Ladies and Gentlemen :—It is pleasant to see this large assembly, and this generous spirit, for it is by precisely such meetings as this that public opinion is first awakened, and public action is at last secured. Our question is essentially an American question. It concerns women, but it is not one of chivalry, nor of gallantry. It is a demand for equal rights, and will therefore be heard. Whenever a free and intelligent people asks any question, involving human rights, or liberty, or development, it will ask louder and louder, until it is answered. The conscience of this nation sits in the way like a sphinx, proposing its riddle of true democracy. President and parties, conventions, caucuses and candidates, failing to guess it, are remorselessly consumed. Forty years ago, that conscience asked, “Do men have fair play in this country?” A burst of contemptuous laughter was the reply. “Fair play! It is the very country of fair play;” and the indignant land, drunk with prosperity and ease, turned its back. Louder and 04339louder grew that question, and the land opened its eyes. Louder and louder! and it opened its ears. Louder! until it was one great thunderburst, absorbing all other questions; and then the country saw that its very life was bound up in the answer; and, springing to its feet, alive in every nerve, with one hand it snapped the slave's chain, and with the other welded the Union into a nation —the pledge of equal liberty. [Applause.]

That same conscience sits in the way to-day. It asks another question,—“Do women have fair play in this country?” As before, a sneer or a smile of derision may ripple from one end of the land to the other; but that question will swell louder and louder, until it is answered by the ballot in the hands of every citizen, and by the perfect vindication of the American fundamental principle, that “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.” [Applause.] By its very nature, however, the progress of this reform will differ from every other political movement. Behind every demand for the enlargement of the suffrage, hitherto there was always a threat. It involved possible anarchy and blood. When the question agitated England, in 1832, Sir Wm. Napier said that the country guivered on the verge of civil war. The voice of the disfranchised class was muttering thunder around the horizon, and by the lightning of its eyes, the British statesmen read the necessity of speedy action. But this reform hides no menace. It lies wholly in the sphere of reason. It is a demand for justice, as the best political policy; an appeal for equality of rights 04440among citizens as the best security of the common welfare. It is a plea for the introduction of all the mental and moral forces of society into the work of government. It is an assertion that in the regulation of society, no class and no interest can be safely spared from a direct responsibility. It encounters, indeed, the most ancient traditions, the most subtle sophistry of men's passions and prejudices. But there was never any great wrong righted that was not entrenched in sophistry—that did not plead an immemorial antiquity, and what it called the universal consent and “instinct” of mankind.

As Sidney Smith said sixty years ago, in urging the claims of women to a higher education, “Nothing is more common or more stupid than to take the actual for the possible—to believe that all which is is all that can be; first, to laugh at every proposed deviation from practice as impossible, then, when it is carried into effect, to be astonished that it did not take place before.” That I suppose is the reason why—now that the Fifteenth Amendment is officially adopted—we discover that there were so many original Abolitionists, and while were piously grateful for their number, we can only wonder that, being so many, they did not earlier do their work. [Applause]

I say that the movement is a plea for justice, and I assert that the equal rights of women, not as citizens, but as human beings, have never been acknowledge. There is no audacity so insolent, no tyranny so wanton, no inhumanity so revolving, as the spirit which 04541says to any human being, or to any class of human beings, “You shall be developed just as far as we choose, and as fast as we choose, and your mental and moral life shall be subject to our pleasure!” and, as Mrs. Howe has said, this is always what men have said to women.

Gibbon, certainly as profound a student of the history of the race as any that we know, says distinctly, “that the wisest or the strongest of the sexes has always usurped the cares and duties of the state, and has confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.” And Montaigne, the shrewdest and most passionless of the observers and critics of society, says, “Women are not at all to blame when they refuse the rules of life that are introduced into the world, forasmuch as the men made them without their consent.”

This is true of every condition of society and of every period. Edward, Lear, the artist, traveling in Greece, says that he was one day jogging along with an Altanian peasant, who said to him, “Women are really better than donkeys for carrying burdens, but not so good as mules.” This was the honest opinion of barbarism—the honest feeling of Greece to-day.

You say that the peasant was uncivilized. Very well. Go back to the age of Pericles. It is the high noon of Greek civilization. It is Athens—“the eye of Greece—mother of arts.” There stands the great orator—himself incarnate Greece—speaking the oration over the Pelopoanesian dead. “The greatest glory of woman,” he says, “is to be the least talked of among men.” So said Pericles, when he lived. Had Pericles lived to-day he 04642would have agreed that to be talked of among men as Miss Martineau and Florence Nightingale are, as Mrs. Somerville and Maria Mitchell are, is as great a glory as to be the mother of the Gracchi. [Applause.] Women in Greece, the mothers of Greece, were an inferior and degraded class. And Grote sums up their whole condition when he says, “Everything which concerned their lives, their happiness, or their rights, was determined for them by male relatives, and they seem to have been destitute of all mental culture and refinement.”

These were the old Greeks. Will you have Rome? The chief monument of Roman civilization is its law—which underlies our own; and Buckle quotes the great commentator on that law as saying that it was the distinction of the Roman law that it treated women not as persons, but as things. Or go to the most ancient civilization; to China, which was old when Greece and Rome were young. The famous French Jesuit missionary, Abbé Huc, mentions on of the most tragical facts recorded—that there is in China a class of women who hold that if they are only true to certain vows during this life, they shall, as a reward, change their form after death and return to earth as men. This distinguished traveler also says that he was one day talking with a certain Master Ting, a very shrewd Chinaman, whom he as endeavoring to convert. “But,” said Ting, “what is the special object of your preaching Christianity?” “Why, to convert you, and save your soul,” said the Abbé. “Well, then, why do you try to convert the women?” asked Master Ting. “To save their souls,” said 04743the missionary. “But women have no souls,” said Master Ting; “you can't expect to make Christians of women,”—and he was so delighted with the idea that he went out shouting “Hi! hi! now I shall go home, and tell my wife she has a soul, and I guess she will laugh as loudly as I do!” [Laughter.]

Such were the three old civilizations. Do you think we can disembarrass ourselves of history? Our civilization grows upon roots that spring from the remotest past; and our life, proud as we are of it, is bound up with that of Greece and Rome. Do you think the spirit of our society is wholly different? Let us see. It was my good fortune, only a few weeks ago, to be invited to address the students of Vassar College at Poughkeepsie, which you will remember is devoted exclusively to the higher education of women. As I stood in those ample halls, and thought of that studious household, of the observatory and its occupants, it seemed to me that, like the German naturalist, who, wandering in the valley of the Amazon, came suddenly upon the Victoria Regia —the finest blossom on the globe—so there, in the valley of the Hudson, I had come upon one of the finest flowers of our civilization. But in the midst of my enthusiasm I was told by the President that this was the first fully endowed college for women in the world; and from that moment I was alarmed. From behind every door, every tree, I expected to see good Master Ting springing out with his “Hi! hi! you laugh at us Chinese barbarians; you call yourselves in America the head of civilization; you claim that the glory of 04844your civilization is your estimate of women; you sneer at us Chinese for belittling women's souls and squeezing their feet. Who belittle their capacities? Who squeeze their minds?” [Applause.] We must confess it. The old theory of the subservience of women still taints our civilization. As Goethe in his famous morphological generalization showed that every part of the inflorescence of plants, the stamens and pistils, the corolla, the bracts, are all but modifications of the leaf, so I think it would not be difficult to show that our view of women, greatly improved as it is, is but a modification of the old doctrine.

