Did the Senator from Indiana answer the Senator from
Vermont in the affirmative or negative?

Mr. MORTON: I tried to answer him.

Mr. BAYARD: I merely ask the question. He says now very
triumphantly to the Senator from North Carolina that the rights
of men and women are the same, their natural rights are the same.

Mr. MORTON: Yes.

Mr. BAYARD: I ask are the rights of children different from those
of men?

Mr. MORTON: I think not, but I do not think there is any force in
that argument, as I said before. There is a certain common sense
and a certain practical regulation of natural rights all the
world over.

Mr. EDMUNDS: But is it the common sense of men alone, let me
suggest to the Senator. The children may differ with us; they
generally do on such questions.

Mr. MORTON: I will not spend any time on that argument.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I think that is wise.

Mr. MORTON: To say that the mature woman has not the right to
vote because the child in her arms must have the same right,
comes so near making nonsense of the whole business that I
dismiss it, and come back to the other statement, that women
having the same natural rights that men have, have the right to
the use the same means for their protection; and as the means
under our form of government for the protection of the natural
rights of men is the right to vote, women should have the same
right and power accorded to them. The whole theory of natural
rights is mere trash unless you shall give women the right and
the power to protect them. The Declaration of Independence says
that governments are instituted for that purpose, and that they
must depend upon the consent of the governed; and as the women
are one-half of the governed, they have a right to give one-half
of the consent.

The Senator from North Carolina says that the women of the
country have consented to our form of government, because they
have not dissented. They have no power to refuse their consent.
They may remonstrate and scold about it, but that amounts to
nothing; their consent one way or the other means nothing except
so far as their influence may be concerned. There were four and a
half million of slaves who did not remonstrate against their
bondage. Why? They had no means of doing it, and if t