give the suffrage to every independent,
self-supporting widow or single woman. Wives I would exclude,--not from
the fear of adding to the stock subjects of domestic disputation,--the
usual reason given,--but because they are not independent. The same
reason should apply to daughters residing under the paternal roof. And,
in all fairness, I would extend my rule to men. I would make, not a
property, but an independence qualification. A man who lives on a dollar
a day, if he owns it or earns it, should vote; but the son who depends
upon a rich father for support, and the pauper who lives upon public
charity, should not vote. Socially, both are minors. We might even say,
that, financially, both are unweaned. Why should they not be minors
politically? This plan would really be manhood suffrage.

_Hipparchia._ Justice and wisdom are both upon our side. We must
eventually succeed; and then the emancipation of woman will be complete,
and her equality with man established. The resolution passed in our
Convention, "that a just government and a true church are alike opposed
to class and caste, whether the privileged order be feudal baron,
British lord, or American white male," ought to be true, and will be
true at a future day.

_Diogenes._ Vigorously expressed! The feudal baron, indeed, is an
extinct species, and was hardly worth mentioning, unless to adorn your
rhetoric and point your resolution. But let me tell you that the white
male can show an older and a better patent of nobility than the British
lord with whom you associate him. Is it not recorded in Genesis, that
Adam was created first, and Eve from him?--a copy only, you observe; and
a copy never comes up to the original. As Dryden has it:--

"He to God's image, she to his, was made;
So farther from the fount the stream at random strayed."

And in the same inspired history we read: "Thy desire shall be to thy
husband, and he shall rule over thee."

_Hipparchia._ Nonsense! I thought that the argument from Scripture had
died out with slavery polemics. You forget that every Eve has not an
Adam. On what ground do you ask a single woman to occupy an inferior
position? I admit that the married may sometimes do so with propriety.

_Aristippus._ On the ground of an inferiority, and of infirmities
absolutely incurable. Between the female man of your theories and the
real male man there is a great gulf you cannot pass over. A negro is a
man,--we can imagine him a bro