.

I have no wish to refine curiously upon the origin of government. If any one insists, with the honorable gentleman from Broome, that there are no such things as natural political rights, and that no man is born a voter, I will not now stop to argue with him; but as I believe the honorable gentleman from Broome is by profession a physician and surgeon, I will suggest to him that if no man is born a voter, so no man is born a man, for every man is born a baby. But he is born with the right of becoming a man without hindrance; and I ask the honorable gentleman, as an American citizen and political philosopher, whether, if every man is not born a voter, he is not born with the right of becoming a voter upon equal terms with other men? What else is the meaning of the phrase which I find in the New York Tribune of Monday, and have so often found there, "The radical basis of government is equal rights for all citizens." There are, as I think we shall all admit, some kinds of natural rights. This summer air that breathes benignant around our national anniversary, is vocal with the traditional eloquence with which those rights were asserted by our fathers. From all the burning words of the time, I quote those of Alexander Hamilton, of New York, in reply, as my honorable friend the Chairman of the Committee will remember, to the Tory farmer of Westchester: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or dusty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." In the next year, Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, summed up the political faith of our fathers in the Great Declaration. Its words vibrate through the history of those days. As the lyre of Amphion raised the walls of the city, so they are the music which sing course after course of the ascending structure of American civilization into its place. Our fathers stood indeed upon technical and legal grounds when the contest with Great Britain began, but as tyranny encroached they rose naturally into the sphere of fundamental truths as into a purer air. Driven by storms beyond sight of land, the sailor steers by the stars; and our fathers, compelled to explore the whole subject of social rights and duties, derived their government from what they called self-evident truths. Despite the brilliant and vehement eloquence of Mr. Choate, they did not deal in glittering generalities, and the Declaration of Independence was not the passionate manifesto of a revolutionary war, but the calm and simple statement of a new political philosophy and practice.

The rights which they declared to be inalienable are indeed what are usually called natural, as distinguished from political rights, but they are not limited by sex. A woman has the same right to her life, liberty and property that a man has, and she has consequently the same right to an equality of protection that he has; and this, as I understand it, is what is meant by the phrase, the right of suffrage. If I have a natural right to that hand, I have an equal natural right to everything that secures to me its use, provided it does not harm the equal right of another; and if I have a natural right to my life and liberty, I have the same right to everything that protects that life and liberty which any other man enjoys. I should like my honorable friend, the Chairman of this Committee, to show me any right which God gave him, which he also gave to me, for which God gave him a claim to any defense which He has not given to me. And I ask the same question for every woman in this State. Have they less natural right to life, liberty, and property than my honorable friend the Chairman of the Committee; and is it not, to quote the words of his report, an extremely "defensible theory" that he can not justly deprive the least of those women of any protection of those rights which he claims for himself? No, sir, the natural, or what we call civil right, and its political defense, go together. This was the impregnable logic of the Revolution. Lord Gower sneered in Parliament at the American Colonists a century ago, as Mr. Robert Lowe sneers at the English Reformers to-day: "Let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights.... I am for enforcing these measures." Dr. Johnson bellowed across the Atlantic, "Taxation, no Tyranny." James Otis spoke for America, for common sense, and for eternal justice, in saying, "No good reason, however, can be given in any country, why every man of a sound mind should not have his vote in the election of a representative. If a man has but little property to protect and defend, yet his life and liberty are things of some importance." And long before James Otis, Lord Somers said to a committee of the House of Commons, that the possession of the vote is the only true security which an Englishman has for the possession of his life and property.

Every person, then, is born with an equal claim to every kind of protection of his natural rights which any other person enjoys. The practical question, therefore, is how shall this protection be best attained? and this is the question of government which, according to the Declaration, is established for the security of these rights. The British theory was that they could be better secured by an intelligent few than by the ignorant and passionate multitude. Goldsmith expressed it in singing:

"For just experience shows in ever soil, That those who think must govern those who toil."

But nobody denies that the government of the best is the best government; the only question is how to find the best, and common sense replies:

"The good, 'tis true, are heaven's peculiar care; But who but heaven shall show us who they are?"

