Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1071

 time.If it were proposed to submit to a vote of the people whether the property of the gentleman from Laramie should be taken from him, or my property should be taken from me and given to somebody else, there would be no difference of opinion upon it. In Wyoming this right of our women has been recognized, has been enjoyed; there are such things in law as vested rights, and the decisions of our courts are unanimous that it is not within the power of the Legislature ever to take away from any person his rights or his property and to confer them upon another, and that is what this clause proposes to do, to submit to a vote whether we shall take away from one-half of our citizens — and, as my friend has well stated, the better half — a certain right, and increase the rights of the other half by so doing.

I was a member of that second Legislature which tried to disfranchise women.From that day to the present no man in the Legislature of "Wyoming has been heard to lift his voice against woman suffrage. It has become one of the fundamental laws of the land, and to raise any question about it at this time is as improper, in my judgment, as to raise a question as to any other fundamental right guaranteed to any citizen in this Territory. I would sooner think, Mr. Chairman, of submitting to the people of Wyoming a separate and distinct proposition as to whether a male citizen of the Territory shall be entitled to vote.

Mr. Hoyt:For twenty years the women of this Territory have taken part with the men in its government, and have exercised this right of suffrage equally with them, and we are all proud of the results. No man in Wyoming ever has dared to say that woman suffrage is a failure. There has been no disturbance of the domestic relations, there has been no diminution of the social order, there has been no lessening of the dignity which characterizes the exercise of the elective franchise; there have been, on the contrary, an improvement of the social order, better laws, better officials, a higher civilization. Why, then, this extraordinary proposition that, after so many years, having exercised with us the right of suffrage since the foundation of this Territorial government, women are now to be singled out, to be set aside, and the question submitted to a vote as to whether they shall have a continuance of the rights which have been given to them by unanimous consent, and which they have exercised wisely and properly and, as my friend says, with profit to the whole Territory? This is indeed an extraordinary proposition, to submit to a vote the continuance of a vested right. I will not impugn the motives of the gentleman who makes it, but I demand as a matter of justice that it shall be voted down by an overwhelming majority, and I would that he had never presented it.We are told that if we put this clause into our constitution as a fundamental law, we shall fail to secure its approval by the people of Wyoming and its acceptance by the Congress of the United States; but if it should so prove that the adoption of this provision to protect the rights of the women should work against our admission, then I agree with my friend, Mr.