great mass of women throughout the
country who do not wish for it, to gratify the comparatively few
who do.

It has been strongly urged that without the right of suffrage,
women are, and will be, subjected to great oppression and
injustice.

But every one who has examined the subject at all knows that,
without female suffrage, legislation for years has improved and
is still improving the condition of woman. The disabilities
imposed upon her by the common law have, one by one, been swept
away, until in most of the States she has the full right to her
property and all, or nearly all, the rights which can be granted
without impairing or destroying the marriage relation. These
changes have been wrought by the spirit of the age, and are not,
generally at least, the result of any agitation by women in their
own behalf.

Nor can women justly complain of any partiality in the
administration of justice. They have the sympathy of judges and
particularly of juries to an extent which would warrant loud
complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner sex.
Their appeals to legislatures against injustice are never
unheeded, and there is no doubt that when any considerable part
of the women of any State really wish for the right to vote, it
will be granted without the intervention of congress.

Any State may grant the right of suffrage to women. Some of them
have done so to a limited extent, and perhaps with good results.
It is evident that in some States public opinion is much more
strongly in favor of it than it is in others. Your committee
regard it as unwise and inexpedient to enable three-fourths in
number of the States, through an amendment to the national
constitution, to force woman suffrage upon the other fourth in
which the public opinion of both sexes may be strongly adverse to
such a change.

For these reasons, your committee report back said resolution
with a recommendation that it be indefinitely postponed.

This adverse report was all the more disappointing because Mr.
Wadleigh, as Mrs. Clemmer's letter states, filled the place of Hon.
Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, one of the most steadfast friends of
woman suffrage, who, at the last session of congress, had asked as
a special favor the reference of our petitions to the Committee on
Pri