Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/106

 of View. After referring to the man's all-mastering desire for liberty from the early history of the race the speaker said: "Did women not share with men this craving for freedom, then would they justly be reckoned as unnatural and unworthy members of the human family, but the same red blood pulses in our veins as in yours, fathers, sons, brothers; we are alive to the same impulses, our souls are kindled by the same aspirations as are yours. Why should this, our ambition, be held in leash by the same bond that holds the ignorant, the illiterate, the vicious, the irresponsible in the human economy? What does the idea of government imply? The crystallized sentiments of an intelligent people? Then do we meet it with but half a truth."

The speaker denounced with much severity the 14th and 15th Amendments and said that by the restrictive educational qualifications now so generally adopted in the southern States the spirit of the amendments had been practically set at naught. "It was born of the instinct of self-preservation," she said, but she deplored the political crimes it made possible and continued: "There is an undercurrent of thought that recognizes in its true proportions the value of an educated suffrage to the South, a restriction based not upon color, race or previous condition of servitude, not upon sex, not upon the question of taxable property, but its sole requirement is the ability to perform worthily the functions of citizenship. This is the only honorable solution of those questions that are vexing not only the body political but the body social of this Southern country."

Mrs. Butt's speech was one of a symposium on the question: Would an educational qualification for all voters tend to the growth of civilization and facilitate good government? Mrs. Hackstaff discussed The Relation which Government Bears to Civilization, saying: "The government which will increase social and individual development most is the best. Progress depends on whether the government will give the opportunity for such development. The one that serves the people best is the one that strengthens them by letting them take part in it." Mrs. Eleanor C. Stockman (Iowa) spoke strongly on Suffrage a Human Right, not a Privilege; Mrs. Clara B. Arthur (Mich.) on A Disfranchised Class a Menace to Self Government; Mrs. Mary Wood