es, erect fountains at every corner, fence in twenty
parks, vote himself in, Mayor, Alderman, Assessor, Collector with a fat
salary from these women's money, attached to each one of these offices,
and in the end elect himself the sole policeman of the city, to protect
the women from--himself; and this you call just government. It is no
more unjust, no more unrepublican, to take the property of fifty, or a
hundred, or a thousand women in this way, than it would be to take the
property of a single one; the principle is still the same. The women of
to-day, protest, as did their fore-mothers, for principle. Women come
into the world endowed with the same natural rights as men, and this by
virtue of their common humanity, and when prevented or restrained from
their exercise, they are enslaved. Old Ben Franklin once said, "those
that have no vote or voice in the laws, or the election of those who
administer them, do not enjoy liberty, but are _absolutely enslaved_ to
those who have votes, and their representatives." That sentiment is as
true to-day as when uttered. While the women of this nation are
restrained from the exercise of their natural rights of self-government,
they are held enslaved to those who do administer the laws. Said an old
minister of revolutionary fame, "One who is bound to obey the will of
another is as really a slave, though he may have a good master, as if he
had a bad one." Those of you who remember Adolph in Uncle Tom's Cabin,
will recall his apparent freedom. Dressed in style, wearing his master's
garments before the first gloss was off, viewing Uncle Tom,
superciliously through his eye glass, he was a petted companion of his
master and did not feel his bonds. But one day the scene changed. St.
Clair died, and poor Adolph, stripped of all his favors, was dragged off
to the vile slave pen. Do you see no parallel between Adolph and the
women of America? Adolph was restrained by unjust power from exercise of
his natural rights, so are the women of this country, as is most fully
shown, by this prosecution and trial of Susan B. Anthony.

In this country, two kinds of representation exist, property and
personal. Let us look for a moment, at the Constitution of the United
States. In three years we celebrate our centennial. From what does it
date? Not from the Constitution, as our country existed eleven years
without a Constitution,--in fact, thirteen years, before it was ratified
by the thirteen colonies. Th