ave
let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the
power to curb. If the civilization of the age calls for an
extension of the suffrage, surely a government of the most
virtuous, educated men and women would better represent the
whole, and protect the interests of all than could the
representation of either sex alone. But government gains no new
element of strength in admitting all men to the ballot-box, for
we have too much of the man-power there already. We see this in
every department of legislation, and it is a common remark, that
unless some new virtue is infused into our public life the nation
is doomed to destruction. Will the foreign element, the dregs of
China, Germany, England, Ireland, and Africa supply this needed
force, or the nobler types of American womanhood who have taught
our presidents, senators, and congressmen the rudiments of all
they know?

3. I urge a Sixteenth Amendment because, when "manhood suffrage"
is established from Maine to California, woman has reached the
lowest depths of political degradation. So long as there is a
disfranchised class in this country, and that class its women, a
man's government is worse than a white man's government with
suffrage limited by property and educational qualifications,
because in proportion as you multiply the rulers, the condition
of the politically ostracised is more hopeless and degraded. John
Stuart Mill, in his work on "Liberty," shows that the condition
of one disfranchised man in a nation is worse than when the whole
nation is under one man, because in the latter case, if the one
man is despotic, the nation can easily throw him off, but what
can one man do with a nation of tyrants over him? If American
women find it hard to bear the oppressions of their own Saxon
fathers, the best orders of manhood, what may they not be called
to endure when all the lower orders of foreigners now crowding
our shores legislate for them and their daughters. Think of
Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the
difference between a monarchy and a republic, who can not read
the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling-book,
making laws for Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, and Anna E.
Dickinson. Think of jurors and jailors drawn from these ran