Within the last fortnight an advocate, pleading for his client before a jury, spoke of him as a man who owned his wife! Nor have I seen a single word of comment or surprise in the press of this city. Take any familiar illustration of the same feeling. You open your morning paper, and read that on the previous evening there was a meeting of intelligent and experienced women, with some that were not so, which is true of all general meetings of men and women; and these persons demanded the same liberty of choice, and an equal opportunity with all other members of society. As we read the report we see that there was a great deal of extravagant rhetoric and weak argument and sentimental appeal, which only shows more and more that it was exactly like the public meetings of men.

If only those persons could properly hold meetings and speak in public who talk nothing but reason and common-sense, the flood-gates of popular oratory in 04945America would be very suddenly dammed up. But if it is permitted to human beings to demand what is rational, even in a foolish way, there would seem to be nothing very irrational in the claim that equal liberty and opportunity development shall be secured to every member of society. But the report of the meeting is received with a shout of derisive laughter, that echoes through the press and through private conversation. Gulliver did not take the Lilliputians on his hands and look at them with more utter contempt, than the political class of this country, to which the men in this hall belong, take up these women, and look askance at them, with infinite, amused disdain.

But in the very next column of the same morning paper we find another report, describing a public dinner, at which men only were present. And we read that after the great orators had made their great speeches, in the course of which they complimented woman so prettily, to the delight of the few privileged ladies who stood behind the screens, or looked over the balcony, or peeped in through the cracks of the windows and doors; and when the great orators had retired with the President, amid universal applause, the first Vice-President took the head of the table, punch was brought in, and well towards morning, when the “army,” and “navy,” and “the press,” and the “Common Council,” had been toasted and drank, with three times three, and Richard Swiveller, Esq., had sung his celebrated song, “Queen of my soul!” the last regular toast was proposed—“Woman—Heaven's last, best gift to man,” which was received 05046with tumultuous enthusiasm, the whole company rising and cheering, the band playing “Will you come to Kelvin grove, bonnie lassie, O? and, in response to a unanimous call, some gallant and chivalric editor replied in a strain of pathetic and humorous eloquence, during which many of the company were observed to shed tears, or laugh, or embrace their neighbors; after which those of the company who were able rose from table, and hallooing, “We won't go home till morning!” hiccuped their way home. [Great laughter and applause.]

This report is not read with great derision or laughter. It is not felt that by this performance women have been insulted and degraded. Gulliver does not take these men on his hands, and smile or sneer at them as unmanly and vulgar; and these very gentlemen who took part in the dinner, and who—thanks to these gentlemen at this table, [pointing to the reporters’ table]—read, the very next morning, with profound complacency, the report of their evening's proceedings, presently turn to the column in which the report of the woman's meeting is recorded, and instantly rail at the shameless women who renounce their sex, and immodestly forget the sphere to which God had appointed them. And just here, in this feeling, is the spring of the latent hostility—the jesting indifference to the question. It is that political enfranchisement is not considered necessary to the discharge to those duties, which men choose to regard as the proper duties of women. I know of no subject upon which so much intolerable nonsense 05147has been talked, and written, and sung, and, above all—saving the presence of our President, Mr. Beecher—preached, as the question of the true sphere of woman, and of what is feminine and what is not, as if men necessarily knew all about it.

Here, at this moment, in this audience, I have no doubt there is many a man who is exclaiming with fervor—“Home, the heaven-appointed sphere of woman.” Very well. I don't deny it, but how do you know it? How can you know it? There is but one law by which any sphere can be determined, and that is perfect liberty of development. If a man says to me that it is the nature of molten lead to run into bullets, and I know nothing about lead, I may believe him until I suddenly detect a bullet mould in his pocket. Then I see that it is the interest of that man that molten lead should run into bullets; and what he calls the nature of lead is merely his own advantage. So I look into history and into the society around me, and I see that the position of women which is most agreeable upon the whole to men is that which they call the “heaven-appointed sphere” of woman. It may or may not be so; all that I can see thus far is that men choose to have it so. Or another gentleman remarks that it is a beautiful ordinance of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines. And when I say, “Is it so?” he takes me into his garden, and shows me a poor, tortured pear-tree, trained upon a trellis. Then I see that it is the beautiful design of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines, precisely as Providence ordains that Chinese 05248women shall have small feet; and that the powdered sugar we buy at the grocer's shall be half ground rice. [Applause.] These philosophers might as wisely inform us that Providence ordains Christian saints to be chops and steaks; and then point us to St. Lawrence upon his gridiron.

You see these flowers upon this table. If your good fortune takes you beyond the city at this moment you will see them everywhere. May-day is but just gone by; and the fields, the woods, the river banks, renew their summer splendor. Now, if ever, you understand the exquisite music of Shakespare's song: “Hark! hark! the lark at haven's gate sings, And Phœbus ‘gins arise; His steeds to water at those springs On chalic'd flowers that lies; And winking Mary-buds begin To ope their golden eyes.”

Has nature ordained that the lark shall rise fluttering and singing to the sun in spring? But how should we ever know it, if he were prisoned in a case with wires of gold never so delicate, or tied with a silken string however slight and soft? Is it the nature of flowers to open to the south wind? How could we know it but that, unconstrained by art, their winking eyes respond to that soft breath? In like manner, what determines the sphere of any morally responsible being, but perfect liberty of choice and liberty of development? Take those away, and you have taken away the possibility of determining the sphere. How do I know my sphere as 05349a man, but by repelling everything that would arbitrarily restrict my choice? How can you know yours as women, but by obedience to the same law?

When men gravely assemble to assert their rights and their claims to what they feel to be justly theirs—to the widest personal liberty, to the amplest education, to the pursuit of every honorable profession, to an equal share in the political control of society, to do, in fact, whatever God has given them the will and the power innocently to do, can you conceive anything more comical than a sudden protest from women that they are forgetting their sphere—deserting the duties which providence had assigned them—and becoming unmanly and vulgar?

There is something quite as comical, and that is men saying it to women. It is not the business of either sex to theorize about the sphere of the other. It is the duty of each to secure the liberty of both. Give women, for instance, every opportunity of education that men have. If there are some branches of knowledge improper for them to acquire—some which are in their nature unwomanly—they will know it a thousand-fold better than men. And if, having opened the college, there be some woman in whom the love of learning extinguishes all other love, then the heaven-appointed sphere of that woman is not the nursery. It may be the laboratory, the library, the observation; it may be the platform or the Senate. And if it be either of these, shall we say that education has unsphered and unsexed her? On the contrary, it has enabled that woman to 05450ascertain so far exactly what God meant he to do. [Applause.]

It is not the duty of men to keep women ignorant that they may continue to be women. But they have as much right to restrict their liberty of choice in education, as in any other direction.

The Woman's rights movement is the simple claim, that the same opportunity and liberty that a man has in civilized society shall be extended to the woman who stands at his side—equal or unequal in special powers, but an equal member of society. She must prove her power as he proves his. When Rosa Bonheur paints a vigorous and admirable picture of Normandy horses, she proves that she has a hundred-fold more right to do it than scores of botchers and bunglers in color, who wear coast and trousers, and whose right, therefore, nobody questions. When the Misses Blackwell, or Miss Zachyzewska, or Miss Hunt, or Miss Preston, or Miss Avery, accomplishing themselves in medicine, with a firm hand and a clear brain, carry the balm of life to suffering men, women and children,it is as much their right to do it—as much their sphere—as it is that of any long-haired, sallow, dissipated boy in spectacles, who hisses them as they go upon their holy mission. [Great applause.]

