ns which describe the last
judgment are a protest against the exclusion of woman from
teaching in the church. "I suffer not a woman to teach, but to be
in silence," said a writer in the New Testament. The sentence has
brought manifold evil in its train. So much for the employments
of women.

* * * * *

By nature, woman has the same political rights that man has--to
vote, to hold office, to make and administer laws. These she has
as a matter of right. The strong hand and the great head of man
keep her down; nothing more. In America, in Christendom, woman
has no political rights, is not a citizen in full; she has no
voice in making or administering the laws, none in electing the
rulers or administrators thereof. She can hold no office--can not
be committee of a primary school, overseer of the poor, or
guardian to a public lamp-post. But any man, with conscience
enough to keep out of jail, mind enough to escape the
poor-house, and body enough to drop his ballot into the box, he
is a voter. He may have no character--even no money; that is no
matter--he is male. The noblest woman has no voice in the State.
Men make laws, disposing of her property, her person, her
children; still she must bear it, "with a patient shrug."

Looking at it as a matter of pure right and pure science, I know
no reason why woman should not be a voter, or hold office, or
make and administer laws. I do not see how I can shut myself into
political privileges and shut woman out, and do both in the name
of inalienable right. Certainly, every woman has a natural right
to have her property represented in the general representation of
property, and her person represented in the general
representation of persons.

Looking at it as a matter of expediency, see some facts. Suppose
woman had a share in the municipal regulation of Boston, and
there were as many alderwomen as aldermen, as many common council
women as common council men, do you believe that, in defiance of
the law of Massachusetts, the city government, last spring, would
have licensed every two hundred and forty-fourth person of the
population of the city to sell intoxicating drink? would have
made every thirty-fifth voter a rum-seller? I do not.

Do you believe the women of