oming from men who have an infatuation upon the subject. I do
not believe a word of it, Mr. President.

I cannot be convinced against these facts that this new movement
in favor of female suffrage means anything more than to add
another patch to the worn-out garment of Republicanism, which
they patched with Mahoneism in Virginia, with repudiation
elsewhere, and which they now seek to patch further by putting on
the delicate little silk covering of woman suffrage. I do not
believe that this movement has its root and branch in any sincere
desire to give to the women of this land the right of suffrage. I
think it is a mere party movement with a view of attempting to
draw into the reach of the Republican party some little support
from the sympathy and interest they suppose the ladies will take
in their cause if they should advocate it here. No bill, perhaps,
is expected to be reported. The committee will sit and listen and
profess to be charmed and enlightened and instructed by what may
be said, and then the subject will be passed by without any
actual effort to secure the passage of a bill.

Introduce your bills and let them go to the Judiciary Committee,
where the rights of men are to be considered as well as the
rights of women. If this subject is of that pressing national
importance which senators seem to think it is, it is not to be
supposed that the Committee on the Judiciary will fail to give it
profound and early attention. When you bring a select committee
forward under the circumstances under which this is to be raised,
you must not expect us to give credit generally to the idea that
the real purpose is to advance the cause of woman suffrage, but
rather that the real purpose is to advance the cause of political
domination in this country. I can see no reason for the raising
of this select committee, unless it be to furnish some senator,
as I have remarked, with a clerk and messenger. If that were the
avowed reason or could even be intimated, I think I should be
disposed to yield that courtesy to the senator, whoever he might
be; but I cannot do it under the false pretext that the real
object is to bring forward measures here for the introduction of
woman suffrage into the District of Columbia, where we have no
suffrage, or into the terr