men be denied that right? Because all men can not stand on a
platform and make a speech, shall I be denied the exercise of
that right? Each individual has a sphere, and that sphere is the
largest place that he or she can fill.

These women complain that they have been robbed of great and
essential rights. They do not ask favors; they demand rights, the
right to do whatever they have the capacity to accomplish, the
right to dictate their own sphere of action, and to have a voice
in the laws and rulers under which they live. Suppose I should go
to vote, and some man should push me back and say, "You want to
be Governor, don't you?" "No," I reply, "I want to exercise my
God-given right to vote." Such a taunt as this would be no more
insulting than those now cast at women, when they demand rights
so unjustly denied.

I make no claim that woman is fit to be a member of Congress or
President; all I ask for her is what I ask for the negro, a fair
field. All will admit that woman has a right to herself, to her
own powers of locomotion, to her own earnings, but how few are
prepared to admit her right to the ballot. But all rights are
held by a precarious tenure, if this one be denied. When women
are the constituents of men who make and administer the laws,
they will pay due consideration to their interests and not
before. The right of suffrage is the great right that guarantees
all others.

Mr. Smith set forth the education, the dignity, the power of
self-government, and took his seat amid great applause.

LUCY STONE said: It is the duty of woman to resist taxation as
long as she is not represented. It may involve the loss of
friends as it surely will the loss of property. But let them all
go; friends, house, garden spot, and all. The principle at issue
requires the sacrifice. Resist, let the case be tried in the
courts; be your own lawyers; base your cause on the admitted
self-evident truth, that taxation and representation are
inseparable. One such resistance, by the agitation that will grow
out of it, will do more to set this question right than all the
conventions in the world. There are $15,000,000 of taxable
property owned by women of Boston who have no voice either in the
use or imposition of the tax.

J. B. BRIGHAM, a school teacher, said