amendment be submitted to the
States.

H. B. ANTHONY.

June 5, 1882, Mr. George, from the Committee on Woman Suffrage,
submitted the following views of the minority:

The undersigned are unable to concur in the report of the
majority recommending the adoption of the joint resolution
proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States,
for reasons which they will now proceed to state.

We do not base our dissent upon any ground having relation to the
expediency or inexpediency of vesting in women the right to vote.
Hence we shall not discuss the very grave and important social
and political questions which have arisen from the agitation to
admit to equal political rights the women of our country, and to
impose on them the burden of discharging, equally with men,
political and public duties. Whether so radical a change in our
political and social system would advance the happiness and
welfare of the American people, considered as a whole, without
distinction of sex, is a question on which there is a marked
disagreement among the most enlightened and thoughtful of both
sexes. Its solution involves considerations so intimately
pertaining to all the relations of social and private life--the
family circle--the status of women as wives, mothers, daughters,
and companions, to the functions in private and public life which
they ought to perform, and their ability and willingness to
perform them--the harmony and stability of marriage, and the
division of the labors and cares of that union--that we are
convinced that the proper and safe discussion and weighing of
them would be best secured by deliberations in the separate
communities which have so deep an interest in the rightful
solution of this grave question. Great organic changes in
government, especially when they involve, as this proposed change
does, a revolution in the modes of life, long-standing habits,
and the most sacred domestic relations of the people, should
result only upon the demand of the people, who are to be affected
by them. Such changes should originate with, and be molded and
guided in their operation and extent by, the people themselves.
They should neither precede their demand for them, nor be delayed
in opposition to thei