and where all that at present adorns and
protects them must be taken away by the rough and vulgar contact
with those struggles which men are much better fitted to meet.
No, sir; the relations of the sexes as they exist to-day under
the laws of this country have produced happy and stable
government, or at least are not responsible for the evil features
which we witness. The best protection for the women of America is
in the respect and the love which the men of America bear to
them. Every man conversant with the practical affairs of life
knows that the fact, that the mere fact that it is a woman who
seeks her rights in a court of justice alone gives her an
advantage over her contestant which few men are able to resist, I
would put it to any who has practiced law in the courts of this
country; let him stand before a jury composed only of men, let
the case be tried only by men; let all the witnesses be men; and
the plaintiff or the defendant be a woman, and if you choose to
add to that, even more unprotected than women generally are, a
widow or an orphan, and does not every one recognize the
difficulty, not to find protection for her rights, but the
difficulty to induce the men who compose the juries of America to
hold the balance of justice steadily enough to insure that the
rights of others are not invaded by the force of sympathy for her
sex? These are common every-day illustrations. They could be
multiplied _ad infinitum_.

Mr. President, there never was a greater mistake, there never was
a falser fact stated than that the women of America need any
protection further than the love borne to them by their
fellow-countrymen. Every right, every privilege, many that men do
not attempt, many that men can not hope for, are theirs most
freely. Do not imperil the advantages which they have, do not
attempt in this hasty, ill-considered, shallow way to interfere
with the relations which are founded upon the laws of nature
herself. Depend upon it, Mr. President, man's wisdom is best
shown by humble attention, by humble obedience to the great laws
of nature; and those discoveries which have led men to their
chiefest enjoyment and greatest advantages have been from the
great minds of those who did lay their ears near the heart of
nature, listened to