ry respect whatever except the
political respect of voting. That is a fact that no man can
truthfully deny who has studied the history of society or who
knows anything about the history of legislation in civilized
States. Therefore, it does not do to say that the right to vote,
the privilege of voting, or the duty of voting--because I use
those phrases as not having the peculiar meaning that the Senator
from California imputes to them, is essential to the protection
of the female sex as such, because, as I have said, the
protection that the law gives them is now in all respects, where
their rights or privileges come in collision with the rest of
society, greater than is extended to men.

The Senator from Indiana insists--and he has a perfect right to
do so, of course--that the right to vote is a natural right, and,
therefore, if females are excluded from voting, as they are by
the constitutions and laws of the various States, it is an
infringement upon natural right, and that that infringement ought
to be abolished. Of course, his conclusion is correct if his
premises are true; but is the right to vote a natural right? Can
the Senator refer me to the work of any writer upon natural or
municipal law from the beginning of the world to the year 1860,
which maintains, or asserts, or insinuates, or suggests that the
right to vote in a political community is a natural right?

Mr. MORTON: I do not call to mind any author.

Mr. EDMUNDS: No; the Senator does not. With candor he says so,
because the Senator, learned in history as he is, knows, as the
rest of us know, that there is no such thing. He knows that in
all the discussions and all the turmoils of society where the
rights of men and women in political respects, the rights of
society at large, have been discussed and turned over and over
and all manner of experiments in government tried and suggested,
it never has been suggested that the right to participate in the
government of a political community is a natural right belonging
to every human being.

Mr. MORTON: I ask the Senator, if there are natural rights, do
not the natural and necessary means to protect those rights
become a part of them? What is the right worth if that be denied?

Mr. EDMUNDS: I answer no, in the broad sense in w