Page:Speech on Partial Suffrage by Laura Clay to the Kentucky Constitutional Convention, December 12, 1890.pdf/2

Rh Friday.] in its discretion, to extend suffrage to women on the same terms as it is now extended to men.

It has been my privilege and pleasure, in the last few days, to hear gentlemen recalling and emphasizing the great principles that lie at the basis of our government. I have heard the instruction with joy, with an uplifting of the spirit, as the gentlemen spoke of the sacred rights of humanity, in this Hall. It has been declared in the noble Bill of Rights framed by them, that they believe in equal rights to all, exclusive privileges for none. I have heard suffrage described as the crowning glory of the freeman. I have heard all of these things, and seen with a joy which only a native-born Kentucky woman can feel, that, amidst all the difficulties now surrounding us, there was an unfeigned and earnest spirit to preserve to our State the blessings which we have had of free government, and to secure good and free government to all. There has been but one tone in regard to ballot reform. It has been shown that there was danger, and I have heard these gentlemen speak for the purity of the ballot, and, while they speak fearlessly, they speak words of warning, that we must guard the sacredness of the ballot. Eternal vigilance was the burden of the cry. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; and these gentlemen wish to exercise that vigilance. Mingling with these words of pure patriotism and love of liberty, there is a note of warning, as I say, and it has brought to my memory powerfully the time I spent in the Capital city of our Mother State, Virginia. While I was there I saw the old church in which Patrick Henry spoke those immortal words, “Give me liberty or give me death.” I went into the Capitol, and there I saw a fac-simile of Magna Charta, the very beginning of Constitutional Government. I saw there the autograph of the father of his country, whose solemn warnings were quoted yesterday in relation to the purity of the ballot-box. I saw mementoes of many of the revolutionary fathers, but the thing that thrilled most through my heart in my visit to that city were words of which those spoken in this hall seemed the echo, that freedom is a sacred gift to be preserved by greatest care. Those words were written by the Burgesses of Virginia in the first Bill of Rights, in the old colonial days, and they ran something like this: “That we cannot long preserve free government or the blessings of liberty to ourselves without a firm adherence to justice and a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” Gentlemen, I do not propose to argue woman’s suffrage. You have your own opinion; but I speak of justice, and justice only. Think of the words of our forefathers, “a firm adherence to justice, and a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” What we ask, will it not be a firm adherence to justice? Shall we fear what shall follow in the footsteps of a firm adherence to justice?

Will it not give the people another opportunity for recurrence to fundamental principles? We ask that the General Assembly shall be granted the power to extend suffrage to women; that Assembly whose members are representatives of this people as you are yourselves. We know that this question is a growing one. We know you are afraid of evil powers; the powers of those who will endeavor to breakdown your work for the sake of evil; but I know there is not a gentleman on this floor who is afraid any evil will ever call in women’s suffrage to subserve its end. The women know, and the sons of women know, that none will ever dare to call in woman’s suffrage to help any evil thing. I appeal to the intelligence of every gentleman on this floor. Who can deny, who believes in the fundamental principles of our Government, that woman’s suffrage is just? Nothing can stand in the way of granting this measure except the various ideas of expediency. Ah! Those people