now, 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 F