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