endment.

Were this the time and place, and were not the discussion
foreclosed by the considerations which I have already advanced, I
might speak at some length upon the advantage which there would
be in the admission of women to the suffrage. I might point with
some pride to the experiment which has been made in Wyoming,
where women hold office, where they vote, where they have the
most orderly society of any of the Territories, where the
experiment is approved by the executive officers of the United
States, by their courts, by the press, and by the people
generally; and if it operates so well in Wyoming, where it has
rescued that Territory from a state of comparative lawlessness to
one of the most orderly in the Union, I ask why it might not
operate equally well in the Territory of Pembina or any other
Territory? I hope the time is not far distant when some of the
older States of the Union like New York, or Massachusetts, or
Ohio may give this experiment a fuller chance. But so far as it
has gone, the experiment has been entirely in favor of
legislation for admitting women to the ballot-box. And I do not
believe that in putting these higher responsibilities upon women
we degrade their character, that we subject them to uncongenial
pursuits, that we injure their moral tone, that we tarnish their
delicacy, that we in any way make them less noble and admirable
as women, as wives, and mothers. I believe that by realizing the
intention of the Constitution, which uses words that are so fully
explained by our courts and by our writers upon the uses of
words, we simply open a wider avenue to women for usefulness to
themselves and to society. I think we give them an opportunity,
instead of traveling the few and confined roads that are open to
them now, to engage more generally in the business of life under
some guarantee of their success. I believe that, instead of
driving them to irregular efforts like those which they recently
have made in many of the States to overthrow liquor selling, it
will give them an opportunity through the ballot-box to protect
their families, to break up the nefarious traffic and purify
society. As it is now, their energies in this direction are
repressed, and sometimes in order to have force are compelled to
be exer