Our fathers answered the question of the best and surest protection of natural right by their famous phrase, "the consent of the governed." That is to say, since every man is born with equal natural rights, he is entitled to an equal protection of them with all other men; and since government is that protection, right reason and experience alike demand that every person shall have a voice in the government upon perfectly equal and practicable terms; that is, upon terms which are not necessarily and absolutely insurmountable by any part of the people.

Now these terms can not rightfully be arbitrary. But the argument of the honorable gentleman from Schenectady, whose lucid and dignified discourse needs no praise of mine, and the arguments of others who have derived government from society, seemed to assume that the political people may exclude and include at their pleasure; that they may establish purely arbitrary tests, such as height, or weight, or color, or sex. This was substantially the squatter sovereignty of Mr. Douglas, who held that the male white majority of the settlers in a territory might deprive a colored minority of all their rights whatever; and he declared that they had the right to do it. The same right that this Convention has to hang me at this moment to that chandelier, but no other right. Brute force, sir, may do anything; but we are speaking of rights, and of rights under this Government, and I deny that the people of the State of New York can rightfully, that is, according to right reason and the principles of this Government derived from it, permanently exclude any class of persons or any person whatever from a voice in the Government, unless it can be clearly established that their participation in political power would be dangerous to the State; and, therefore, the honorable gentleman from Kings was logically correct in opposing the enfranchisement of the colored population, upon the ground that they were an inferior race, of limited intelligence, a kind of Chimpanzee at best. I think, however, sir, the honorable and scholarly gentleman—even he—will admit, that at Pillow, at Milliken's Bend, at Fort Wagner, the Chimpanzees did uncommonly well; yes, sir, as gloriously and immortally as our own fathers at Bunker Hill and Saratoga. "There ought to be no pariahs," says John Stuart Mill, "in a full grown and civilized nation; no persons disqualified except through their own default.... Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny." "No arrangement of the suffrage, therefore, can be permanently satisfactory in which any person or class is peremptorily excluded; in which the electoral privilege is not open to all persons of full age who desire it." (Rep. G., p. 167.) And Thomas Hare, one of the acutest of living political thinkers, says that in all cases where a woman fulfills the qualification which is imposed upon a man, "there is no sound reason for excluding her from the parliamentary franchise. The exclusion is probably a remnant of the feudal law, and is not in harmony with the other civil institutions of the country. There would be great propriety in celebrating a reign which has been productive of so much moral benefit by the abolition of an anomaly which is so entirely without any justifiable foundation." (Hare, p. 280.)

The Chairman of the Committee asked Miss Anthony, the other evening, whether, if suffrage was a natural right, it could be denied to children. Her answer seemed to me perfectly satisfactory. She said simply, "All that we ask is an equal and not an arbitrary regulation. If you have the right, we have it." The honorable Chairman would hardly deny that to regulate the exercise of a right according to obvious reason and experience is one thing, to deny it absolutely and forever is another. And this is the safe practical rule of our government, as James Madison expressed it, that "it be derived from the great body of the people, not from an inconsiderable portion or favored class of it." When Mr. Gladstone, in his famous speech that startled England, said in effect, that no one could be justly excluded from the franchise, except upon grounds of personal unfitness or public danger, he merely echoed the sentiment of Joseph Warren, which is gradually seen to be the wisest and most practical political philosophy: "I would have such a government as should give every man the greatest liberty to do what he chooses, consistent with restraining him from doing any injury to another." Is not that the kind of government, sir, which we wish to propose for this State? And if every person in New York has a natural right to life, liberty, and property, and a co-existent claim to a share in the government which defends them, regulated only by perfectly equitable conditions, what are the practical grounds upon which it is proposed to continue the absolute and hopeless disfranchisement of half the adult population?

