Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/90

 allowed under the Constitution, although no action had been proposed except the mere appointment of a Select Committee, to whom all questions relating to woman suffrage might be referred, such as already existed in the Senate.

James B. Belford of Colorado in an able reply said:

I have no doubt that this House will be gratified with the profound respect which the gentleman from Texas has expressed for the Constitution of the country. The last distinguished act with which he was connected was its attempted overthrow; and a man who was engaged in an enterprise of that kind can fight a class to whom his mother belonged. I desire to know whether a woman is a citizen of the United States or an outcast without any political rights whatever. eG What is the proposition presented by the gentleman from Ohio? That we will constitute a committee to whom shall be referred all petitions presented by women. Is not the right of petition a constitutional right? Has not woman, in this country at least, risen above the horizon of servitude, discredit and disgrace, and has she not a right, representing as she does in many instances great questions of property, to present her appeals to this National Council and have them judiciously considered? I think it is due to our wives, daughters, mothers and sisters to afford them an avenue through which they can legitimately and judicially reach the ear of this great nation.

Moved by Mr. Reagan's attacks, Mr. Keifer made a strong plea for the rights of women, which deserves a place in history, saying in part:.

We must remember that we stand here committed in a large sense to the matter of woman suffrage. In the Territories of Wyoming and Utah for fifteen years past women have had the right to vote on all questions which men can vote upon; and the Congress of the United States has stood by without disapproving the legislative acts of those Territories. And we now have before us a law passed at the last session of the Legislature of Washington, giving to its women the right to vote. We have not passed upon the question one way or the other, but we have the right to pass upon it. This, I think, seems to dispose sufficiently of the question of constitutional legislative power without trampling upon the toes of any State-rights man.

The right of petition belongs to all persons within the limits of our republic, and with the right of petition goes the right on the part of the Congress through constitutional means to grant relief. Do gentlemen claim it is unconstitutional to amend the Constitution? I know that claim was made at one time on the floor of this House and on the floor of the Senate. When it was proposed to abolish slavery in the United States, distinguished gentlemen argued that it