political and civil rights and reduce them to
a state of abject servitude. Women have not been enslaved.
Intelligence has not been denied to them; they have not been
degraded; there is no prejudice against them on account of their
sex; but, on the contrary, if they deserve to be, they are
respected, honored, and loved. Wide as the poles apart are the
conditions of these two classes of persons. Exceptions I know
there are to all rules; but, as a general proposition, it is true
that the sons defend and protect the reputation and rights of
their mothers; husbands defend and protect the reputation and
rights of their wives; brothers defend and protect the reputation
and rights of their sisters; and to honor, cherish, and love the
women of this country is the pride and the glory of its sons.

When women ask Congress to extend to them the right of suffrage
it will be proper to consider their claims. Not one in a thousand
of them at this time wants any such thing, and would not exercise
the power if it were granted to them. Some few who are seeking
notoriety make a feeble clamor for the right of suffrage, but
they do not represent the sex to which they belong, or I am
mistaken as to the modesty and delicacy which constitute the
chief attraction of the sex. Do our intelligent and refined women
desire to plunge into the vortex of political excitement and
agitation? Would that policy in any way conduce to their peace,
their purity, and their happiness? Sir, it has been said that
"the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world"; and there is
truth as well as beauty in that expression. Women in this
country, by their elevated social position, can exercise more
influence upon public affairs than they could coerce by the use
of the ballot. When God married our first parents in the garden,
according to that ordinance they were made "bone of one bone and
flesh of one flesh"; and the whole theory of government and
society proceeds upon the assumption that their interests are
one, that their relations are so intimate and tender that
whatever is for the benefit of the one is for the benefit of the
other; whatever works to the injury of the one works to the
injury of the other. I say, sir, that the more identical and
inseparable these interests and relations can