ional government, in theory, although failing
sometimes in practice, are a standing monument to the genius and
intellect of the men who created them. But the senator from
Massachusetts was pleased to say further, that woman suffrage
should obtain in this country in the interest of education. I
permit not that senator to go further than myself in the line of
universal public education. I have declared, over and over again,
in every county in my State for the past ten years, that
universal education should accompany universal suffrage, that the
school-house should crown every mound in prairie and forest, that
it was the temple of liberty and the altar of law and order.

I well remember that I was thrilled with the eloquence of the
distinguished senator from Massachusetts at the last session of
the last congress, when, upon a bill to provide for general
education by a donation of the public lands, he so pathetically
and justly described the mass of dark ignorance and illiteracy
projected upon the people of the South under the policy of the
Republican party, and the senator then stood here and said that
the people of Massachusetts extended the public lands to relieve
the people of the South from this monstrous burden. What does the
senator propose to do to-day? He proposes with one stroke of the
pen to double, and more than double, the illiterate suffrage of
the United States. The senator says that one-half the people of
the United States are represented in this measure of woman
suffrage. I deny it, sir. If the senator means that the women of
America, comprising one-half of the population, are interested in
this measure, I deny it most emphatically and most peremptorily.
Not one-tenth of them want it. Not one-tenth of the mothers and
sisters and Christian women of this land want to be turned into
politicians or to meddle in a sphere to which God and nature have
not assigned them.

Sir, there are some ladies--and I do not intend to term them
anything but ladies--who are zealously engaged in this cause, and
they have flooded this hall with petitions, and have called their
women's rights conventions all over the land. I assail not their
motives, but I deny that they represent the women of the United
States. I say that if woman suffrage obtains, the