of woman's activities and usefulness has been enlarged.
These social laws are in the main the groundwork of the exclusion
of women from the right of suffrage. In the establishment of
these laws, as in their modification, women themselves have even
a greater influence than men. Their disability to vote is,
therefore, self-imposed; when they shall will otherwise, it is
not too much to say that the disability will no longer exist. If
in the future it shall be found that these laws deny a right to
women the enjoyment of which they desire, and for the exercise of
which they are qualified, it cannot be doubted that they will
give way. If, on the contrary, neither of these shall be
discovered, it will happen that the exclusion of suffrage will
not be considered as a denial of a right, but as an exemption
granted to women from cares and burdens which a tender and
affectionate regard for womanhood refuses to cast on them.

We are convinced, therefore, that the best mode of disposing of
the question is to leave its solution to that power most amenable
to the influences and usages of society in which women have so
large and so potential a share, confident that at no distant day
a right result will be reached in each State which will be
satisfactory to both sexes and perfectly consistent with the
welfare and happiness of the people. Certainly this must be so if
the people themselves, the source and foundation of all power,
are capable of self-government.

At two of its meetings the committee listened with great pleasure
to several eminent ladies who appeared before it as advocates of
the proposed amendment. At none of the meetings of the committee,
including that at which the members voted on the proposed
amendment, was there any discussion of this important subject;
none was asked for or desired by any member of the committee, and
the vote was taken. The reports of the majority and of the
minority of the committee are therefore to be construed only as
the individual opinions of the members who respectively concur in
them. They are in no sense to be treated as the judgment of a
deliberative body charged with the examination of this important
subject.

The foregoing leads us to but one recommendation: that the
committee should be discharged from th