throat
of South Carolina--here women of wealth and education, who pay
taxes and are amenable to law, who may be hung, even though not
permitted to choose the judge, the juror, or the sheriff who does
the dismal deed, women who are your peers in art, science, and
literature--already close upon your heels in the whole world of
thought--are thrust outside the pale of political consideration
with traitors, idiots, minors, with those guilty of bribery,
larceny, and infamous crime. What a category is this in which to
place your mothers, wives, and daughters. I ask you, men of the
Empire State, where on the footstool do you find such a class of
citizens politically so degraded? Now, we ask you, in the coming
Constitutional Convention, to so amend the Second Article of our
State Constitution as to wipe out this record of our disgrace.

"But," say you, "women themselves do not make the demand." Mr.
Phillips said on this platform, a year ago, that "the singularity
of this cause is, that it has to be carried on against the wishes
and purposes of its victims," and he has been echoed by nearly
every man who has spoken, on this subject during the past year.
Suppose the assertion true, is it a peculiarity of this
reform?... Ignorant classes always resist innovations. Women
looked on the sewing-machine as a rival for a long time. Years
ago the laboring classes of England asked bread; but the Cobdens,
the Brights, the Gladstones, the Mills have taught them there is
a power behind bread, and to-day they ask the ballot. But they
were taught its power first, and so must woman be. Again, do not
those far-seeing philosophers who comprehend the wisdom, the
beneficence, the morality of free trade urge this law of nations
against the will and wishes of the victims of tariffs and
protective duties? If you can prove to us that women do not wish
to vote, that is no argument against our demand. There are many
duties in life that ignorant, selfish, unthinking women do not
desire to do, and this may be one of them.

"But," says Rev. O. B. Frothingham, in a recent sermon on this
subject, "they who first assume political responsibilities must
necessarily lose something of the feminine element." In the
education and elevation of woman we are yet to learn the true
manho