ough they have
much to say about the great privilege which every man enjoys, of
having a voice in the government, and the responsibility of a
voter. Things would remain much as now if to-morrow every
obstacle were removed from woman's path. Only gradually would the
change occur, as individual after individual found larger room
for action than that in which she is now pent. As this discussion
has been going on, woman after woman has been enlarging the
sphere allowed her. Women write admirable books, paint admirable
pictures, chisel admirable statues, make most excellent and
well-instructed physicians. Women are doing everything which it
is now claimed they have the right to do, except voting, which
they are not yet permitted to do; and I am not sure, in regard to
that, that the best plan would not be, as our Platonic friend in
New England once said, for the women to go quietly and vote,
without waiting to be asked or told that they would be permitted
to do so. To be sure, he said, their votes could not be counted,
but there they would be, and they would have their force. He
thought that the moral influence of those votes would go a great
ways, and it is quite possible that they would have that effect.
But I hope, whether in that way or some other--perhaps before
that step is taken--men will be led to see, that in the sphere of
politics, as well as in the sphere of literature and art, woman's
influence is needed; and all the objections that are made to
woman's voting are of the most trivial character, that would not
stand a day before any serious desire that she should have her
simple right in this matter, so far as she chooses to claim it.
And her right lies simply in these old propositions, so dear to
our fathers--upon which they stood and fought an eight years'
war--"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and that "all
just powers of government are derived from the consent of the
governed." And there is nothing in these two propositions which
confines their application to man; there is nothing in them which
does not demand that woman should be included as well as man.
Wherever woman is taxed, she has a right to vote, by this
fundamental principle of our government; and wherever she is
legislated for and governed, she is entitled to a voi