tts [Mr. Hoar], for whom I have very great
regard, was yesterday pleased to observe that the State
governments furnished by the senator from Missouri and other
senators in the past had been no argument in favor of manhood
suffrage. Mr. President, I have been under the impression that
the American people to-day are the best governed, the best
clothed, the best fed, the best housed, the happiest people upon
the face of the globe, and that, too, notwithstanding the fact
that they have been under the domination of the Republican party
for twenty long years. I have also been under the impression that
the institutions of the States and of the United States are an
improvement upon all governmental theories and schemes hitherto
known to mortal man; but we are to learn to-day from the senator
from Massachusetts that this government and the State governments
have been failures, and that woman suffrage must be introduced in
order to purify the political atmosphere and elevate the
suffrage.

Mr. HOAR: Will the senator allow me to interrupt him for a
moment?

Mr. VEST: Of course.

Mr. HOAR: I desire to disclaim the meaning which the honorable
senator seems to have put upon my words. I agree with him that
the American governments have been the best on the face of the
earth, but it is because of their adoption of that principle of
equality more than any other government, the logical effect of
which will compel them to yield the right prayed for to women,
that they are the best. But still best as they are, I said, and
mean to say, that the business of governing mankind has been the
one business on the face of the earth which has been done most
clumsily, which has been, even where most excellent, full of
mistakes, expense, injustice, and wrong-doing. What I said was
that I did not think the persons to whom that privileged function
had been committed so far were entitled to claim any special
superiority for the masculine intellect in the results which it
had achieved.

Mr. VEST: To say that the governments, State and national, now in
existence upon this continent are imperfect is but to announce
the truism that everything made by man is necessarily imperfect.
But I stand here to declare to-day that the governments of the
States, and the nat