overn; let the peasant till the earth and provide the sinews
of war." Says the proud slaveholder, "I'll read and write and
think; let the negro hoe the sugar, rice, and corn." Says the New
York Suffrage Committee, "We will do the voting; let women pay
the taxes. We will be judges, jurors, sheriffs; and give woman
the right to be hung on the gallows." Napoleon once said to
Madame de Stael, "Why will you women meddle with politics?"
"Sire," she replied, "if you will hang us, we must ask the reason
why."

The functions of the sexes! What particular function does it
require to vote? In the discussion on this point, we hear of
property, education, morality, sanity; yet "white males" vote
without these, and women possessing all are denied the right.
While different men have different duties, different functions,
different spheres, ranging from the heights of Parnassus to the
bowels of the earth, why legislate all women into a nutshell?
Because a man is a father, must he needs be nothing else? Are
lawyers, merchants, tailors, cobblers, bootblacks less skilled in
their specialties because they vote? Because some women are
mothers, shall all women concentrate every thought in that
direction? and can those who are mothers be nothing else? Have
not those who are training up sons and daughters an interest
beyond the home, in the great outer world, where they are soon to
act their part? If women should vote one day in the year, must
every duty and function of their being be subordinated to that
one act during the whole 365?

Many men, possessing the right of suffrage, never exercise it:
many more use it indifferently once a year, or sell it to the
highest bidder; and on what principle does the theory rest, that
if woman had this right, she would desert husband, child, and
home, and reserve all her love and care, her smiles and
enthusiasm, for the ballot-box? No; woman's love for man is not
based on the statutes of the State, nor the maternal instinct on
the second article of the Constitution. Whatever distribution of
duties and functions are fixed by nature we need no legislation
to enforce. So long as the fact of motherhood does not release
woman from taxation, and the necessity of earning her own bread,
it should not deprive her of that right most