t when life was
paid for it under the battle-axe of war. It was his with
Washington and Jefferson, James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln. Not
one of them could ever produce a higher, holier claim. Nor can
any of us. We are prating about _giving_ the right of suffrage to
black _male_ citizens, as complacently as we once gave our
compassion and corn to famishing Ireland. But this famine of
freedom and justice exists because we have produced it. Had our
fleets and armies robbed Ireland of its last loaf, and left its
myriads of inhabitants lean, ghastly skeletons, our charity would
not have been more a mockery when we sent them bread to preserve
them alive, than it is now when we talk of _giving_ the ballot to
those whom God created free and equal with ourselves.

And in the plenitude of our generosity, we even propose to extend
the _gift_ to woman also. It is proposed to make educated,
cultivated, refined, loyal, tax-paying, government-obeying woman
equal to the servants who groom her horses, and scour the pots
and pans of her kitchen. Our Maria Mitchells, our Harriet
Hosmers, Harriet Beecher Stowes, Lydia Maria Childs, and Lucretia
Motts, with millions of the mothers and matrons of quiet homes,
where they preside with queenly dignity and grace, are begging of
besotted, debauched white male citizens, legal voters, soaked in
whisky, simmered in tobacco, and parboiled in every shameless
vice and sin, to recognize them also as human, and graciously
accord to them the rights of intelligent beings!

And, singularly enough, in some of the States, it is proposed to
grant the prayer. But the wisest and best men have no idea that
they are only restoring what they have so long held by force,
based on fraud and falsehood. They only propose to _give_ woman
the boon which they claim was theirs by heavenly inheritance. But
they are too late with their sublime generosity. For God gave
that when he gave life and breath, passions, emotions,
conscience, and will. Give gold, give lands, give honors, give
office, give title of nobility, if you must: but talk not of
giving natural, inalienable and heaven-derived endowments. God
alone bestows these. He alone has them to give. Our trade in the
right of suffrage is contraband. It is bold buccaneering on the
commerce