And so when Joan of Arc follows God and leads the army; when the maid of Saragossa loads and fires the cannon; when Mrs. Stowe makes her pen the heaven-appealing tongue of an outraged race; when Grace Darling and Ida Lewis, pulling their boats through the pitiless 05551waves, save fellow-creatures from drowning; when Mrs. Patten, the captain's wife, at sea—her husband lying helplessly ill in his cabin—puts everybody aside, and herself steers the ship to port, do you ask me whether these are not exceptional women? I am a man and you are women; but Florence Nightingale, demanding supplies for the sick soldiers in the Crimea, and when they are delayed by red tape, ordering a file of soldiers to break down the doors and bring them, which they do—for the brave loved bravery—seems to me quite as womanly as the loveliest girl in the land, dancing at the gayest ball in a dress of which the embroidery is the pinched lines of starvation in another girl's face, and whose pearls are the tears of despair in her eyes. Jenny Lind enchanting the heart of a nation; Anna Dickinson pleading for the equal liberty of her sex; Lucretia Mott, publicly bearing her testimony against the sin of slavery, are doing what God, by his great gifts of eloquence and song, appointed them to do. And whatever generous and noble duty, either in a private or a public sphere, God gives any woman the will and the power to do, that, and that only, for her, is feminine.

But have women, then, no sphere, as women? Undoubtedly they have, as men have a sphere as men. If a woman is a mother, God gives her certain affections, and cares springing from them, which we may be very sure she will not forget, and to which, just in the degree that she is a true woman, she will be fondly faithful. We need not think that it is necessary to fence her in, nor to suppose that she would try to evade these duties and 05652responsibilities, if perfect liberty were given her. As Sydney Smith said of education, we do not fear that if girls study Greek and mathematics, mothers will desert their infants for quadratic equations, or verbs in mi.

But the sphere of the family is not the sole sphere either of men or women. They are not only parents, they are human beings, with genius, talents, aspirations, ambition. They are also members of the state, and from the very equality of the parental function which perpetuates the state, they are equally interested in its welfare. Has the mother less concrn than the father, in the laws that regulate the great social temptations which everywhere yawn for their children, or in the general policy of the government which they are summoned to support? Is she less entitled to the fruits of her industry than he, and if it be best that some arrangement be made by law for the common support of the family, is there any just reason why she should not be consulted in making the law as well as he? The woman earns property and owns it. Society taxes her, and tries her, and sends her to the jail or to the gallows. Can it be improper that she be tried by her peers, or inexpedient that she have a voice in making the law that taxes her?

Is it said that she influences the man now? Very well; do you object to that? And if not, is there any reason why she should not do directly what she does indirectly? If it is proper that her opinion should influence a man's vote, is there any good reason why it should not be indpendently expressed? Or is it said 05753that she is represented by men? Excuse me; I belong to a country which said, with James Otis in the forum, and with George Washington in the field, that there is no such thing as virtual representation. The guarantee of equal opportunity in modern society is the ballot. It may be a clumsy contrivance, but it is the best we have yet found. In our system a man without a vote is but half a man. When we gave the freedmen their civil rights we gave them a gun. When we added political equality, we loaded it and made it effective. So long as women are forbidden political equality, the laws and feelings of society will be unjust to them.

The other day a young man and his sister graduated at Oberlin with exactly equal rank and ability. They became teachers of the same grade, in the same town—perhaps in the same school. He was paid three or four times as much as she; and when she asked that her salary might be raised, she was replaced by a young man—her pupil—and he was paid a third more than she had been. If women had a vote, I think that school-committee elected by the people would have a miraculous gift of sight, and suddenly see that exactly equal labor and ability are worth exactly equal wages. Or look into the Statutes of Massachusetts. There is one that provides that no married woman can be guardian, even of her own children by a former marriage, until her husband files in the Probate Court his written consent to her assuming the office. The late statute authorized that husband by will to appoint a guardian for his children who might be the window or another; 05854and if she married again, the minor children were at the disposition of the guardian and not of their mother. Such a law is the consequence of making laws by men only. If women voted, it would follow the fugitive slave act into obloquy and oblivion.

I have no more superstition about the ballot than about any other method of social improvement and progress. But all experience shows that my neighbor's ballot is no protection for me. We see that voters may be bribed, dazzled, coerced; and where there is practically universal suffrage among men, we often see, indeed, corruption, waste and bad laws. But we nowhere see that those who once have the ballot are willing to relinquish it, and many of those who most warmly oppose the voting of women, also most earnestly advocate the unconditional restoration of political rights to the guiltiest of the late rebel leaders, because they know that to deprive them of the ballot places them at a terrible disadvantage. If, then, it is what I may call an American political instinct that any class of men which monopolizes the political power will be unjust to other classes of men, how much truer is it that one sex as a class will be unjust to the other. And if the usurping sex, as Gibbon calls it, is physically the stronger, then, just in the degree that it becomes honorable, enlightened, civilized, will it see that no class ca safely monopolize political power, and will gladly welcome every restraint upon its own tendency to abuse it.

Yes, I am told, but practical politics is a system of 05955expediency. If the suffrage is to be enlarged, it ought to be shown that the enlargement will promote the general welfare. There are as many ignorant women as there are intelligent, and the change, therefore, will merely increase, without improving, the number of voters. Ignorance may be a proper disqualification for a vote, but ignorance is not confined to sex. If we say that ignorant persons shall not vote, very well. That is one thing. But it is quite another to say that, men and women having an equal interest in good government, ignorant men may vote, and intelligent women shall not.

Besides, if we speak of the public welfare, surely we ought to have learned by heart the great lesson which has been written in blood in this country, that nothing is so demoralizing to a people as persistence in obvious and proved injustice—a public policy inconsistent with our fundamental principles. I know, as every man knows, many a woman of the noblest character, of the highest intelligence, of the purest purpose, the owner of property, the mother of children, devoted to her family and to all her duties, and for that reason profoundly interested in public affairs. And when this woman says to me, “You are one of the governing class, your government is founded upon the principle of expressed consent of all, as the best security of all. I have as much stake in it as you, perhaps more than you, because I am a parent, and wish more than many of my neighbors to express my opinion and assert my influence by a ballot. I am a better judge than you or any man 06056can be of my own responsibilities and powers. I am willing to bear my equal share of every burden of the government in such manner as we shall all equally decide to be best. By what right, then, except that of mere force, do you deny me a voice in the laws which I am forced to obey?” What shall I say? What can I say? Shall I tell her that she is “owned” by some living man, or is some dead man's “relict,” as the old phrase was? Shall I tell her that she ought to be ashamed of herself for wishing to be unsexed; that God has given her the nursery, the ball room, the opera, and if these fail, he has graciously provided the kitchen, the wash-tub and the needle? Or shall I tell her that she is a lute, a moonbeam, a rosebud? and touch my guitar, and weave flowers in her hair and sing:— “Gay without toil and lovely without art, They spring to cheer the sense and glad the heart; Nor blush, my fair, to own you copy these, Your best, your sweetest empire is to please.”

No, no. At least I will not insult her. I can say nothing. I hang my head before that woman as when in foreign lands I was asked—“You are an American? What is the nation that forever boasts of the equal liberty of all its citizens, and is the only great nation in the world that traffics in human flesh!”

Or is it said that women do not wish to vote; that it depends wholly upon themselves, and that whenever a majority of them demand political equality, it will be granted? But this is a total surrender of the objection. 06157The argument hitherto has been that it is unwomanly to ask for a share in political power; and if that be so, then the louder the demand becomes the more pressing is the necessity to build the barriers higher and higher. If it is unwomanly to wish to vote, a general demand upon the part of women would be merely an insurrection of women against womanliness, to be put down at all hazards by men, who assume to know what this womanliness is, if women themselves do not. Instead of yielding to a majority, there should be more formidable preparations to resist them. Besides, if it be unwomanly, and destructive of the natural and proper sphere of sex for women to vote, when the demand becomes imposing from numbers, it will be necessary to ascertain what has fostered the demand. Then we shall find that it is the constantly growing respect for women, their admission to certain civil rights and to larger education which has logically led them to demand political rights, and there will be no remedy but in turning civilization backward and restoring them to their condition under the old civilization, which treated them as things and not as persons.

