nal force enough, to carry
these ignorant foreigners along with us. We have attractions that
will draw them a thousand times more toward us than they can draw
us toward them. And yet, while I take this broad ground, that no
man, even of the Democratic party (I make the distinction because
a man may be a democrat and be ashamed of the party, and a man
may be of the party and not know a single principle of
democracy), should be debarred from voting, I ask, is an Irishman
just landed, unwashed and uncombed, more fit to vote than a woman
educated in our common schools? Think of the mothers and
daughters of this land, among whom are teachers, writers,
artists, and speakers! What a throng could we gather if we
should, from all the West, call our women that as educators are
carrying civilization there! Thousands upon thousands there are
of women that have gone forth from the educational institutions
of New England to carry light and knowledge to other parts of our
land. Now, place this great army of refined and cultivated women
on the one side, and on the other side the rising cloud of
emancipated Africans, and in front of them the great emigrant
band of the Emerald Isle, and is there force enough in our
government to make it safe to give to the African and the
Irishman the franchise? There is. We shall give it to them.
(Applause). And will our force all fail, having done that? And
shall we take the fairest and best part of our society; those to
whom we owe it that we ourselves are civilized: our teachers; our
companions; those to whom we go for counsel in trouble more than
to any others; those to whom we trust everything that is dear to
ourselves--our children's welfare, our household, our property,
our name and reputation, and that which is deeper, our inward
life itself, that no man may mention to more than one--shall we
take them and say, "They are not, after all, fit to vote where
the Irishman votes, and where the African votes?" I am
scandalized when I hear men talk in the way that men do talk--men
that do not think.

If therefore, you refer to the initial sentence, and ask me why I
introduce this subject to-day, when we are already engaged on the
subject of suffrage, I say, This is the greatest development of
the suffrage question. _It i