alid, it
must stand. In such a nation as this, an election is equivalent
to a divine decree, and irreversible. But in Great Britain an
election means, not the will of the people, but the will of
rulers and a favored class, and there is always under them a
great wronged class, that, if they get stirred up by the thought
that they are wronged, will burst out with an explosion that not
the throne, nor parliament, nor the army, nor the exchequer can
withstand the shock. And they wisely give way to the popular will
when they can no longer resist it without running too great a
risk. They oppose it as far as it is safe to do so, and then jump
on and ride it. And you will see them astride of the vote, if the
common people want it. But in America it is not so. The vote with
us is so general that there is no danger of insurrection, and
there is no danger that the government will be ruined by a
wronged class that lies coiled up beneath it. When we speak of
the vote here, it is not the representative of a class, as it is
in England, worn like a star, or garter, saying, "I have the
king's favor or the government's promise of honor." Voting with
us is like breathing. It belongs to us as a common blessing. He
that does not vote is not a citizen, with us.

It is not the vote that I am arguing, except that that is the
outlet. What I am arguing, when I urge that woman should vote, is
that she should do all things back of that which the vote means
and enforces. She should be a nursing mother to human society. It
is a plea that I make, that woman should feel herself called to
be interested not alone in the household, not alone in the
church, not alone in just that neighborhood in which she resides,
but in the sum total of that society to which she belongs; and
that she should feel that her duties are not discharged until
they are commensurate with the definition which our Saviour gave
in the parable of the good Samaritan. I argue, not a woman's
right to vote: I argue woman's _duty to discharge citizenship_.
(Applause.) I say that more and more the great interests of human
society in America are such as need the peculiar genius that God
has given to woman. The questions that are to fill up our days
are not forever to be mere money questions. Those will always