Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/546

546 because this is a country where honest views ought to be expressed, but because agitation pushes forward reform. I am glad that nearly half of our representatives were in favor of submitting this question to the women of the State, and that our interests were so ably defended by a talented representative from our own district. I do not think, however, by submitting it to the women, they would get a correct expression upon the subject. A good many would vote for suffrage, a few against it, and thousands would be afraid to vote. If it is granted, I do not suppose all women will vote immediately. Many prejudices will first have to give way. If women vote what they wish to vote, and there is no disorderly conduct at the polls in consequence, and no general disorder in the body politic, I do not see any objection to the voting being continued from year to year.

When women like Miss Jones of our city, now in California, take a few more professorships in a university over half-a-hundred competitors, write a few more libraries, show themselves capable of solving great questions, become ornaments to their professions, it will seem more absurd for them not to be enfranchised than it does now for them to be so.

Hon. J. M. Ashley, of Toledo, in a speech on the floor of congress, June 1, 1868, said:

I want citizenship and suffrage to be synonymous. To put the question beyond the power of States to withhold it, I propose the amendment to article fourteen, now submitted. A large number of Republicans who concede that the qualifications of an elector ought to be the same in every State, and that it is more properly a national than a State question, do not believe congress has the power under our present constitution to enact a law conferring suffrage in the States, nevertheless they are ready and willing to vote for such an amendment to the constitution as shall make citizenship and suffrage uniform throughout the nation. For this purpose I have added to the proposed amendment for the election of president a section on suffrage, to which I invite special attention.

This is the third or fourth time I have brought forward a proposition on suffrage substantially like the one just presented to the House. I do so again because I believe the question of citizenship suffrage one which ought to be met and settled now. Important and all-absorbing as many questions are which now press themselves upon our consideration, to me no one is so vitally important as this. Tariffs, taxation, and finance ought not to be permitted to supersede a question affecting the peace and personal security of every citizen, and, I may add, the peace and security of the nation. No party can be justified in withholding the ballot from any citizen of mature years, native or foreign born, except such as are non compos or are guilty of infamous crimes; nor can they justly confer this great privilege upon one class of citizens to the exclusion of another class.

The Revolution of March 19, 1868, said:

Notwithstanding the most determined hostility to the demands of the age for female physicians, institutions for their educational preparation for professional responsibilities are rapidly increasing. The ball first began to move in the United States, and now a female medical college is in successful operation in London, where the favored monopolizers of physic and surgery were resolved to keep out all new ideas in their line by acts of parliament. But the ice-walls of opposition have melted away, and even in Russia a woman has graduated with high medical honors.