of
myself!"--and that is the essence of democracy. (Applause). It is
the corner-stone of progress, also; because, the moment you have
admitted that poor ignorant heart as an element of the
government, able to mold your institutions, those five millions
of dollars, feeling that their cradle is not safe and their life
is in peril, unless that heart is bulwarked with education and
informed with morality, selfishness dictates that wealth and
education should do its utmost to educate poverty and hold up
weakness--and that is the philosophy of democratic institutions.
(Applause). I am speaking in a republic which admits the
principle that the poor are not to be protected by the rich, but
to have the means of protecting themselves. So, too, the
ignorant; so, too, races. The Irish are not to trust to the sense
of justice in the Saxon; the German is not to trust to the
native-born citizen; the Catholic is not to trust to the
Protestant; but all sects, all classes, are to hold in their own
hands the scepter--the American scepter--of the ballot, which
protects each class. We claim it, therefore, for woman. The reply
is, that woman has not got sense enough. If she has not, so much
the more shame for your public-schools--educate her! For you will
not say that woman naturally has not mind enough. If God did not
give her mind enough, then you are brutes, for you say to her:
"Madam, you have sense enough to earn your own living--don't come
to us!" You make her earn her own bread, and, if she has sense
enough to do that, she has enough to say whether Fernando Wood or
Governor Morgan shall take one cent out of every hundred to pay
for fireworks. When you hold her up in both hands, and say, "Let
me work for you! Don't move one of your dainty fingers! We will
pour wealth into your lap, and be ye clothed in satin and velvet,
every daughter of Eve!"--then you will be consistent in saying
that woman has not sense enough to vote. But if she has sense
enough to work, to depend for her bread on her work, she has
sense enough to vote....

But men say it would be very indelicate for woman to go to the
ballot-box or sit in the Legislature. Well, what would she see
there? Why, she would see men. (Laughter). She sees men now. In
"Cranford Village," that sweet little