The very moment women passed out of the degradation of the Greek household, and the contempt of the Roman law, they began their long and slow ascent, through prejudice, sophistry and passion, to their perfect equality of choice and opportunity as human beings; and the assertion that when a majority of women ask for equal political rights they will be granted, is a confession that there is no conclusive 06258reason against their sharing them. And, if that be so, how can their admission rightfully depend upon the majority? Why should the woman who does not care to vote prevent the voting of her neighbor who does? Why should a hundred girls who are content to be dolls, and do what Mrs. Grundy expects, prejudice the choice of a single one who wishes to be a woman, and do what her conscience requires? You tell me that the great mass of women are uninterested, indifferent, and, upon the whole, hostile to the movement. You say what of course you cannot know, but even if it were so, what then? There are some of the noblest and best of women both in this country and in England who are not indifferent. They are the women who have thought for themselves upon the subject. The others, the great multitude, are those who have not thought at all, who have acquiesced in the old order, and who have accepted the prejudices of men. Shall their unthinking acquiescence, or the intelligent wish of their thoughtful sisters decide the question?

And if women do not care about the question, it is high time that they did, both for themselves and for men. The spirit of society cannot be just, nor the laws equitable, so long as half of the population are politically paralyzed. And this movement, so well begun twenty-two years ago by women whose names will be always honored in its history, for their undismayed fidelity to the welfare of their sex—this movement is now fully organized for the very purpose of interesting men and women in the question. It is a pacific agitation 06359but its issues are immeasurable. You cannot deride it so contemptuously as the last great agitation in this country was derided, nor so bitterly as the corn-law reform in England. Even Mr. Webster, whose business was to know the people and understand politics, who had himself, on Plymouth Rock, declared the cause of liberty to be that of American, and at Niblo's Garden had asserted the omnipotence of conscience in politics—even Mr. Webster derided the anti-slavery movement as a rub-a-dub agitation.

But it was a drum-beat that echoed over every mountain, and penetrated every valley, and roused the heart of the land to throb in unison. To that rub-a-dub, a million men appeared at Lincoln's call, with millions of women supporting them. To that rub-a-dub the brave and beautiful and beloved went smiling to their graves. To that rub-a-dub Grant forced his fiery way through the wilderness; following its roll Sherman marched to the sea, and Sheridan scoured the Shenandoah. The rattling shots of the Kearsarge sinking the Alabama were only the far-off echoes of that terrible drum-beat. To that rub-a-dub Jefferson Davis fled from Richmond, and the wall of the Rebellion and of slavery crumbled at last and forever, as the walls of Jericho before the horns of Israel. That tremendous rub-a-dub, played by the hearts and hands of a great people, fills the land to-day with the celestial music of liberty, and to that people, still thrilling with that music, we appeal!

We can be patient. Our fathers won their independence 06460of England by the logic of English ideas. We will persuade American by the eloquence of American principles. In one of the fierce Western battles among the mountains, General Thomas—whom we freshly deplore—was watching a body of his troops painfully pushing their way up a steep hill against a withering fire. Victory seemed impossible, and the General—even he, a rock of valor and of patriotism, exclaimed—“They can't do it! They'll never reach the top!” His chief of staff, watching the struggle with equal earnestness, placed his hand on his commander's arm, and said softly: “Time, time, General; given them time;” and presently the moist eyes of the brave leader saw his soldiers victorious upon the summit. They were American soldiers—so are we. They were fighting an American battle—so are we. They were climbing a precipice—so are we. The great heart of their General gave them time and the conquered. The great heart of our country will give us time and we shall triumph.

It may be asked why, at such times a this, when the attention of the whole nation is concentrated upon the reconstruction of our States, we should intrude a new and advanced question. I have been asked, “Why not wait for the settlement of the question that now fills the minds of men? Why divert and distract their thoughts?” I answer, because the question is one and the same. We are not now discussing merely the question of the vote for the African, or of his status as a new-born citizen. That is a fact which compels us to discuss the whole underlying question of government. That is the case in court. But when the judge shall have given his decision, that decision will cover the whole question of civil society, and the relations of every individual in it as a factor, an agent, an actor.

Now, if you look back, you shall see that the history of the development of man for the last thousand years—before that, but more obviously and noticeably since—has been collection for the sake of distribution. In order to guard interest against brute force, it was needful that guilds, and franchises, and fraternities, and professions should be established. Just as when we light a candle in flaring winds we take every precaution, not to hide the light, but to protect it until it has strength to 06662burn without protection, and then let it stand to give light to all that are in the house; so it was necessary for law to protect itself. It was needful for medicine, too, as it were, to intrench itself and ward off empyrics. It was needful for various mechanical trades to defend themselves. And it has been said that these were the bulwarks and the very advanced guards of popular democratic liberty. But so soon as, by guilds, and franchises, and fraternities, and professions, a principle had become so strong that it needed no longer to be protected, it then had worn out its time, and become a kind of aristocracy. And in our day the great distributive tendency has set in. The principal of democracy is so well established now that learning is not confined to a learned class; medicine is not confined to the medical profession; law is not confined to lawyers; and the ministration of the gospel, thank God, is not confined to ministers of the gospel. Everywhere it is becoming more and more acknowledged or apparent that the functions that used to be given to men of professions are becoming part and parcel of the right of every citizen who shows himself capable of exercising those functions. It needs now no reformation, no convention, to teach us that a man may take the Word of God in his hand, and go down into any street, and preach the gospel to every living creature. Once it would have required a man to make his peace with a civil magistrate to do that; for only the hand of ordination was supposed to give a man the right to preach. But not that is over, almost without discussion. It is not now thought necessary for a man, if he knows the law, to consult a lawyer. A man has a right to be healthy without a doctor, and to step 06763aside, if he pleases, from the methods which have been prescribed by the schools of medicine. A mother is better than many a doctor that is called to attend the child; and I think that nurses will one day be considered the best and chiefest of doctors. Good doctors already consider themselves as but men standing between officious friends and the patient to keep off medicine. And the time will come, has come, when any man may enter, by the simple right of capacity to do it, into any calling, profession, or business in life. There was a time when, in some lands, if the father was a cooper, the son must be a cooper too. There was a time when, if a man was born in a barrel, he must live in a barrel all his life! There was a time when a man felt as much bound to follow the profession that his father did, as a man, being born a man, feels bound to continue a man, or a woman, being born a woman, feels bound to continue a woman. Now that is changed. Christian civilization, the progress of democratic ideas, is making itself felt everywhere. Men are scholars, without belonging to a scholastic class. Men are practitioners in every one of the professions, without belonging to the professional class. Men have a right to be statesmen by virtue of their citizenship. There is more power to-day in one citizen of Massachusetts than at any one time there was in a score of English nobles. These changes are going on by reason of the working of this grand democratic element. All the interests of society are experiencing a change; and society itself, in its structure, is also experiencing a change.

