spected his
intellect, you believed in his integrity, you sit in his seat.
You are to prepare the report that he would prepare were he still
upon the earth. May I ask you to bring to that labor as fair a
spirit, as unprejudiced an outlook, as just a decision as he
would have done?

I ask this not as a partisan of woman's rights, but as a lover of
the human race. In this faint dawn of woman's day, I discern not
woman's development of freedom merely, but the promise of that
higher, finer, purer civilization which is to redeem the world,
the lack of which makes men tyrants and women slaves. You cannot
be unconscious of the fact that a new race of women is born into
the world, who, while they lack no womanly attribute, are the
peers of any man in intellect and aspiration. It will be
impossible long to deny to such women that equality before the
law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happens to
be a man; denied to the highest creature that asks it, if she
happens to be a woman.

On what authority, save that of the gross regality of physical
strength, do you deny to a thoughtful, educated, tax-paying
person the common rights of citizenship because she is a woman? I
am a property-owner, the head of a household. By what right do
you assume to define and curtail for me my prerogatives as a
citizen, while as a tax-payer you make not the slightest
distinction between me and a man? Leave to my own perception what
is proper for me as a lady, to my own discretion what is wise for
me as a woman, to my own conscience what is my duty to my race
and to my God. Leave to unerring nature to protect the subtle
boundaries which define the distinctive life and action of the
sexes, while you as a legislator do everything in your power to
secure to every creature of God an equal chance to make the best
and most of himself.

If American men could say as Huxley says, "I scorn to lay a
single obstacle in the way of those whom nature from the
beginning has so heavily burdened," the sexes would cease to war,
men and women would reign together, the equal companions,
friends, helpers, and lovers that nature intended they should be.
But what is love, tenderness, protection, even, unless rooted in
justice? Tyranny and servitude, that is all. Brute s