Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/953

Rh undeniable status at present in the Government. I can suggest no plan to effect this great object, except that of agitation and discussion, everywhere throughout the land. Whenever the public mind shall become sufficiently enlightened, and women themselves shall seriously and earnestly demand, on their own behalf, equal rights and equal laws, they will be accorded; and then we shall have, what the world has never yet had or seen, 2 true republican system of government. Excuse these hasty thoughts.

Truly yours,.

To the President and Members of the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention in New York assembled:


 * —I notice with pleasure the call for your annual convention. The hour is pregnant with events, and this period is opportune for opening and pressing upon the publie attention the questions with which you are occupied. As the claims of the slave in past years have furnished to so many espousing them the occasion of manifold and large emancipations little thought by them at first, so the claims of the emerging freedman will lay open the way to the study and solution of the gravest and widest social questions. The great problems of social order: government, its fit aims and happiest methods, the nature and just basis of suffrage, etc., are to be studied anew and brought to true adjustment; false barriers and artificial distinctions must be swept away, no child of Adam must be inhibited from wielding those prerogatives which by birthright or attainment he may be entitled to. The more obvious abuses, the flagrantly gratuitous distinctions, involving very gross inequalities and oppressions, will be the first to be exposed and abolished.

The natural and just basis of the right of suffrage is doubtless qualification, wisdom, and substantial honesty. The right to wield the ballot is not in the strict sense an inborn and original right, coeval with our being, except as any right to which we may by culture attain is of this character. It is ours potentially. It belongs to attainment and possession, as the right, for instance, in a particular case to survey land, or instruct minds. It is a right I am to rise to through intelligence, discipline, manhood. It is conditioned upon discernment and true faithfulness. Those too ignorant or uncaring to distinguish between rule and misrule, government and lawlessness, science and a juggle, supernal and infernal—those especially so profligate, who seek only to reach through government the sanction of law, the baptism of social order for their wickedness and misdeeds, have no business at any ballot-box, save that of recorded resolution to amend and repent. To put the ballot into the hands of the reckless, the besotted, and the profligate, is the sheer est abuse possible, and suicidal to all just protection and rule.

It may be a long day ere suffrage shall be adjusted carefully and strictly to the normal basis. But before this the Gospel must be preached to all nations, the rough places must be made smooth and the paths straight for the coming of the Most High. Whatever unjust barriers or factitious discrimination there may be against any must be abolished, and equality must be for all, Wisdom or virtue is not the monopoly of any class or sex or race. By all the proprieties of nature, woman should have with man a voice in the enactment of laws and the administration of government. She is the complement of man, essential for the due poise, the right wisdom, and conduct in family, in neighborhood, in Church or in State. Sharing in civil government, she will be a redemptive agency fur society in many ways little thought at present. And agitation and overturning shall not cease until the final realization is reached. Society shall yet be rewrought and born again, All rule shall be justice, and obedience liberty. Government shall be the reflection of the infinite kingdom, the incarnation of truth, wisdom, benignly, power, the protector and help of all, inviting and assisting each to full realization of the utmost possibilities of attainment and strength for the individual soul, building to perfect freedom, building also to perfect unity. Service, sacrament, supreme reverence— this shall be the motto and norm of the world, all society become a church and all life worship, the broad anthem of souls. For this high consummation let us look and labor, trusting and working on to the perfect end.

Yours sincerely, ,

April 30, 1866.


 * —Your kind letter inviting me to attend the Convention on