eserted what then seemed the party policy upon this
question. The pleas urged in advocacy of the new movement, as
well as the protests urged against it, were substantially the
same as were used in the East at that stage of the question.
Accompanying them were the extravagancies of hope and fear
incident to the early consideration of every suggested change in
a long-accepted social order. An impossible Utopia was promised
on the one hand no less confidently than was predicted upon the
other a dire iconoclasm of the sacred shrine of long-adored
ideals, as a consequence of simply granting to intelligent women
a privilege justly their due. Both the derision and the adverse
reasoning of the alarmists were well met by fearless friends, in
Council and House. Bills looking to the removal of woman's
disabilities were referred in each to a select committee for
consideration, on January 19. The majority report to the House
through the chairman of its special committee, M. DeFrance, was
an able advocacy of the measure under consideration, while the
adverse recommendation of the Council committee was accompanied
by an excellent report by Hon. Amos Steck, setting forth clearly
the reasons of the minority for their favorable views. After
hearing the reports, both Houses went into committee of the whole
for a free discussion upon the question.

"The criterion of civilization, physical force," "Strength as the
measure of right,"--as recent writers have defined the divine
right of might--seemed the basis of reasoning with those who
claimed that woman should not be given the ballot because she
might not carry the sword. Dark pictures were drawn of possible
women as electors plunging their country into wars, from whose
consequences they would themselves suffer nothing. By the more
hopeful it was urged that the mighty heart, the moral force of
humanity, as represented in womanhood, and united with clear
womanly intelligence, would prove a greater power in all State
interests than sword or bayonet.

The strongest speaker in the legislature upon the subject of
suffrage--President Hinsdale of the Council--was, unfortunately,
a bitter enemy of the proposed reform. Yet some of his most
forcible utterances made in committee of the whole, were
excellent arguments