fluence is least--it
is most potent where there is the greatest intellectual and moral
cultivation of man. I want this gentle and holy influence to
continue pure and uncontaminated by keeping it within the
domestic fane and afar from party politics. But, sir, it has
become the fashion, the philosophy, the frenzy of the day to coin
catch-words that carry a seemingly attractive principle, but at
the same time alluring and mischievous, and among them is this
cry for woman's rights and also for negro suffrage and manhood
suffrage and universal suffrage. It is all nothing but slang and
demagoguery, and is fraught with naught but evil, mischief, and
degradation, individually and nationally. For these reasons, sir,
one of the last propositions, or if gentlemen choose, principles
which have been or may be propounded to the people of America, or
as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to
which I shall ever give my acceptance, is female suffrage.

I do not deny that our national family properly and wisely
comprehends all of the nationalities of Europe who may come here,
according to the terms of our naturalization laws, and their
posterity; but I assert that negroes, Indians, Mongolians,
Chinese, and Tartars ought not and can not safely be admitted to
the powers and privileges of citizenship.

I have no doubt that my honorable friend from Pennsylvania
desires that the right of suffrage should be given to women; and
if he had the power to transfer all the women of the conservative
States into and to become residents of the radical States, who
imagines that if that were done the Radicals of this House and of
the nation would shout in favor of giving to women the right of
suffrage? If the Radicals in Congress and out of Congress knew
with the certainty of truth that every vote which they will
enfranchise by conferring the right of suffrage on the negro,
would be cast against that party, in favor of their late southern
masters, in favor of the Democracy, in hostility to the schemes
of ambition and spoils which are now animating the heart and mind
of the great radical organization, who doubts that this party and
every mother's son of them would shout for withholding suffrage
from the negro?

Mr. SPRAGUE: I know the Senate is impatie