is be the government, every
person in the nation has a right to participate in its
administration. There is no partiality possible in such a
conception of the system of government under which we live.

Charles Sumner said that "equality of rights is the first of
rights," and this will reveal itself in every department of
citizenship. Our Government requires the expression of the views
of the whole people upon every national question; it is a human
right belonging to the political status of every individual, the
woman as well as the man. The history of Christianity has been a
history of the gradual enlarging of the sphere of woman; and this
meeting to-night is one of the effects of Christianity. We stand
now at the beginning of a new century; the last has been one of
great development, and yet the very root fact of our national
being lies in the first line of the Declaration. When we declared
ourselves to be a Nation, we declared equality for all men, and
we never meant by that, equality simply for all males. Jefferson
never had that narrow view of human nature. He knew it meant all
the people of America. Every one had a right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, the woman as well as the man.

It is said women can not rule. Not rule! look through history.
Where are Cleopatra and Semiramis, and Zenobia and Catharine, and
Elizabeth and Victoria? Not rule? Did not Joan of Arc save France
when the king had fled, and the armies were scattered, and
English soldiers did their will in all that land? So Elizabeth
picked up a prostrate nation, lowest of the low, despised of
emperor, king, and Pope, and made it the sovereign power of
Europe. So Victoria held back Palmerston and Russell and
Gladstone and Derby, who would have plunged England into war with
us, and left us free to subdue our enemy. Had not a woman ruled
England we should have had a harder task than we did by far.
Christianity has lifted woman to a level with man. It has given
her liberty of movement, of faith, of life. It also demands her
political deliberation. May this beginning of our second
Centennial see the perfection of our political system, in this
admission of woman to all the rights and duties of citizenship.
It has worked well in Wyoming. It will everywhere. Let it com