Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/585

Rh of the political body should be allowed to remain. But where there is no exemption, but a full apportionment of the burden, and, at the same time, no representation, the absurdity of injustice has reached its climax. (Laughter and cheers).

In the second place, woman should vote, because she ought to be a sharer in those benefits which government is formed to confer upon the governed. She has property which the government must protect, a person which it must defend, and rights which it is bound to secure. Were the millennium arrived, were there no such thing as selfishness on earth; were simple truth and justice the prominent elements in all men's minds, and the guiding spirit of all men's actions, then indeed might woman confide herself to man; then might she rely on him to secure those governmental benefits which are her due, as a portion of the general community. But is this the state of things? Alas! not yet; and, until it is, the horrible injustice of the laws which exclude woman from a share in making them, while they are her only security for the advantages she ought to enjoy, will never cease crying aloud to all men for purification. One of the great aims of all government, one of the strong considerations which alone makes its restrictions endurable, is the assurance which it gives the governed, that the sum of their happiness, and even of their liberty, shall, by individual restraints, become greater on the whole. It holds out a bonus to society, or rather, to its individual members, "Give me this little, and I will give you in exchange this much." Thus each individual puts a stake into the common fund, has an interest in the common weal, which demands careful watching. Can woman watch the large, the all-absorbing interest she has at stake? She, above all, the most tender, the most sensitive of beings, the most keenly alive to wrong, to insult, to oppression, to aught that bruises her womanly nature, can she give a careful eye to the disposal of those important questions which touch the very core of her heart? Why, when reduced to these, its naked dimensions, the injustice seems so horrible, as not to be credible, and did we not know the facts, we would find it hard to believe that man, made in the image of his Maker, could violate justice so barbarously. Surely woman lies under no moral obligation to any laws which, wanting her assent, yet assume to control her every action, word, and even thought. Her property, her person, all her rights, her most sacred affections, come within the province of those enactments; yet she can have no voice, no weight in determining what those enactments shall be. (Stamping and groans).

In the third place, woman is entitled to vote, because she is liable to all the penalties imposed by government. Not only is it that she confides, or rather, that government compels her to confide to it, the custody of person, property, rights, and all dearest interests, but it goes a step further, and thus adds another link (though quite a superfluous one) to the adamantine chain of argument which it supplies to bind down its own injustice. It stands not merely in a passive or receiving relation to woman, it becomes the active arbiter of her doom; it declares itself competent to lay hands on her, to shut her up in prison, to take away her life, the life of one who has made with it no compact—giving such awful power—the life of one who never consented to the laws which assert over her so terrible a supremacy! All the principles already applied come in here with perhaps renewed force, as being the arbiters of a question which may be regarded by some as of a still more absorbing interest, although to woman it