All the world over, the question to-day is, Who has a 06864right to construct law, and to administer law? Russia —gelid, frigid Russia—cannot escape the question. Yes, he that sits on the Russian throne has proved himself a better democrat than any of us all, and is giving to-day more evidence of a genuine love of God, and of its partner emotion, love to man, in enfranchising thirty million serfs, than many a proud democrat of America has ever given. (Applause.) And the question of emancipation in Russia is only the preface to the next question, which doubtless he as clearly as any of us foresees—namely, the question of citizenship, and of the rights and functions of citizenship. In Italy, the question of who may partake of government has arisen, and there has been an immense widening of popular liberty there. Germany, that freezes at night and thaws out by day only enough to freeze up again at night, has also experienced as much agitation on this subject as the nature of the case will allow. And when all France, all Italy, all Russia, and all Great Britain shall have rounded out into perfect democratic liberty, it is to be hoped that, on the North side of the fence where it freezes first and the ice thaws out last, Germany, will herself be thawed out in her turn, and come into the great circle of democratic nations. Strange, that the mother of modern democracy should herself be stricken with such a palsy and with such lethargy! Strange, that a nation in which was born and in which has inhered all the indomitableness of individualism should be so long unable to understand the secret of personal liberty! But all Europe to-day is being filled and agitated with this great question of the right of every man 06965to citizenship; of the right of every man to make the laws that are to control him; and of the right of every man to administer the laws that are applicable to him. This is the question to-day in Great Britain. The question that is being agitated from the throne down to the Birmingham shop—from the Atlantic to the North Sea to-day, is this: Shall more than one man in six in Great Britain be allowed to vote? There is only one in six of the full-grown men in that nation that can vote to-day. And everywhere we are moving toward that sound, solid, final ground—namely, that it inheres in the radical notion of manhood that every man has a right which is not given to him by potentate, nor by legislator, nor by the consent of the community, but which belongs to his structural idea, and is a divine right, to make the laws that control him, and to elect the magistrates that are to administer those laws. It is universal.

And now, this being the world-tide and tendency, what is there in history, what is there in physiology, what is there in experience, that shall say to this tendency, marking the line of sex: “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?” I roll the argument from off my shoulders, and I challenge the man that stands with me, beholding that the world-thought to-day is the emancipation of the citizen's power and the preparation by education of the citizen for that power, and objects to extending the right of citizenship to every human being, to give me the reasons why. (Applause.) To-day this nation is exercising its conscience on the subject of suffrage for the African. I have all the time favored that: not because he was an African, but because he was 07066a man; because this right of voting, which is the symbol of everything else in civil power, inheres in every human being. But I ask you, to-day, “ Is it safe to bring a million of black men to vote, and not safe to bring in your mother, your wife, and your sister to vote?” (Applause.) This ought ye to have done, and to have done quickly, and not to have left the other undone. (Renewed applause.)

To-day, politicians of every party, especially on the eve of an election, are in favor of the briefest and most expeditious citizenizing of the Irishmen. I have great respect for Irishmen—when they do not attempt to carry on war! (Laughter.) The Irish Fenian movement is a ludicrous phenomenon past all laughing at. Bombarding England from the shores of America! (Great laughter.) Paper pugnation! Oratorical destroying! But when wind-work is the order of the day, commend me to Irishmen. (Renewed laughter.) And yet I am in favor of Irishmen voting. Just so soon as they give pledge that they come to America, in good faith, to abide here as citizens, and forswear the old allegiance, and take on the new, I am in favor of their voting. Why? Because they have learned our Constitution? No; but because voting teaches. The vote is a school-master. They will learn our laws, and learn our Constitution, and learn our customs ten times quicker when the responsibility of knowing these things is laid upon them, that when they are permitted to live in careless respecting them. And this nation is so strong that it can stand the incidental mischiefs of thus teaching the wild rabble that emigration throws on our shores 07167for our good and upbuilding. We are wise enough, and we have educational force enough, to carry these ignorant foreigners along with us. We have attractions that will draw them a thousand times more toward us than they can draw us toward them.

And yet, while I take this broad ground, that no man, even of the Democratic party (I make the distinction because a man may be a democrat and be ashamed of the party, and a man may be of the party and not know a single principle of democracy), should be debarred from voting, I ask, is an Irishman just landed, unwashed and uncombed, more fit to vote than a woman educated in our common schools? Think of the mothers and daughters of this land, among whom are teachers, writers, artists, and speakers. What a throng could we gather if we should from all the West call our women that as educators are carrying civilization there! Thousands upon thousands there are of women that have gone forth from the educational institutions of New England to carry light and knowledge to other parts of our land. Now, place this great army of refined and cultivated women on the one side, and on the other side the rising cloud of emancipated Africans, and in front of them the great emigrant band of the Emerald Isle, and is there force enough in our government to make if safe to give to the African and the Irishman the franchise? There is. We shall give it to them. (Applause.) And will our force all fail, having done that? And shall we take the fairest and best part of our society; those to whom we owe it that we ourselves are civilized; our teachers; our companions; those to whom we go for 07268counsel in trouble more than to any others; those to whom we trust everything that is dear to ourselves—our children's welfare, our household, our property, our name and reputation, and that which is deeper, our inward life itself, that no man may mention to more than one—shall we take them and say, “They are not, after all, fit to vote where the Irishman votes, and where the African votes?” I am scandalized when I hear men talk in the way that men do talk—men that do not think.

If, therefore, you refer to the initial sentence, and ask me why I introduce this subject to-day, when we are already engaged on the subject of suffrage, I say, This is the greatest development of the suffrage question. It is more important that woman should vote than that the black man should vote. It is important that he should vote, that the principle may be vindicated, and that humanity may be defended; but it is important that woman should vote, not for her sake. She will derive benefit from voting; but it is not a selfish ground that I claim the right of suffrage for her. It is God's growing and least disclosed idea of a true human society that man and woman should not be divorced in political affairs any more than they are in religious and social affairs. I claim that woman should vote because society will never know its last estate and true glory until you accept God's edict and God's command—long raked over and covered in the dust—until you bring it out, and lift it up, and read this one of God's Ten Commandments, written, if not on stone, yet in the very heart and structure of mankind. Let those that God joined together not be put asunder. (Applause.)

When men converse with me on the subject of suffrage, or the vote, it seems to me that the terminology withdraws their mind from the depth and breadth of the case to the mere instruments. Many of the objections that are urged against woman's voting are objections against the mechanical and physical act of suffrage. It is true that all the forces of society, in their final political deliverance, must needs be born through the vote, in our structure of government. In England it is not so. It was one of the things to be learned there that the unvoting population on any question in which they are interested and united are more powerful than all the voting population or legislation. The English Parliament, if they believed to-day that every working man in Great Britain staked his life on the issues of universal suffrage, would not dare a month to deny it. For when a nation's foundations are on a class of men that do not vote, and its throne stands on forces that are coiled up and liable at any time to break forth to its overthrow, it is a question whether it is safe to provoke the exertion of those forces or not. With us, where all men vote, government is safe; because, if a thing is once settled by a fair vote, we will go to war rather than to give it up. As when Lincoln was elected, if an election is valid, it must stand. In such a nation as this, an election is equivalent to a divine decree, and irreversible, but in Great Britain an election means not the will of the people, but the will of rulers and a favored class, and there is always under them a great wrong class, that, if they get stirred up by the thought that they are wronged, will burst out with an explosion 07470such that not the throne, nor parliament, nor the army, nor the exchequer can withstand the shock. And they wisely give way to the popular will when they can no longer resist it without running too great a risk. They oppose it as far as it is safe to do so, and then jump on the ride it. And you will see them astride of the vote, if the common people want it. But in America it is not so. The vote with us is so general that there is no danger of insurrection, and there is no danger that the government will be ruined by a wronged class that lies coiled up beneath it. When we speak of the vote here, it is not the representative of a class, as it is in England, worn like a star or garter, saying, “I have the king's favor or the government's promise of honor.” Voting with us is like breathing. It belongs to us as a common blessing. He that does not vote is not a citizen with us.

