Champion_, John A. Martin, editor,
retorted:

TAKE IT YOURSELVES.--Thirty-one gentlemen, all but six of whom
live in States that have utterly refused to have anything to do
with the issue of "female suffrage," unite in an address, to
apply, as they say, the "principles of the Declaration of
Independence to women;" and make a specious, flimsy, and
ridiculous little argument in favor of their appeal.

It is a pity that comments in the main so sensible, should be
marred by a few statements as ridiculous as is the trashy address
to which the article refers. It is the old cry that "female
suffrage," a novel proposition, although justly regarded with
distrust and suspicion by all right-thinking people; although not
demanded by even a considerable minority of the women themselves;
and although an "experiment" which may rudely disturb the best
elements of our society and civilization, may be tried in Kansas!
"We regard it with distrust," says the _Tribune_, "but are quite
willing to see it tried in Kansas." "Upon a full and fair trial,"
it continues, "we believe they (the women) would conclude that
the right of suffrage for women was, on the whole, rather a
plague than a profit, and vote to resign it into the hands of
their husbands and fathers." But it "decidedly objects to having
ten women in every hundred compel the other ninety to vote, or to
allow the ten to carry elections against the judgment of ninety."
These expressions of grave doubt as to the expediency of "female
suffrage," together with the fact that the editor of the
_Tribune_, in his report as chairman of the Suffrage Committee in
the New York Constitutional Convention, declared this new hobby
"an innovation revolutionary and sweeping, openly at war with a
distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as
venerable and pervading as government itself," make the
_Tribune's_ recommendation that we shall "try the experiment in
Kansas" rather amusing as well as impudent.

There is not a man nor a woman endowed with ordinary common sense
who does not know that Kansas is the last State that should be
asked to try this dangerous and doubtful experiment. Our society
is just forming, our institutions are crude. Ever since the
organization of the Territory, we have lived a life of wild