what sort
of women were those who thus made a public exhibition of their zeal
in this cause. In remote places, as well as nearer the scene of
action, many people who had never thought of the significance of
the woman's rights movement, began to consider it through reading
the reports of the woman suffrage bazar.

Female opponents of the suffrage movement began to make a stir as
early as 1868. A remonstrance was sent into the legislature, from
two hundred women of Lancaster, giving the reasons why women should
not enjoy the exercise of the elective franchise: "It would
diminish the purity, the dignity and the moral influence of woman,
and bring into the family circle a dangerous element of discord."
In _The Revolution_ of August 5, 1869, Parker Pillsbury said:

Dolly Chandler and the hundred and ninety-four other women who
asked the Massachusetts legislature not to allow the right of
suffrage, were very impudent and tyrannical, too, in petitioning
for any but themselves. They should have said: "We, Dolly
Chandler and her associates, to the number of a hundred and
ninety-five in all, do not want the right of suffrage; and we
pray your honorable bodies to so decree and enact that we shall
never have it." So far they might go. But when they undertake to
prevent a hundred and ninety-four thousand other women who do
want the ballot and who have an acknowledged right to it, and are
laboring for it day and night, it is proper to ask, What business
have Dolly Chandler and her little coterie to interpose? Nobody
wants them to vote unless they themselves want to. They can stay
at home and see nobody but the assessor, the tax-gatherer and the
revenue collector, from Christmas to Christmas, if they so
prefer. Those gentlemen they will be pretty likely to see,
annually or quarterly, and to feel their power, too, if they have
pockets with anything in them, in spite of all petitions to the
legislature.

It did not occur to these women that by thus remonstrating they
were doing just what they were protesting against. What _is_ a
vote? An expression of opinion or a desire as to governmental
affairs, in the shape of a ballot. The "aspiring blood of
Lancaster" should have mounted higher than this, since, if it
really was the opinion of these remonstrants that woman cannot vote
without becoming defiled, they should have kept themselves out of