s to the
polls side by side with the first man in the land, and he rides
in a carriage there, if he is too drunk to walk, and he can vote
the first man in the line, if he chooses. The richest man in the
country must walk behind him and wait for his turn. He drops his
ballot and he is cooled off. He soon begins to get hold a little
of this idea of responsibility that I am speaking of, and after a
while it will come into his head--very slowly, perhaps, for we
are all slow to learn these things--that he has got to work
himself up and get on a par with those intelligent and
influential people who are so powerful in making laws and
customs.

Now, gentlemen, it seems to me if you could disfranchise every
foreigner to-day who was not intelligent, or if you could make
intelligence the test of voting, you would have ten barns burned
where you have one now. I believe it firmly. Being naturally
conservative, as I think all women are, a few years ago I really
thought that ten, even twenty years' residence might be required
of foreigners before they should be allowed to vote. I said they
did not know enough, and so ought to be kept out as long as that.
To-day I am inclined not to limit the time a moment longer than
it is necessary for men to get their naturalization papers out,
and go through the required legal formalities. If
disfranchisement meant annihilation, selfishly, I might be glad
to get rid of this troublesome question in that way, the task of
ruling this country would then be a far easier one than it is;
but it does not mean annihilation. So when gentlemen talk with
me, and say we have too many voters already, I reply, do not
disfranchise these men, enlighten them, for God has sent them
here for a purpose of His own. And I say to you gentlemen the
ballot in the hands of every man is the only thing that saves us
from anarchy to-day, that keeps us alive as a republic--the
ballot in the hands of these ignorant men, and the more ignorant
they are the more they need it, and the more we need they should
have it. And let me say, in passing, that reconstruction at the
South is hindered to-day for the same reason, responsibility is
taken away from a large class of citizens. A disfranchised class
is always a restless class; a class that, if it be no