you have had no voice in making, many of which are
specially burdensome upon you as women; in short, your rights to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are daily infringed, simply
because you have heretofore been denied the use of the ballot, the one
weapon of protection and defense under a republican form of
government. Fortunately, however, you are not compelled to resort to
force in order to secure the rights of a complete citizenship. These
are provided for by the original Constitution, and by the recent
amendments you are recognized as citizens of the United States, whose
rights, including the fundamental right to vote, may not be denied or
abridged by the United States, nor by any State. The obligation is
thus laid upon you to accept or reject the duties of citizenship, and
to your own consciences and your God you must answer, if the future
legislation of this country shall fall short of the demands of justice
and equality.

The participation of woman in political affairs is not an untried
experiment. Woman suffrage has within a few years been fully
established in Sweden and Austria, and to a certain extent in Russia.
In Great Britain women are now voting equally with men for all public
officers except members of Parliament, and while no desire is
expressed in any quarter that the suffrage already given should be
withdrawn or restricted, over 126,000 names have been signed to
petitions for its extension to parliamentary elections, and Jacob
Bright, the leader of the movement in Parliament, and brother of the
well known John Bright, says that no well-informed person entertains
any doubt that a bill for such extension will soon pass.

In this country, which stands so specially on equal representation, it
is hardly possible that the same equal suffrage would not be
established by law, if the matter were to be left merely to the
progress of public sentiment and the ordinary course of legislation.
But as we confidently believe, and as we have before stated, the right
already exists in our National Constitution, and especially under the
recent amendments. The interpretation of the Constitution which we
maintain, we can not doubt, will be ultimately adopted by the courts,
although, as the assertion of our right encounters a deep and
prevailing prejudice, and judges are proverbially cautious and
conservative, we must expect to encounter some adverse decisions. In
the meantime it is of the highest importance that