, not aristocracies.

Such I believe, Mr. President, to be the principles on which our
personal rights, our liberties in society repose. It is true the
argument carries us very far, but not farther, I apprehend, than
republican government must go whenever it undertakes to conform
its practice to its logic. And having examined the general
reasoning that controls the whole question of franchise, let me
now advert more particularly to the bearing of that argument upon
the proposition submitted by the Senator from Pennsylvania. I
know that many affirm that the results to which such reasoning as
that I have adduced would lead are themselves conclusive against
its force. But that is scarcely a fair mode of judging of the
strength and invincibility of any argument, far less one touching
interests so momentous in character. To give the objection its
greatest force it may be said, "If suffrage be the right of all
men, why is it not also the right of all women, of all children?"
"Are they not equally interested in good government, and are they
not equally capable of expressing through a vote their wish in
relation to public affairs?" "Do they not come within the
category, the equal liberty of each limited by the like liberty
of all, and if so, can the infringement of their liberty by
disfranchisement be justified!" To such questions, and, in fact,
to the whole inquiry, it may be replied that as freedom finds the
expression of its limits in the social relation itself, so long
as the marital and paternal state remain as they are now,
essential parts to that social relation, so long will there be
more or less of constraint involved in their expression through
governmental forms. And it may be added also that in so far as
marriage and paternity establish an identity of interest between
husband and wife, or parent and child, so far the participation
of the one in the Government is virtually the participation of
both, the franchise of one the franchise of both. Such identity
is not always true or equable, but it nevertheless approximates
truth, and is therefore the more readily accepted as such in
practical affairs.

That the rights of women, however, are intrinsically the same
with those of men, may not be consistently denied; and that all
the advance