any country upon record, where justice has
reigned, where the interests of every class have been consulted, and
where the people have lived together in mutual esteem, in unity and in
prosperity? If we look through the world to-day, we find but one country
that is governed in anything like a satisfactory manner. It is loved by
some classes of its people, and admired by very many foreigners. When we
reflect that it is governed by a queen, and that history tells us that
its most prosperous period in the past was under Queen Elizabeth, it is
certainly safe to assume--No, no, my friends," she said, hastily, "do
not applaud. That is not my point. It is possible that women may govern
better than men, but that is yet to be tested. This illustration proves
but one thing--_that a country is better for not being governed by a
man_."

Her point was this: she did not appear as an advocate of suffrage for
women, but as an earnest petitioner against its being any longer held by
men. The one thing a man could _not_ do was--to govern! This was no
assertion. It was a fact proved by all history. Since the beginning of
the world men had had the governing power in their hands, and what a
mess they had always made of it! There had never been a decent
government. Oppression, rebellion, anarchy, war, bloodshed, slavery and
tyranny,--this was their record.

If women could do anything better, she was in favor of giving them the
opportunity of proving it, but it was not her purpose to propose the
after-treatment. She was not a physician in charge, but the surgeon for
the moment.

She had made suggestions: she freely confessed it. She had, for
instance, proposed to their talented townsman, the editor of the
_Snow-Drift_, a series of articles upon the existing Presidential
contest. As far as she could learn, there was a great lack of unanimity
regarding the vote, and it was not clear to the Hayes party that Tilden
was elected. Now, she had suggested that there were certain classes
concerned but _not_ consulted in the election, and to them she proposed
leaving the decision. The legal voters had blundered horribly in some
way, and she would have been in favor of allowing the Indians, the
Chinese, the convicts, the idiots _and_ the women to decide the matter.
It could not be made worse, and it might be made better.

But leaving all these questions of a past hour, she would put the axe
where George Washington did not put it--at the root of the tre