rench 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,