It is alleged that women are already represented by men? Where are they so represented? and when was the choice made? If I am told that they are virtually represented, I reply, with James Otis, that "no such phrase as virtual representation is known in law or Constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd." I repeat, if they are represented, when was the choice made? Nobody pretends that they have ever been consulted. It is a mere assumption to the effect that the interest and affection of men will lead them to just and wise legislation for women as well as for themselves. But this is merely the old appeal for the political power of a class. It is just what the British parliament said to the colonies a hundred years ago. "We are all under the same government," they said: "Our interests are identical; we are all Britons; Britannia rules the wave; God save the King! and down with sedition and the Sons of Liberty!" The colonies chafed and indignantly protested, because the assumption that therefore fair laws were made was not true; because they were discovering for themselves what every nation has discovered—the truth that shakes England to-day, and brings Disraeli and the Tory party to their knees, and has already brought this country to blood—that there is no class of citizens, and no single citizen, who can safely be intrusted with the permanent and exclusive possession of political power. "There is no instance on record," says Buckle, in his history of civilization in England, "of any class possessing power without abusing it." It is as true of men as a class as it is of an hereditary nobility, or of a class of property-holders. Men are not wise enough, nor generous enough, nor pure enough, to legislate fairly for women. The laws of the most civilized nations depress and degrade women. The legislation is in favor of the legislating class. In the celebrated debate upon the Marriage Amendment Act in England, Mr. Gladstone said that "when the gospel came into the world woman was elevated to an equality with her stronger companion." Yet, at the very time he was speaking, the English law of divorce, made by men to regulate their domestic relations with women, was denounced by the law lords themselves as "disgusting and demoralizing" in its operation, "barbarous," "indecent," "a disgrace to the country," and "shocking to the sense of right." Now, if the equality of which Mr. Gladstone spoke had been political as well as sentimental, does he or any statesman suppose that the law of divorce would have been what it then was, or that the law of England to-day would give all the earnings of a married woman to her husband, or that of France forbid a woman to receive any gift without her husband's permission?

We ask women to confide in us, as having the same interests with them. Did any despot ever say anything else? And, if it be safe or proper for any intelligent part of the people to relinquish exclusive political power to any class, I ask the Committee, who proposed that women should be compelled to do this? To what class, however rich, or intelligent, or honest, they would themselves surrender their power? and what they would do if any class attempted to usurp that power? They know, as we all know, as our own experience has taught us, that the only security of natural right is the ballot. They know, and the instinct of the whole loyal land knows, that, when we had abolished slavery, the emancipation could be completed and secured only by the ballot in the hands of the emancipated class. Civil rights were a mere mocking name until political power gave them substance. A year ago, Gov. Orr of South Carolina told us that the rights of the freedmen were safest in the hands of their old masters. "Will you walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?" New Orleans, Memphis, and countless and constant crimes, showed what that safety was. Then, hesitating no longer, the nation handed the ballot to the freedmen, and said, "Protect yourselves!" And now Gov. Orr says that the part of wisdom for South Carolina is to cut loose from all parties, and make a cordial alliance with the colored citizens. Gov. Orr knows that a man with civil rights merely is a blank cartridge. Give him the ballot, and you add a bullet, and make him effective. In that section of the country, seething with old hatreds and wounded pride, and a social system upheaved from the foundation, no other measure could have done for real pacification in a century what the mere promise of the ballot has done in a year. The one formidable peril in the whole subject of reconstruction has been the chance that Congress would continue in the Southern States the political power in the hands of a class, as the report of the Committee proposes that we shall do in New York.

If I am asked what do women want the ballot for, I answer the question with another, what do men want it for? Why do the British workmen at this moment so urgently demand it? Look into the British laws regulating labor, and you will see why. They want the ballot because the laws affecting labor and capital are made by the capitalist class alone and are therefore unjust. I do not forget the progressive legislation of New York in regard to the rights of women. The Property Bill of 1860, and its supplement, according to the New York Tribune, redeemed five thousand women from pauperism. In the next year, Illinois put women in the same position with men, as far as property rights and remedies are concerned. I mention these facts with pleasure, as I read that Louis Napoleon will, under certain conditions, permit the French people to say what they think. But, if such reforms are desirable, they would certainly have been sooner and more wisely effected could women have been a positive political power. Upon this point one honorable gentleman asked Mrs. Stanton whether the laws both for men and women were not constantly improving, and whether, therefore, it was not unfair to attribute the character of the laws about women to the fact that men made them. The reply is very evident. If women alone made the laws, legislation for both men and women would undoubtedly be progressive. Does the honorable gentleman think, therefore, that women only should make the laws?

