ought to want; that they had as much as was good for them. The woman must obey in consideration of the kind protection which her lord vouchsafes to her. The wife's property ought to belong to the husband, because upon him the law casts the burden of sustaining the family. There must be a ruler, and the husband ought to be that one. But this is the same principle which, during thousands of years, maintained the divine right of kings. When we apply it to our system of suffrage the number of sovereigns is increased, that is all. It is a recognition of the divine right of man to legislate for himself and woman too. It is only a difference in the number of autocrats and the manner in which their decrees are promulgated....
By what argument can a man defend his own suffrage as a right and not concede an equal right to woman? A just man ought to accord to every other human being, even his own wife, the rights which he demands himself.
"But she has her sphere and she ought not go beyond it." My friend, who gave you the right to determine what that sphere should be? If nature prescribes it, nature will carry out her own ordinances without your prohibitory legislation. I have the greatest contempt for the sort of legislation which seeks to enable nature to carry out her own immutable laws. I would have very little respect for any decree, enacted with whatever solemnity, which should prescribe that an object shall fall towards the earth and not from it; and I have just as little respect for any statute of man which enacts that women shall continue to love and care for their children by shutting them out from political action and preferment lest they should neglect the duties of the household....
"But," say you, "woman is already adequately represented. She does not form a separate class. She has no interests different from those of her husband, brother or father." These arguments have been used even by so eminent an authority as John Bright. Is it indeed a fact? Wherever woman owns property which she would relieve from unjust taxation; wherever she has a son whom she would preserve from the temptations of intemperance, or a daughter from the enticements of a libertine, or a husband from the conscriptions of war, she has a separate interest which she is entitled to protect.
"But she can control legislation by her influence." If it were proposed to take away our right to vote, we would think it a satisfactory answer that our influence would still remain? If she has influence she is entitled to that and her vote too. You have no right to burn down a man's house because you leave him his lot.
"But woman does not want the suffrage." How do you know? have you given her an opportunity of saying so? Wherever the right has been accorded it has been generally exercised, and the best proof of her wishes is the actual use which she makes of the ballot when she has it. But it makes no difference whether all women want to vote or whether most women want to vote, so long as there is one woman who insists upon this simple right, the justice of America can not afford to deny it....
At the close of Mr. Foulke's address Mrs. Stanton was obliged to leave in order to reach New York City in time for her steamer. The entire audience arose, the women waving handkerchiefs and the men joining in three farewell cheers.
One splendid address followed another, morning and evening, while the afternoons were occupied with business meetings, and even here there were many little speeches which were worthy of preservation. Among them was one of Miss Anthony's, in which she said: "If it is necessary, I will fight forty years more to make our platform free for the Christian to stand upon, whether she be a Catholic and counts her beads, or a Protestant of the straightest orthodox sect, just as I have fought for the rights of the 'infidels' the last forty years. These are the principles I want to maintain—that our platform may be kept as broad as the universe, that upon it may stand the representatives of all creeds and of no creeds—Jew and Christian, Protestant and Catholic, Gentile and Mormon, believer and atheist."
Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) discussed The Centennial of 1892, demanding the recognition of women. Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) spoke on the Present, the Destiny of To-day. Mrs. Ormiston Chant (Eng.) depicted the glory of The Coming Woman. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt made her first appearance on the national platform with an address on The Symbol of Liberty, describing political conditions with a keen knowledge of the facts and showing their need of the intelligence, morality and independence of women. The subject selected by Miss Phoebe W. Couzins, herself an office-holder, was Woman's Influence in Official Government.
Henry B. Blackwell made a strong speech on Woman Suffrage a Growth of Civilization. He read a letter from Lucy Stone, his wife, who was to have spoken on The Progress of Women but was prevented by illness, in which she said: "The time is full of encouragement for us. We look back to our small beginnings and over the many years of constant endeavor to secure for women the application of the principles which are the foundation of a representative government. Now we are a host. Both Houses of Congress and the legislative bodies in nearly all the States, have our questions before them. So has the civilized world. Surely at no distant day the sense of justice which exists in everybody will secure our claim, and we shall have at last a truly representative government, of the people, by the people and for the people. We may, therefore, rejoicing in what is already gained, look forward with hope to the future."
A large audience listened to the address of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe on The Chivalry of Reform, during which she said:
The political enfranchisement of woman has long been sought upon the ground of abstract right and justice. This ground is surely the soundest and safest basis for any claim to rest upon. But mankind, after yielding a general obedience to the moral law, will reserve for themselves a certain freedom in its application to particular things. Even in so imperative a matter as the salvation of their own souls they will not be content with weights and measures. The touch of sentiment must come in, uplifting what law knocks down, freeing what it trammels, satisfying man's love for freedom by ministering to his sense of beauty. When this subtle power joins itself to the demonstrations of reason, the victory is sure and lasting.
It is in the grand order of these ideas that I stand here to advocate the enfranchisement of my sex. Morally, socially, intellectually equal with men, it is right that we should be politically equal with them in a society which claims to recognize and uphold one equal humanity. I do not say it is our right. I say it is right—God's right and the world's.
In the name of high sentiment then, in the name of all that good men profess, I ask that the gracious act may be consummated which will admit us to the place that henceforth befits us, that of equal participants with you in the sovereignty of the people. Do this in the spirit of that mercy whose quality is not strained. Remember that the neglect of justice brings with it the direst retribution. Make your debt to us a debt of honor, and pay it in that spirit; if you do not pay it, dread the proportions which its arrears will assume. Remember that he who has the power to do justice and refrains from doing it, will presently find it doing itself, to his no small discomfiture....
Women, trained for the moral warfare of the time, armed with the fine instincts which are their birthright, are not doomed to sit forever as mere spectators in these great encounters of society. They are to deserve the crown as well as to bestow it; to meet the powers of darkness with the powers of light; to bring their potent aid to the eternal conquest of right. And let me say here to those women who not only hang back from this encounter but who throw obstacles in the way of true reform and progress, that the shallow ground upon which they stand is within the belt of the moral earthquake, and that what they build upon it will be overthrown....
The Rev. Miss Shaw, in an address filled with humor as well as logic, treated of Our Unconscious Allies, among whom she included clergymen who oppose equal suffrage, the women remonstrants with their weak documents, the colleges which try to keep out girls, and the many cases of outrage and wrong committed by "our motherless Government." The Rev. Olympia Brown replied to the question, Where is the Mistake? With great power and earnestness she pointed out the mistakes made by our Government during the century of its existence and demanded the correction of the greatest one of all—the exclusion of women.
The address of Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace (Ind.), A Whole Humanity, aroused the universal sympathy and appreciation of the audience, permeated as it was with the spirit of love, charity and justice:
....The animus of this movement for woman's freedom has been mistaken in the idea that it meant competition between women