n until they, too, are expounded by
civil war? On what theory is it less dangerous to defraud twenty
million women of their inalienable rights than four million
negroes? Is not the same principle involved in both cases? We ask
congress to pass a sixteenth amendment, not only for woman's
protection, but for the safety of the nation. Our people are
filled with unrest to-day because there is no fair understanding
of the basis of individual rights, nor the legitimate power of
the national government. The Republican party took the ground
during the war that congress had the right to establish a
national currency in every State; that it had the right to
emancipate and enfranchise the slaves; to change their political
status in one-half the States of the union; to pass a civil
rights bill, securing to the freedman a place in the schools,
colleges, trades, professions, hotels, and all public conveyances
for travel. And they maintained their right to do all these as
the best measures for peace, though compelled by war.

And now, when congress is asked to extend the same protection to
the women of the nation, we are told they have not the power, and
we are remanded to the States. They say the emancipation of the
slave was a war measure, a military necessity; that his
enfranchisement was a political necessity. We might with
propriety ask if the present condition of the nation, with its
political outlook, its election frauds daily reported, the
corrupt action of men in official position, governors, judges,
and boards of canvassers, has not brought us to a moral necessity
where some new element is needed in government. But, alas! when
women appeal to congress for the protection of their natural
rights of person and property, they send us for redress to the
courts, and the courts remand us to the States. You did not trust
the Southern freedman to the arbitrary will of courts and States!
Why send your mothers, wives and daughters to the unwashed,
unlettered, unthinking masses that carry popular elections?

We are told by one class of philosophers that the growing
tendency to increase national power and authority is leading to a
dangerous centralization; that the safety of the republic rests
in local self-government. Says the editor of the Boston _Index_: