Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/142

112 It will be impossible long to deny to such women that equality before the law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happens to be a man; denied to the highest creature that asks it, if she happens to be a woman.

On what authority, save that of the gross regality of physical strength, do you deny to a thoughtful, educated, tax-paying person the common rights of citizenship because she is a woman? I am a property-owner, the head of a household. By what right do you assume to define and curtail for me my prerogatives as a citizen, while as a tax-payer you make not the slightest distinction between me and a man? Leave to my own perception what is proper for me as a lady, to my own discretion what is wise for me as a woman, to my own conscience what is my duty to my race and to my God. Leave to unerring nature to protect the subtle boundaries which define the distinctive life and action of the sexes, while you as a legislator do everything in your power to secure to every creature of God an equal chance to make the best and most of himself.

If American men could say as Huxley says, "I scorn to lay a single obstacle in the way of those whom nature from the beginning has so heavily burdened," the sexes would cease to war, men and women would reign together, the equal companions, friends, helpers, and lovers that nature intended they should be. But what is love, tenderness, protection, even, unless rooted in justice? Tyranny and servitude, that is all. Brute supremacy, spiritual slavery. By what authority do you say that the country is not prepared for a more enlightened franchise, for political equality, if six women citizens, earnest, eloquent, long-suffering, come to you and demand both? No words can express my regret if to the minority report I see appended only the honored name of George F. Hoar of Massachusetts.

Your friend,

In response to all these arguments, appeals and petitions, Senator Wadleigh, from the Committee on Privileges and Elections, presented the following adverse report, June 14, 1878:

This proposed amendment forbids the United States, or any State to deny or abridge the right to vote on account of sex. If adopted, it will make several millions of female voters, totally inexperienced in political affairs, quite generally dependent upon the other sex, all incapable of performing military duty and without the power to enforce the laws which their numerical strength may enable them to make, and comparatively very few of whom wish to assume the irksome and responsible political duties which this measure thrusts upon them. An experiment so novel, a change so great, should only be made slowly and in response to a general public demand, of the existence of which there is no evidence before your committee.