It is not the vote that I am arguing, except that that is the outlet. What I am arguing, when I argue that woman should vote, is that she should do all things back of that which the vote means and enforces. She should be a nursing mother to human society. It is a plea that I make, that woman should feel herself called to be interested not alone in the household, not alone in the church, not alone in just that neighborhood in which she resides, but in the sum total of that society to which she belongs; and that she should feel that her duties are not discharged until they are commensurate with the definition which our Savior gave in the parable of the good Samaritan. I argue, not woman's right to vote; I argue woman's duty to discharge citizenship. 07571(Applause.) I say that more and more the great interests of human society in America are such as need the peculiar genius that God has given to woman. The questions that are to fill up our days are not forever to be mere money questions. Those will always constitute a large part of politics; but not so large a portion as hitherto. We are coming to a period when it is not merely to be a scramble of fierce and belluine passions in the strife for power and ambition. Human society is yet to discuss questions of work and the workman. Down below privilege lie the masses of men. More men, a thousand times, feel every night the ground which is their mother than feel the stars and the moon far up in the atmosphere of favor. As when Christ came the great mass carpeted the earth, instead of lifting themselves up like tress of Lebanon, so now and here the great mass of men are men that have nothing but their hands, their heads, and their good stalwart hearts, as their capital. The millions that come from abroad come that they may have light and power, and lift their children up out of ignorance, to where they themselves could not reach with the tip of their fingers. And the great question of to-day is, How shall work find leisure, and in leisure knowledge and refinement? And this question is knocking at the door of legislation. And is there a man who does not know that, when questions of humanity and justice are blended, woman's instinct is better than man's judgment? From the moment a woman takes the child into her arms, God makes her the love-magistrate of the family; and her instincts and moral nature fit her to adjudicate questions of weakness 07672and want. And when society is on the eve of adjudicating such questions as these, it is a monstrous fatuity to exclude from them the very ones, that, by nature and training, and instinct, are best fitted to legislate and to judge.

For the sake, then, of such questions as these, that have come to their birth, I feel it to be woman's duty to act in public affairs. I do not stand here to plead for your rights . Rights, compared with duties, are insignificant—are mere baubles—are as the bow on your bonnet. It seems to me that the voice of God's providence to you to-day is, “Oh messenger of mine, where are the words that I sent you to speak? Whose dull, dead ear has been raised to life by that vocalization of heaven, that has given to you more than to any other one?” Man is sub-base. A thirty-two feet six-inch pipe is he. But what is an organ played with the feet, if all the upper part is left unused? The flute, the hautboy, the finer trumpet stops, all those stops that minister to the intellect, the imagination and the higher feelings—these must be drawn, and the whole organ played from top to bottom! (Applause.)

More than that; there are now coming up for adjudication public questions of education. And who, by common consent is the educator of the world? Who has been? Schools are to be of more importance than railroads—not to undervalue railroads. Books and newspapers are to be more vital and powerful than exchequers and banks—not to undervalue exchequers and banks. In other words, as society ripens, it has to ripen in its three departments, in the following order: First, 07773in the animal; second, in the social, and third, in the spiritual and moral. We are entering the last period, in which the questions of politics are to be more and more moral questions. And I invoke those whom God made to be peculiarly conservators of things moral and spiritual to come forward and help us in that work, in which we shall falter and fail without woman. We shall never perfect human society without her offices and her ministration. We shall never round out the government, or public administration, or public policies, or politics itself, until you have mixed the elements that God gave to us in society—namely, the powers of both men and women. (Applause.) I, therefore, charge my countrywomen with this duty of taking part in public affairs in the era in which justice and humanity, and education, and taste, and virtue are to be more and more a part and parcel of public procedure.

We are near the end of the time when men will talk to us about isms. I have lived to see the day when Grace Church has preached politics, and I am prepared to say, “Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” (Great applause.) We have seen the time when humanity was so ostracised and was so vagabond that no man that valued his reputation, or his life even, dared to preach it. But that time has gone. The sepulchre is open, and the Christ has come out, and is a living Saviour and no man now, rolling the door back, can again shut in the Saviour of the world. It is too late. He has flown. And those regal ideas that struggle for liberty have come forth, and spread their wings to soar high, and yet brood low over all the nations, and you 07874shall never get them back; and the time is coming when they will take such proportions as we do not now suspect. And the men that pray out of grog-shops, and out of Heralds, and such like newspapers, and fear that the sacred garments of religion will be soiled by those who in the pulpit dabble with politics—let them prepare themselves, for there is to be more dabbling with politics that they ever saw before in all their lives. (Great laughter and applause.)

In such a state of society, then, as the present, I stand, as I have said, on far higher ground in arguing this question than the right of women. That I believe in; but that is down in the justice's court. I go to the supreme bench and argue it, and argue it on the ground that the nation needs woman, and that woman needs the nation, and that woman can never become what she should be, and the nation can never become what it should be, until there is no distinction made between the sexes as regards the rights and duties of citizenship —until we come to the 28th verse of the third chapter of Galatians:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

And when that day comes; when the Heavenly Kingdom is ushered in with its myriad blessed influences; when the sun of righteousness shall fill the world with its beams, as the natural sun, coming from the far South, fills the earth with glorious colors and beauty; then it will come to pass that there shall be no nationality, no difference of classes, and no difference of sexes. Then all shall be one in Christ Jesus.

I urge, then, that woman should perform the duty of a citizen in voting. You may, perhaps, ask, before I go any further, “What is the use of preaching to us that we ought to do it, when we are not permitted to do it?” That day in which the intelligent, cultivated women of America say, “We have a right to the ballot,” will be the day in which they will have it. (Voices—“Yes.” “That is so.”) There is no power on earth that can keep it from them. (Applause.) The reason you have not voted is because you have not wanted to. (Applause.) It is because you have not felt that it was your duty to vote. You have felt yourselves to be secure and happy enough in your privileges and prerogatives, and have left the great mass of your sisters, that shed tears and bore burdens, to shift for themselves. You have felt that you had rights more than you wanted now. O, yes, it is as if a beauty in Fifth avenue, hearing one plead that bread might be sent to the hungry and famishing, should say, “What is this talk about bread for? I have as much bread as I want and plenty of sweetmeats, and I do not want your loaves.” Shall one that is glutted with abundance despise the wants of the starving, who are so far below them that they do not hear their cries, not one of which escapes the ear of Almighty God? Because you have wealth, and knowledge, and loving parents, or a faithful husband, or kind brothers, and you feel no pressure of need, do you feel no inward pressure of humanity for others? Is there no part of God's great work in providence that should lead you to be discontented with your ease and privileges until you are enfranchised? You ought to vote; 08076and when your understanding and intellect are convinced that you ought to do it, you will have the power to do it; and you never will till then.

I. Woman has more interest than man in the promotion of virtue and purity and humanity. Half, shall I say?—Half does not half measure the proportion of those sorrows that come upon woman by reason of her want of influence and power. All the young men that, breaking down, break fathers’ and mothers hearts; all those that struggle near to the grave, weeping piteous tears of blood, it might almost be said, and that at last, under paroxysms of despair, sin against nature, and are swept out of misery into damnation; the spectacles that fill our cities, and afflict and torment villages—what are these but reasons that summon woman to have a part in that regenerating of thought and that regenerating of legislation which shall make vice a crime, and vice-makers criminals? Do you suppose that, if it were to turn on the votes of women to-day whether rum should be sold in every shop in this city, there would be one moment's delay in settling the question? What to the oak lightening is, that marks it and descends swiftly upon it, that woman's vote would be to miscreant vices in these great cities. (Applause.)

