most as a matter of spontaneity, 35,000 names
should have been gathered and sent to this Capitol to a
committee, whose voluntary duty it was made to receive them; the
fact that other names are now coming in at the rate of some 500 a
day; that from California 10,000 more are on the way, all speak
to the Representatives of the people in accents that can not be
misunderstood, that here is a great and necessary reform which
calls for the fullest consideration and the promptest action of
the Congress of the United States.

They are not to be told that this is an innovation, that this is
a new thing. Division of property between the husband and the
wife was a greater innovation upon the feudal law, which is the
foundation of our law as regards women, and a very much greater
innovation than this will be. That in the parent State from which
we come women have had the right to act in public affairs; from
the fact that in that parent State a woman is at the head of
public affairs, seems to point to us that women may safely be
trusted with the right to vote.

I have desired to say this much, in presenting this petition, in
order that it may be brought to the notice of the House and the
country; that it may take the same place in the consideration of
the people that in a not very far day in the past anti-slavery
petitions took, which founded the great party which now has
control of the Government of this country. There was a great
reform, beginning in the little, urged on by petitions, not so
numerous in its early days, and hardly so numerous in its later
days, as this, scarcely arriving to the dignity of numbers of
applicants which characterizes the petition which I now present;
and although, when a great moneyed interest was at stake, it took
years to bring that freedom which those petitions asked for, yet
let me assure the House of Representatives that in my judgment,
much sooner, and as certainly as the sun rolls around in its
course a few more times, just so sure will the right asked for in
this petition be accorded to the women citizens of the United
States.

I ask that this petition, which I propose simply to show to the
House in its large volume (unrolling the petition), may be
referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, to whom this subje