Street, it is a mere chance who will be our rulers. Whither is a
nation tending when brains count for less than bullion, and
clowns make laws for queens? It is a startling assertion, but
nevertheless true, that in none of the nations of modern Europe
are the higher classes of women politically so degraded as are
the women of this Republic to-day. In the Old World, where the
government is the aristocracy, where it is considered a mark of
nobility to share its offices and powers, women of rank have
certain hereditary lights which raise them above a majority of
the men, certain honors and privileges not granted to serfs and
peasants. There women are queens, hold subordinate offices, and
vote on many questions. In our Southern States even, before the
war, women were not degraded below the working population. They
were not humiliated in seeing their coachmen, gardeners, and
waiters go to the polls to legislate for them; but here, in this
boasted Northern civilization, women of wealth and education, who
pay taxes and obey the laws, who in morals and intellect are the
peers of their proudest rulers, are thrust outside the pale of
political consideration with minors, paupers, lunatics, traitors,
idiots, with those guilty of bribery, larceny, and infamous
crimes.

Would those gentlemen who are on all sides telling the women of
the nation not to press their claims until the negro is safe
beyond peradventure, be willing themselves to stand aside and
trust all their interests to hands like these? The educated women
of this nation feel as much interest in republican institutions,
the preservation of the country, the good of the race, their own
elevation and success, as any man possibly can, and we have the
same distrust in man's power to legislate for us, that he has in
woman's power to legislate wisely for herself.

4. I would press a Sixteenth Amendment, because the history of
American statesmanship does not inspire me with confidence in
man's capacity to govern the nation alone, with justice and
mercy. I have come to this conclusion, not only from my own
observation, but from what our rulers say of themselves.
Honorable Senators have risen in their places again and again,
and told the people of the wastefulness and corruption of the
presen