Alfred, Marcus Aurelius, or Napoleon were exceptional men.
It was held by some of the old English writers that a woman might
serve in almost any of the great offices of the kingdom. And,
indeed, if Victoria may deliberate in council with her ministers,
why may not any intelligent English woman deliberate in
Parliament, or any such American woman in Congress? I mention
Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, Catherine, and all the famous Empresses
and Queens, not to prove the capacity of women for the most
arduous and responsible office, for that is undeniable, but to
show the hollowness of the assertion that there is an instinctive
objection to the fulfillment of such offices by women. Men who
say so do not really think so. The whole history of the voting
and office-holding of women shows that whenever men's theories of
the relation of property to the political franchise, or of the
lineal succession of the government, require that women shall
vote or hold office, the objection of impropriety and incapacity
wholly disappears. If it be unwomanly for a woman to vote, or to
hold office, it is unwomanly for Victoria to be Queen of England.
Surely if our neighbors had thought they would be better
represented in this convention by certain women, there is no good
reason why they should have been compelled to send us. Why should
I or any person be forbidden to select the agent whom we think
the most competent and truly representative of our will? There is
no talent or training required in the making of laws which is
peculiar to the male sex. What is needed is intelligence and
experience. The rest is routine.

The capacity for making laws is necessarily assumed when women
are permitted to hold and manage property and to submit to
taxation. How often the woman, widowed, or married, or single, is
the guiding genius of the family--educating the children,
directing the estate, originating, counseling, deciding. Is there
anything essentially different in such duties and the powers
necessary to perform them from the functions of legislation? In
New Jersey the Constitution of 1776 admitted to vote all
inhabitants of a certain age, residence, and property. In 1797,
in an act to regulate elections, the ninth section provides:
"Every voter shall openly and in full view deliver