Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/904

870 "An election shall be held at the school-house of each school district, from nine o'clock in the morning till two o'clock in the evening, of the first Saturday of April of each year, for the election of three Trustees for the District for one year, and until others are elected and qualified. The qualified voters in each District shall be the electors, and any widow having a child between six and eighteen years of age, may also vote in person or by written proxy."

[But if the suffrage is not limited to widows who have a child between six and eighteen, but extended to unmarried, married, and childless men, why not give it to women in those positions also? Such a partial concession, though valuable as recognizing a principle, is not likely to be extensively used. For in this case, as in that of women who are stockholders in corporations, the female voters will be deterred by their own small numbers and by the prejudices of society. But give woman the equal right of suffrage, and the prejudice will soon be swept away].

— [The following is the Canadian law under which women vote. The omission of the word male was intentional, and was done to secure the weight of the Protestant property in the hands of women, against the Roman Catholic aggressions and demands for separate schools, The law works well. A friend of mine in Canada West told me," said Lucy Stone recently, "that when the law was first passed giving women who owned a certain amount of property, or who paid a given rental, a right to vote, he went trembling to the polls to see the result. The first woman who came was a large property holder in Toronto; with marked respect the crowd gave way as she advanced. She spoke her vote and walked quietly away, sheltered by her womanhood. It was all the protection she needed."]

— An Act for the better establishment and maintenance of Common Schools in Upper Canada. Passed July 24, 1850.

Sec. 1. Preamble — Repeals former acts.

Sec. 2. Enacts that the election of School Trustees shall take place on the second Wednesday of January in each year.

Sec. 22. And be it enacted, that in each Ward, into which any City or Town is or shall be divided according to Law, two fit and proper persons shall be elected School Trustees by a majority of all the taxable inhabitants.

Sec. 25. Enacts that on the second Wednesday in January there shall be a meeting of all the taxable inhabitants of every incorporated village, and at such meeting six fit and proper persons, from among the resident householders, shall be elected School Trustees.

Sec. 5. Provides that in all Country School Districts three trustees shall be similarly elected by a majority of the freeholders or householders of such school section.

"" — A very curious controversy, on paper, is going on at present in the Reveu Philosophique et Religieuse, between M. Proudhon and Mme. Jenny D'Hericourt. The latter defends, with great warmth, the moral, civil, and political emancipation of woman. Proudhon, in reply, declares that all the theories of Mme. D' Hericourt are inapplicable, in consequence of the inherent weakness of her sex. The periodical in which the contest is going on was founded and is conducted by the old St. Simoniens.

, 1858.

The following petition, numerously signed by both men and women, citizens of this State, was, at the first session of the Legislature, referred to the undersigned Select Committee:

", The women of the State of Ohio are disfranchised by the Constitution solely on account of their sex;

"We do, respectfully, demand for them the right of suffrage — a right which involves