people are concerned in their enactment. It is the old claim of
despots--that their laws are good. When they told Alexander of
Russia that his personal character was as good as a constitution
for his people, "then," said he, "I am but a lucky accident."
Your constitution may be never so benignant to woman, but that is
only a lucky accident, unless you concede the claim of these
women to have a share in creating it. Nothing else "is an
equitable mode of making laws." But it is too late to choose
female delegates to your Convention, and the only thing you can
do is to allow women to vote on the acceptance of its results.
The claim of these petitioners may be unexpected, but is
logically irresistible. If you do not wish it to be renewed, you
must remember either to alter or abrogate your Bill of Rights;
for the petition is based on that.

The last speaker called this movement a novelty. Not entirely so.
The novelty is partly the other way. In Europe, women have direct
political power; witness Victoria. It is a false democracy which
has taken it away. In my more detailed argument, I have cited
many instances of these foreign privileges. In monarchical
countries the dividing lines are not of sex, but of rank. A
plebeian woman has no political power--nor has her husband. Rank
gives it to man, and, also, in a degree, to woman. But among us
the only rank is of sex. Politically speaking, in Massachusetts
all men are patrician, all women plebeian. All men are equal, in
having direct political power; and all women are equal, in having
none. And women lose by democracy precisely that which men gain.
Therefore I say this disfranchisement of woman, as woman, is a
novelty. It is a now aristocracy; for, as De Tocqueville says,
wherever one class has peculiar powers, as such, there is
aristocracy and oligarchy.

We see the result of this in our general mode of speaking of
woman. We forget to speak of her as an individual being, only as
a thing. A political writer coolly says, that in Massachusetts,
"except criminals and paupers, there is no class of persons who
do not exercise the elective franchise." Women are not even a
"class of persons." And yet, most readers would not notice this
extraordinary omission. I talked the other day with a young
radic