, wives, and mothers, that from pure
benevolence we should relieve him from this troublesome branch of
legislation. We should vote, and make laws for ourselves. Do not
be alarmed, dear ladies! You need spend no time reading Grotius,
Coke, Puffendorf, Blackstone, Bentham, Kent, and Story to find
out what you need. We may safely trust the shrewd selfishness of
the white man, and consent to live under the same broad code
where he has so comfortably ensconced himself. Any legislation
that will do for man, we may abide by most cheerfully....

But, say you, we would not have woman exposed to the grossness
and vulgarity of public life, or encounter what she must at the
polls. When you talk, gentlemen, of sheltering woman from the
rough winds and revolting scenes of real life, you must be either
talking for effect, or wholly ignorant of what the facts of life
are. The man, whatever he is, is known to the woman. She is the
companion, not only of the accomplished statesman, the orator,
and the scholar; but the vile, vulgar, brutal man has his mother,
his wife, his sister, his daughter. Yes, delicate, refined,
educated women are in daily life with the drunkard, the gambler,
the licentious man, the rogue, and the villain; and if man shows
out what he is anywhere, it is at his own hearthstone. There are
over forty thousand drunkards in this State. All these are bound
by the ties of family to some woman. Allow but a mother and a
wife to each, and you have over eighty thousand women. All these
have seen their fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, in the lowest
and most debased stages of obscenity and degradation. In your own
circle of friends, do you not know refined women, whose whole
lives are darkened and saddened by gross and brutal associations?
Now, gentlemen, do you talk to woman of a rude jest or jostle at
the polls, where noble, virtuous men stand ready to protect her
person and her rights, when, alone in the darkness and solitude
and gloom of night, she has trembled on her own threshold,
awaiting the return of a husband from his midnight revels?--when,
stepping from her chamber, she has beheld her royal monarch, her
lord and master--her legal representative--the protector of her
property, her home, her children, and her person, down on his
hands and k