and constitutional law are all
alike on our side of the question. We need not detain you to
rehearse the fundamental principles of our government, your own
interpretation of the constitution, or the right of Congress to
regulate suffrage in the District, for all this has been argued
before the nation and sealed by your own acts. With the argument
all on our side, the only question that remains is, does woman
herself demand the right of suffrage at this hour? If, honorable
gentlemen, you will look abroad, and note the general uprising of
women everywhere, in foreign nations as well as our own, you will
realize that our demand is the great onward step of the century
and not, as some claim, the idiosyncrasy of a few unbalanced
minds. Man knows as little of the real feeling of the women of
their household as did the proud Southerner of the slaves on his
plantation. Woman fears man's ridicule more than the slave did
the master's lash. Yes! woman waits to-day but for man's
approval, to manifest the intense enthusiasm she feels in the no
distant future, when she, too, shall be crowned sovereign of this
great republic, where all are of the blood royal--all heirs
apparent to the throne.

We are often asked the question, "On what do you base your
assertion that the ballot can achieve so much for woman? It has
not done much for man; in this country all white men vote, yet
the masses are wretchedly fed, housed, clothed, and poorly paid
for their labor. Ignorant alike of social and political economy,
their voting is a mere form; practically they have no more to do
with the government than the masses in the old world who have no
representation whatever." These wholesale philosophers, and we
meet them every day, are incapable of any patient process of
analytical reasoning. If the moment a man is endowed with the
suffrage he does not spring up into knowledge, virtue, wealth,
and position, then the right amounts to nothing. If a generation
of ignorant, degraded men, does not vote at once with the wisdom
of statesmen, then Universal Suffrage is a failure, and the
despot and the dagger the true government. The careful reader of
history will see that with every new extension of rights a new
step in civilization has been taken, and that uniformly those
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