It is true, Mr. Chairman, that, in the ordinary and honorable sense of the words, women are represented. Laws are made for them by another class, and upon the theories which that class, without the fear of political opposition, may choose to entertain, and in direct violation of the principles upon which, in their own case, they tenaciously insist. I live, sir, in the county of Richmond. It has a population of some 27,000 persons. They own property, and manage it. They are taxed, and pay their taxes; and they fulfill the duties of citizens with average fidelity. But if the Committee had introduced a clause into the section they propose to this effect, "Provided that idiots, lunatics, persons under guardianship, felons, inhabitants of the county of Richmond, and persons convicted of bribery, shall not be entitled to vote," they would not have proposed a more monstrous injustice, nor a grosser inconsistency with every fundamental right and American principle, than in the clause they recommend; and in that case, sir, what do you suppose would have been my reception had I returned to my friends and neighbors, and had said to them, "The Convention thinks that you are virtually represented by the voters of Westchester and Chautauqua"?

Mr. Chairman, I have no superstition about the ballot. I do not suppose it would immediately right all the wrongs of women, any more than it has righted all those of men. But what political agency has righted so many? Here are thousands of miserable men all around us; but they have every path opened to them. They have their advocates; they have their votes; they make the laws, and, at last and at worst, they have their strong right hands for defense. And here are thousands of miserable women pricking back death and dishonor with a little needle; and now the sly hand of science is stealing that little needle away. The ballot does not make those men happy nor respectable nor rich nor noble; but they guard it for themselves with sleepless jealousy, because they know it is the golden gate to every opportunity; and precisely the kind of advantage it gives to one sex, it would give to the other. It would arm it with the most powerful weapon known to political society; it would maintain the natural balance of the sexes in human affairs, and secure to each fair play within its sphere.

But, sir, the Committee tell us that the suffrage of women would be a revolutionary innovation; it would disturb the venerable traditions. Well, sir, about the year 1790, women were first recognized as school-teachers in Massachusetts. At that time, the New England "school-marm" (and I use the word with affectionate respect) was a revolutionary innovation. She has been abroad ever since, and has been by no means the least efficient, but always the most modest and unnoticed, of the great civilizing influences in this country. Innovation!—why, sir, when Sir Samuel Romilly proposed to abolish the death-penalty for stealing a handkerchief, the law officers of the crown said it would endanger the whole criminal law of England. When the bill abolishing the slave-trade passed the House of Lords, Lord St. Vincent rose and stalked out, declaring that he washed his hands of the ruin of the British empire. When the Greenwich pensioners saw the first steamer upon the Thames, they protested that they did not like the steamer, for it was contrary to nature. When, at the close of the reign of Charles II., London had half a million of people, there was a fierce opposition to street-lamps,—such is the hostility of venerable traditions to an increase of light. When Mr. Jefferson learned that New York had explored the route of a canal, he benignly regarded it, in the spirit of our Committee, as, doubtless, "defensible in theory"; for he said that it was "a very fine project, and might be executed a century hence." And, fifty-six years ago, Chancellor Livingston wrote from this city, that the proposition of a railroad, shod with iron, to move heavy weights four miles an hour, was ingenious, perhaps "theoretically defensible"; but, upon the whole, the road would not be so cheap or convenient as a canal. In this country, sir, the venerable traditions are used to being disturbed. America was clearly designed to be a disturber of traditions, and to leave nobler precedents than she found. So, a few months ago, what the committee call a revolutionary innovation was proposed by giving the ballot to the freedmen in the District of Columbia. The awful results of such a revolution were duly set forth in one of the myriad veto messages of the President of the United States. But they have voted. If anybody proposed to disturb the election, it was certainly not the new voters. The election was perfectly peaceful, and not one of the presidential pangs has been justified. So with this reform. It is new in the extent proposed. It is as new as the harvest after the sowing, and it is as natural. The resumption of rights long denied or withheld never made a social convulsion: that is produced by refusing them. The West-Indian slaves received their liberty, praying upon their knees; and the influence of the enfranchisement of women will glide into society as noiselessly as the dawn increases into day.

