through our physical weakness and your courtesy as Christian
gentlemen, that protection which we need for the proper discharge
of those sacred and inalienable functions and rights conferred
upon us by God. To these the vote, which is not a natural right
(otherwise why not confer it upon idiots, lunatics, and adult
boys) would be adverse.

When women ask for a distinct political life, a separate vote,
they forget or they willfully ignore the higher law, whose logic
may be thus condensed: Marriage is a sacred unity. The family,
through it, is the foundation of the State. Each family is
represented by its head, just as the State ultimately finds the
same unity, through a series of representations. Out of this come
peace, concord, proper representation, and adjustment--union.

The new doctrine, which is illusive, may be thus defined:
Marriage is a mere compact, and means diversity. Each family,
therefore, must have a separate individual representation, out of
which arises diversity or division, and discord is the
corner-stone of the State.

Gentlemen, we cannot displace the corner-stone without
destruction to the edifice itself! The subject is so vast, has so
many side issues, that a volume might as readily be laid before
your honorable committee as these few words hastily written with
an aching woman's heart. Personally, if any woman in this vast
land has a grievance by not having a vote, I may claim that
grievance to be mine. With father, brother, husband, son, taken
away by death, I stand utterly alone, with minor children to
educate and considerable property interests to guard. But I would
deem it unpatriotic to ask for a general law which must prove
disastrous to my country, in order to meet that exceptional
position in which, by the adorable will of God, I am placed. I
prefer, indeed, to trust to that moral influence over men which
intelligence never fails to exercise, and which is really more
potent in the management of business affairs than the direct
vote. In this I am doubtless as old-fashioned as were our
grandmothers, who assisted to mold this vast republic. They knew
that the greatest good for the greatest number was the only safe
legislative law, and that to it all exceptional cases must
submit.

Gentlemen, in conc