Ah, I speak that which I do know. As a physician speaks from that which he sees in the hospital where he ministers, so I speak from that which I behold in my professional position and place, where I see the undercurrent of life. I hear groans that come from smiling faces. I witness tears that when others look upon the face are all swept away, as the rain is when one comes after a 08177storm. Not most vocal are our deepest sorrows. Oh, the sufferings of wives for husbands untrue! Oh, the sufferings of mothers for sons led astray! Oh, the sufferings of sisters for sisters gone! Oh, the sufferings of companions for companion-women desecrated! And I hold it to be a shame that they, who have the instinct of purity and of divine remedial mercy more than any other, should withhold their hand from that public legislation by which society may be scoured, and its pests cleared away. And I declare that woman has more interest in legislation than man, because she is the sufferer and the home-staying, ruined victim.

II. The household, about which we hear so much said as being woman's sphere, is safe only as the community around about it is safe. Now and then there may be a Lot that can live in Sodom but when Lot was called to emigrate, he could not get all his children to go with him. They had been intermarried and corrupted. A Christian woman is said to have all that she needs for her understanding and to task her powers if she will stay at home and mend her husband's clothes, if she has a husband, and take care of he children, if she has children. The welfare of the family, it is said, ought to occupy he time and thoughts. And some ministers, in descanting upon the sphere of woman, are wont to magnify the glory and beauty of a mother teaching some future chief-justice or some president of the United States. Not one whit of glory would I withdraw from such a canvas as that but I aver that the power to teach these children largely depends upon the influences that surround the household; so that she that would 08278take the best care of the house must take care of the atmosphere which is around the house as well. And every true and wise Christian woman is bound to have a thought for the village, for the country, for the State, and for the nation. (Applause.)

That was not the kind of woman that brought me up —a woman that never thought of anything outside of her own door-yard. My mother's house was as wide as Christ's house; and she taught me to understand the words of him that said, “The field is the world; and whoever needs is your brother.” A woman that is content to wash stockings, and make Johnny-cake, and to look after and bring up her boys faultless to a button, and that never thinks beyond the meal-tub, and whose morality is so small as to be confined to a single house, is an under-grown woman, and will spend the first thousand years after death in coming to that state in which she ought to have been before she died. (Laughter.) Tell me that a woman is fit to give an ideal life to an American citizen, to enlarge his sympathies, to make him wise in judgment, and to establish him in patriotic regard, who has no thought above what to eat and drink, and wherewithal to be clothed! The best housekeepers are they that are the most widely beneficent. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these thing shall be added unto you.” God will take care of the stockings, if you will take care of the heads! (Laughter and applause.) Universal beneficence never hinders anybody's usefulness in any particular field of duty. Therefore, woman's sphere should not be limited to the household. The public 08379welfare requires that she should have a thought of affairs outside of the household, and in the whole community.

III. Woman brings to public affairs peculiar qualities, aspirations, and affections which society needs. I have had persons say to me, “Would you, now, take your daughter and your wife, and walk down to the polls with them?” If I were to take my daughter and my wife and walk down to the polls with them, and there was a squirming crowd of bloated, loud-mouthed, blattering men, wrangling like so many maggots on cheese, what do you think would take place, but that, at the moment I appeared with my wife and daughter walking by my side with conscious dignity and veiled modesty, the lane would open, and I should pass thorugh the red sea unharmed? (Great applause.) Where is there a mob such that the announcement that a woman is present, does not bring down the loudest of them? Nothing but the sorcery of rum prevents a man from paying unconscious, instant respect to the presence of a woman.

I am asked, “Would you take your wife and daughter into the vulgarity of politics?” Now, to take your wife and daughter into the vulgarity of politics is to cleanse politics of its vulgarity. (Applause.) Politics is vulgar, because you are not there, woman; and that is one of the reasons why you must be there. You may surround the polls with as many inspectors of election as the room would hold, and station a line of policemen or military all the way from the door to the ballot-box, and corruption will creep through them; but put a revered mother, a beloved wife, or an honored sister there, and corruption will look upon them, and veil its face, 08480and pass on. (Applause.) It is the presence of woman in public affairs, actuated by a high sense of duty, and befriended and co-operated with by man, that allays corruption, wards off insult, and brings peace where was strife and struggle. And, therefore, I say, Politics is as the poor wretch that called out to the Master, “Art thou come to torment me before my time?” when woman approaches it. And a voice shall yet be heard saying, “I command thee to come out of it.” And the devil will cast it on the ground, and tear it, and it will wallow foaming, and the devil will come out of it, and it will be worth twenty times more without a devil than with a devil in it. (Applause.)

IV. The history of woman's co-operative labors thus far justifies the most sanguine anticipations, such as I have alluded to. Allusion has been made to the purification of literature. The influence of woman has been a part of the cause of this, unquestionably; but I would not ascribe such a result to any one cause. God is a great workman, and has a chest full of tools, and never uses one tool, but always many; and in the purification of literature, the elevation of thought, the advancement of the public sentiment of the world in humanity, God has employed more than that which has been wrought in their departments. And that which the church has long ago achieved for herself, that which the family has achieved—that, in more eminence and more wondrous and surprising beauty, the world will achieve for itself in public affairs, when man and woman co-operate there, as now they are co-operating in all other spheres of taste, intellection and morality.

Let me now pass, without touching upon some other points which I had marked, to a consideration of a few of the objections that are made to a woman's mixing in public affairs as a voter and as a citizen.

I. It is said, “A woman's place is at home.” Well, now, since compromise are coming into vogue again, will you compromise with me, and agree that until a woman has a home she may vote? (Laughter.) That is only fair. It is said, “She ought to stay at home, and attend to home duty, and minister to the wants of father, or husband, or brothers.” Well, may all orphan women, and unmarried women, and women that have no abiding place of residence vote? If not, where is the argument? But, to look at it seriously, what is the defect of this statement? It is the impression that staying at home is incompatible with going abroad. Never was there a more monstrons fallacy. I light my candle, and it gives me all the light I want, and it gives all the light you want to you, and to you, and to you, and to every other one in the room; and there is not one single ray that you get there which cheats me here; and a woman that is doing her duty right in the family, sheds a beneficent influence out upon the village in which she dwells, without taking a moment's more time.

My cherry-trees are joyful in all their blossoms, and thousands go by them and see them in their beauty day by day; but I never mourn the happiness that they bestow on passers-by as having been taken from me. I am not cheated by the perfume that goes from my flowers into my neighbor's yard. And the character of a true woman is such that it may shine everywhere without 08682making her any poorer. She is richer in proportion as she gives away. (Applause.) It is that which you give away that you keep. It is that which you keep that can never do any good to yourselves or others. It is that which you give away that bounds back and makes you stronger.

Why, I set a candle in my window in the country, that they who come up the lane may see how to drive and reach my house, and clear down to the road that modest candle sheds its light; but does it cheat me? Does it fail to do its work inside because it sends its long line of light outside? Some men seen to think that, if woman should get the rights that she is clamoring for, she would do nothing but put a reticule on her arm, and start out every morning with a bundle of tracts, discussing all manner of questions. Oh no, she is not a man! If she were a man she would go about with noisy inefficiency, buzzing and bustling, and making a great ado about nothing; but, being a woman, she goes about what she has to do, and does it so quietly as scarcely to be noticed. And is she not a skillful manager? Does she not know how to give up and conquer? Does she not know how to touch the subtile springs of action? Has she not the element of foresight? It is called “tact.” I do not care what you call it, it is blessed. For next to having your own way, is thinking that you have it. (Laughter.) Some of the sweetest experiences of my life were when my father, who was two-thirds a woman—a woman with man's enamel on—took my side when I meant to go to sea, and made it all so plain and right that, when I came 08783to the point of deciding, I did not want to go, and all trouble was avoided. If he had whipped me, and shut me up, and scolded me, I should have gone away; and I do not know where I should have been buried—somewhere. Woman has that peculiar quality of doing much while she talks little. Her life is largely in the sphere of spiritual unembodied power. She works with the fewest instruments, and the least noise possible, and avoids observation; while man works with all the instrumentation at his command, and makes the greatest possible amount of noise and clatter. And it is just because woman is woman that she is fitted, while she takes care of the household, to take care of the village and the community around about her.