Or shall I be told that women, if not numerically counted at the polls, do yet exert an immense influence upon politics, and do not really need the ballot. If this argument was seriously urged, I should suffer my eyes to rove through this chamber and they would show me many honorable gentlemen of reputed political influence. May they, therefore, be properly and justly disfranchised? I ask the honorable Chairman of the Committee, whether he thinks that a citizen should have no vote because he has influence? What gives influence? Ability, intelligence, honesty. Are these to be excluded from the polls? Is it only stupidity, ignorance and rascality which ought to possess political power?

Or, will it be said that women do not want the ballot and ought to be asked? And upon what principle ought they to be asked? When natural rights or their means of defense have been immemorially denied to a large class, does humanity, or justice, or good sense require that they should be registered and called to vote upon their own restoration? Why, Mr. Chairman, it might as well be said that Jack the Giant Killer ought to have gravely asked the captives in the ogre's dungeon whether they wished to be released. It must be assumed that men and women wish to enjoy their natural rights, as that the eyes wish light or the lungs an atmosphere. Did we wait for emancipation until the slaves petitioned to be free? No, sir, all our lives had been passed in ingenious and ignominious efforts to sophisticate and stultify ourselves for keeping them chained; and when war gave us a legal right to snap their bonds, we did not ask them whether they preferred to remain slaves. We knew that they were men, and that men by nature walk upright, and if we find them bent and crawling, we know that the posture is unnatural whether they may think so or not. In the case of women we acknowledge that they have the same natural rights as ourselves—we see that they hold property and pay taxes, and we must of necessity suppose that they wish to enjoy every security of those rights that we possess. So when in this State, every year, thousands of boys come of age, we do not solemnly require them to tell us whether they wish to vote. We assume, of course, that they do, and we say to them, "Go, and upon the same terms with the rest of us, vote as you choose." But gentlemen say that they know a great many women who do not wish to vote, who think it is not ladylike, or whatever the proper term may be. Well, sir, I have known many men who have habitually abstained from politics because they were so "ungentlemanly," and who thought that no man could touch pitch without defilement. Now what would the honorable gentlemen who know women who do not wish to vote, have thought of a proposition that I should not vote, because my neighbors did not wish to? There may have been slaves who preferred to remain slaves—was that an argument against freedom? Suppose that there are a majority of the women of this State who do not wish to vote—is that a reason for depriving one woman who is taxed of her equal representation, or one innocent person of the equal protection of his life and liberty?

Shall nothing ever be done by statesmen until wrongs are so intolerable that they take society by the throat? Did it show the wisdom of British Conservatism that it waited to grant the Reform bill of 1832 until England hung upon the edge of civil war? When women and children were worked sixteen hours a day in English factories, did it show practical good sense to delay a "short time" bill until hundreds of thousands of starving workmen agreed to starve yet more, if need be, to relieve the overwork of their families, and until the most pitiful procession the sun ever shone upon, that of the factory children, just as they left their work, marched through the streets of Manchester, that burst into sobs and tears at the sight? Yet if, in such instances, where there was so plausible an adverse appeal founded upon vested interests and upon the very theory of the government, it was unwise to wait until a general public outcry imperatively demanded the reform, how wholly needless to delay in this State a measure which is the natural result of our most cherished principles, and which threatens to disturb or injure nothing whatever. The amendment proposes no compulsion like the old New England law, which fined every voter who did not vote. If there are citizens of the State who think it unladylike or ungentlemanlike to take their part in the government, let them stay at home. But do not, I pray you, give them authority to detain wiser and better citizens from their duty.