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