Blake (N. Y.), who said in the course of a long and logical address:
We find that it is declared in Article IV, Section 4, that "the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of Government." What is a republican form of Government? In a monarchy, the theory is that all power flows directly from the monarch; even in constitutional monarchies each concession has been obtained "by consent of our gracious sovereign." When the laws are based on the idea that the caprices of the ruler regulate the privileges granted to the people, it is at least logical, even if it is cruel, to refuse the right of suffrage to any class of the community. You will agree that this is not a monarchy, where power flows from the sovereign to the people, but a republic, where the sovereign people give to the Executive they have chosen the power to carry out their will. Can you really claim that we live under a republican form of government when one-half the adult inhabitants are denied all voice in the affairs of the nation? It may be better described as an oligarchy, where certain privileged men choose the rulers who make laws for their own benefit, too often to the detriment of the unrepresented portion of our people, who are denied recognition as completely as was ever an oppressed class in the most odious form of oligarchy which usurped a government.
Article XIV, Section 2, provides that "Representation shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians, not taxed." What sort of justice is there in excluding from the basis of representation Indians who are not taxed and including in this basis women who are taxed? The framers of this amendment were evidently impressed with the tenet that taxation and representation should be associated, and that as the Indian paid no taxes, and was not, therefore, forced to carry the burdens of citizenship, he might, with justice, be denied the privileges of citizenship. But by what specious reasoning can any one maintain that it is honest to tax the great body of women citizens, to count them in the basis of representation, and yet deny to them the right of personal representation at the ballot box? What excuse can be made for this monstrous perversion of liberty? Each one of you, gentlemen, sits here as the representative of thousands of women who, by their money, have helped to build this Capitol in which you assemble and to pay for the seats in which you sit; nay, more, they pay a part of the salary of every man here, and yet what real representation have they? How often do you think of the women of your States and of their interests in the laws you pass? How much do you reflect on the injustice which is daily and hourly done them by denying to them all voice in this body, wherein you claim to "represent the people" of your respective States....
Some years ago, when the bill regulating affairs in Utah was under discussion Senator Edmunds said, "Disfranchisement is a cruel and degrading penalty, that ought not to be inflicted except for crime." Yet this cruel and degrading penalty is inflicted upon practically all the women of the United States. Of what crime have we been guilty? Or is our mere sex a fault for which we must be punished? Would not any body of men look upon disfranchisement as "a cruel and degrading penalty?" Suppose the news were to be flashed across our country to-morrow that the farmers of the nation were to be disfranchised, what indignation there would be! How they would leave their homes to assemble and protest against this wrong! They would declare that disfranchisement was a burden too heavy to be borne; that if they were unrepresented laws would be passed inimical to their best interests; that only personal representation at the ballot box could give them proper protection; and they would hasten here, even as we are doing, to entreat you to remove from them the burden of "the cruel and degrading penalty of disfranchisement."
And now, I desire to call your attention to a series of declarations in the Constitution which prove beyond all possibility of contravention that the Government has solemnly pledged itself to secure to the women of the nation the right of suffrage.
Article XIV, Section 1, declares that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The women of this country are, then, citizens thereof and entitled to all the rights of citizens.
Article XV speaks of "the right of a citizen to vote," as if that were one of the most precious privileges of citizenship, so precious that its protection is embodied in a separate amendment.
If we now turn to Article IV, Section 2, we find it declares that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States."
What do these assertions mean? Is there one of you who can explain away these noble guarantees of the right of individual representation at the ballot box as mere one-sided phrases, having no significance for one-half the people? No. These grand pledges are abiding guarantees of human freedom, honest promises of protection to all the people of the republic.
You, gentlemen, have sworn to carry out all the provisions of the Constitution. Does not this oath lay upon you the duty of seeing that this great pledge is kept and that the Fifty-sixth Congress sets its mark in history by fulfilling these guarantees and securing the ballot to the millions of women citizens, possessing every qualification for the intelligent use of this mighty weapon of liberty?
The Dome of this Capitol is surmounted by a magnificent statue representing the genius of American freedom. How is this mighty power embodied? As a majestic woman, full-armed and panoplied to protect the liberty of the republic. Is not this symbol a mockery while the women of the country are held in political slavery? We ask you to insist that the pledges of the republic shall be redeemed, that its promises shall be fulfilled, and that American womanhood shall be enfranchised.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton (N. Y.), as had been her custom during all the years since she had ceased to appear in person before these committees, sent a strong appeal for justice, beginning as follows:
In adjusting the rights of citizens in our newly-acquired possessions, the whole question of suffrage is again fairly open for discussion in the House of Representatives; and as some of the States are depriving the colored men of the exercise of this right and all of the States, except four, deny it to all women, I ask Congress to submit an amendment to the National Constitution declaring that citizens not allowed a voice in the Government shall not be taxed or counted in the basis of representation.
To every fair mind, such an amendment would appear pre-eminently just, since to count disfranchised classes in the basis of representation compels citizens to aid in swelling the number of Congressmen who may legislate against their most sacred interests. If the Southern States that deny suffrage to negro men should find that it limited their power in Congress by counting in the basis of representation only those citizens who vote, they would see that the interests of the races lay in the same direction. A constitutional amendment to this effect would also rouse the Northern States to their danger, for the same rule applied there in excluding all women from the basis of representation would reduce the number of their members of Congress one-half. And if the South should continue her suicidal policy toward women as well as colored men, her States would be at a still greater disadvantage....
By every principle of our republic, logically considered, woman's emancipation is a foregone conclusion. The great "declarations," by the fathers, regarding individual rights and the true foundations of government, should not be glittering generalities for demagogues to quote and ridicule, but eternal laws of justice, as fixed in the world of morals as are the laws of attraction and gravitation in the material universe.
In regard to the injustice of taxing unrepresented classes, Lord Coke says: "The supreme power can not take from any man his property without his consent in person or by representation. The very act of taxing those who are not represented appears to me to deprive them of one of their most sacred rights as free men, and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right; for what one civil right is worth a rush when a man's property is subject to be taken from him without his consent?
Woman's right to life, liberty and happiness, to education, property and representation, can not be denied, for if we go back to first principles, where did the few get the right, through all time, to rule the many? They never had it, any more than pirates had the right to scour the high seas, and take whatever they could lay hands upon.
Miss Elizabeth Sheldon Tillinghast (Conn.) considered The