arent to a throne in the Old World
abdicating her rights because some conservative politician or
austere bishop doubted woman's capacity to govern? History
affords no such example. Those who have had the right to a throne
have invariably taken possession of it and, against intriguing
cardinals, ambitious nobles and jealous kinsmen, fought even to
the death to maintain the royal prerogatives which by inheritance
were theirs. When I hear American women, descendants of
Jefferson, Hancock and Adams, say they do not want to vote, I
feel that the blood of the revolutionary heroes must long since
have ceased to flow in their veins.

Suppose when the day dawned for Victoria to be crowned Queen of
England she had gone before the House of Commons and begged that
such terrible responsibilities might not be laid upon her,
declaring that she had not the moral stamina nor intellectual
ability for the position; that her natural delicacy and
refinement shrank from the encounter; that she was looking
forward to the all-absorbing duties of domestic life, to a
husband, children, home, to her influence in the social circle
where the Christian graces are best employed. Suppose with a
tremulous voice and a few stray tears in her blue eyes, her head
drooping on one side, she had said she knew nothing of the
science of government; that a crown did not befit a woman's brow;
that she had not the physical strength even to wave her nation's
flag, much less to hold the scepter of power over so vast an
empire; that in case of war she could not fight and hence could
not reign, as there must be force behind the throne, and this
force must be centered in the hand which governed. What would her
Parliament have thought? What would other nations have
thought?...

None of you would admit, honorable gentlemen, that all the great
principles of government which center round our theories of
justice, liberty and equality in favor of individual sovereignty
have not as yet produced as high a type of womanhood as has a
monarchy in the Old World. We have a large number of women as
well fitted as Victoria for the most responsible positions in the
Government, who could fill the highest places with equal dignity
and wisdom.

There is no subject more intensely interesting to men