this nation a more
absolute and cruel depotism than monarchy; in that, woman
finds a political master in her father, husband, brother,
son. The aristocracies of the old world are based upon
birth, wealth, refinement, education, nobility, brave deeds
of chivalry; in this nation, on sex alone; exalting brute
force above moral power, vice above virtue, ignorance above
education, and the son above the mother who bore him.

_The judiciary above the nation_ has proved itself but the
echo of the party in power, by upholding and enforcing laws
that are opposed to the spirit and letter of the
constitution. When the slave power was dominant, the Supreme
Court decided that a black man was not a citizen, because he
had not the right to vote; and when the constitution was so
amended as to make all persons citizens, the same high
tribunal decided that a woman, though a citizen, had not the
right to vote. Such vacillating interpretations of
constitutional law unsettle our faith in judicial authority,
and undermine the liberties of the whole people.

These articles of impeachment against our rulers we now submit to
the impartial judgment of the people. To all these wrongs and
oppressions woman has not submitted in silence and resignation.
From the beginning of the century, when Abigail Adams, the wife
of one president and mother of another, said, "We will not hold
ourselves bound to obey laws in which we have no voice or
representation," until now, woman's discontent has been steadily
increasing, culminating nearly thirty years ago in a simultaneous
movement among the women of the nation, demanding the right of
suffrage. In making our just demands, a higher motive than the
pride of sex inspires us; we feel that national safety and
stability depend on the complete recognition of the broad
principles of our government. Woman's degraded, helpless position
is the weak point in our institutions to-day; a disturbing force
everywhere, severing family ties, filling our asylums with the
deaf, the dumb, the blind; our prisons with criminals, our cities
with drunkenness and prostitution; our homes with disease and
death. It was the boast of the founders of the republic, that the