oose or exercise
the elective franchise, why not choose for her in everything, and
impose upon her the husband of your choice? Don't you represent
her? You concede that the young woman has abundance of capacity
to choose her lord and master to whom she shall be delivered, and
yet she is not fit to vote for a constable. (Laughter.)

Be consistent, you who oppose us in this movement, and say she
shall not have anything to do with the selection of her husband.
If she is competent at an early age, in the vortex and whirlpool
of life, to select him to whom first, last, and always she shall
belong, may she not once in four years have the privilege of
voting for President without any great hazard? Think of it. Oh!
this terrible old question! We have been mining and drilling in
the earth's crust, and we have got finally to the last question,
or, rather, it has made its way to the surface. This question of
woman's suffrage and woman's right at last comes up for final
argument, and it will work its way along until it is definitely
determined. Indeed, I believe it is already settled.

To return to these constitutions, from which I mean not to wander
again. I said to you that these constitutions of the various
American States have recognized as older than themselves the
right of government. They have furnished the means, which were
also older than themselves, the exercise of the elective
franchise. They have not attempted to create and confer any right
to govern. They simply regulate it; and they are framed upon this
idea, that all people are equally entitled to govern themselves,
women and men, and would all govern themselves if some were not
excluded by the terms and provisions of these, their
constitutions. Take up the whole thirty-five that can be found in
the edition of 1864, and every one of them says that the elective
franchise shall be exercised by the _male_ white citizens. We
have got rid of the "white." We have finally given color to the
Constitution. (Laughter.) And, in getting rid of that "white," we
got rid of more than was probably intended at the time. Good does
get itself done by accident sometimes. It has to when bad men do
it. (Laughter and applause.) Why is this term "male" used in the
constitutions, pray? It was not by accident. Fort