II. It is said, “It will destroy woman's delicacy if she goes into politics.” Certainly, if she goes into partnership with some politicians. One base politician is corruption enough to spoil a whole village; and I would not have her inoculated with it for the world. But I do not propose that she should change her sex. I would a great deal rather have a man that was born a man than a woman that has become a man. Unsexing is poor business. I have seen that tried to be women and women that tried to be men; and commend me to women that are women by nature, and men that are men by nature, and to no mixture. (Applause.) If you come into public affairs with the same kind of ratioeinactive force that men do, you will be no better there than men; but if you do not divest yourself of those intuitions of the moral sense, and that foresight, that tact, which you employ in other spheres, then your 08884presence there will be more fruitful of good than men's. It is to bring these things into the place of the coarser instrumentations of politics that I want you to be a woman more than ever. And if, there be sweetness on the tongue, let it ring like a silver bell. If there be mildness in the eye, let if not give place to fierce zeal. If there be melody of the heart, let it charm away that which is bad in public affairs. It is as a woman that you are summoned to take part in those affairs. If you lay aside the woman, then you are not needed. It is to get another sort of influence in public affairs that we plead for woman's entrance there.

But it is said, “She ought to act through her father, or husband, or son.” Why ought she? Did you ever frame an argument to show why the girl should use her father to vote for her, and the boy who is younger, and not half so witty, should vote for himself? It does not admit of an argument. If the grandmother, the mother, the wife, and the eldest daughter, are to be voted for by the father, the husband, and the eldest brother, then why are not the children to be voted for in complete family relation by the patriarchal head? Why not go back to the tribal custom of the desert, and let the patriarch do all the voting? To be sure, it would change the whole form of our government; but, if it is good for the family, it is just as good for classes. I should like to see one man go to another and claim the right to vote for him. Suppose I should go to men that are working for me, and say, “Boys, you are nothing but workmen, and I am the owner of a fancy farm, which I pay roundly for, and you ought to let me vote 08985for you; tell me what you want, and I will take it into consideration.” There would be as much reason in this as there is in the argument that women ought not to vote because her husband or father can vote for her.

In a frontier settlement is a log cabin, and it is in a region which is infested by wolves. There are in the family a broken-down patient of a man, a mother, and three daughters. The house is surrounded by a pack of these voracious animals, and the inmates feel that their safety requires that the intruders should be driven away. There are three or four rifles in the house. The man creeps to one of the windows, and to the mother and daughter it is said, “You load the rifles, and hand them to me, and let me fire them.” But they can load all the four rifles, and he cannot fire half as fast as they can load; and I say to the mother, “Can you shoot?” She says, “Let me try”; and she takes a gun, and points it at the wolves, and pulls the trigger, and I see one of them throw his feet up in the air. “Ah!” I say, “I see you can shoot! You keep the rifle, and fire it yourself.” And I say to the eldest daughter, “Can you shoot?” “I guess I can,” she says. “Well, dare you?” “I dare do anything to save father and the family.” And she takes one of the rifles, and pops over another of the pack. And I tell you, if the wolves knew that all the women were firing, they would flee from that cabin instanter. (Laughter.) I do not object to a woman loading a man's rifle and letting him shoot; but I say that, if there are two rifles, she ought to load one of them herself and shoot. And I do not see any use in a woman's influencing a man, and loading him 09086with a vote, and letting him go and fire it off at the ballot-box. (Laughter and applause.)

It is said, again, “Woman is a creature of such an excitable nature that, if she were to mingle with men in public affairs, it would introduce a kind of vindictive acrimony, and politics would become intolerable.” O, if I really thought so, if I thought that the purity of politics would be sullied, I would not say another word! (Laughter.) I do not want to take anything from the celestial graces of politics! (Renewed laughter.) I want Fernando Wood and the aldermen of New York to understand that I would not on any account demoralize politics; and, if I believed that bringing our mothers and wives and daughters into politics would have a tendency to lower its moral tone in the slightest degree, I would give up the argument. (Laughter and applause.) I will admit that woman is an excitable creature, and I will admit that politics needs no more excitement; but, sometimes, you know, things are homœopathic. A woman's excitement is apt to put out a man's; and if she should bring her excitability into politics, it is likely that it would neutralize the excitement already there, and that there would be a grand peace! (Laughter.)

But, not to trifle with it, woman is excitable. Woman is yet to be educated. Woman is yet to experience the reactionary influence of being a public legislator and thinker. Add let her sphere be extended beyond the family and the school, so that she should be interested in, and actively engaged in promoting the welfare of the whole community, and in the course of three generations the reaction on her would be such that the excitement 09187she would bring into public affairs would be almost purely moral inspiration. It would be the excitement of purity and disinterested benevolence. And this excitement we need. For, although men decry excitement, and enthusiasm, and fanaticism, that cause which has not enthusiasm in it is dead, and ought to be buried; and only that cause has regency and potency which has in it just that excitement, indomitable, far-reaching, and purifying, which comes from man's and woman's moral instincts. And I would to God that we could have a little more of such enthusiasm and fanaticism in politics. (Applause.)

It is said, furthermore, “Woman might vote for herself, and take office.” Why not? A woman makes as good a postmistress as a man does postmaster. Woman has been tried in every office from the throne to the position of the humblest servant; and where has she been found remiss? I believe that multitudes of the offices that are held by men are mere excuses for leading an effeminate life; and that with their superior physical strength it behooves them better to be actors out of doors, where the severity of climate and the elements is to be encountered, and leave indoor offices to women, to whom they more properly belong.

But, women, you are not educated for these offices. I hear bad reports of you. It is told me that the trouble in giving places to women is that they will not do their work well; that they do not feel the sense of conscience. They have been flattered so long, they have been called “women” so long, they have had compliments instead of rights so long, that they are spoiled; but when a generation 09288of young women shall have been educated to a stern sense of right and duty, and shall take no compliments at the expense of right, we shall have no such complaints as these. And when a generation of women, working with the love of God and true patriotism in their souls, shall have begun to hold office, meriting it, and being elected to it by those that would rather have a woman than a man in office, then you may depend upon it that education has qualified them for the trusts which are committed to them. We have tried “old women” in office, and I am convinced that it would be better to have real women than virile old women in public stations. (Laughter and applause.) For my own sake, give me a just, considerate, true, straight-forward, honest-minded, noble-hearted woman, who has been able, in the fear of God, to bring up six boys in the way they should go, and settle them in life. If there is anything harder in this nation than that, tell me what it is. A woman that can bring up a family of strong-brained children, and make good citizens of them, can be President without any difficulty. (Applause.)

Let me now close with one single thought in connection with this objection. I protest in the name of my country-women against the aspersion which is cast upon them by those who say that woman is not fit to hold office or discharge public trusts. The name of what potentate to-day, if you go around the world, would probably, in every nation on the earth, bring down most enthusiasm and public approbation? It I know, here in your midst, shall mention the name of Queen Victoria, your cheers will be a testimony to your admiration of 09389this noble woman. (Great applause.) Though it be in a political meeting, or any other public gathering, no man can mention her name without eliciting enthusiastic tokens of respect. And yet, the same men that cheer her will go home, and put on their spectacles, and argue that woman ought not to hold office. Was there ever a nobler specimen of woman than the Duchess of Sutherland? And is there a nobler than her daughter, the Duchess of Argyle—a friend to our cause, and one who our Minister, Mr. Adams, told me knew more of public affairs than he did? There are State occasions when she must stand in Parliament with her queen, and perform appropriate public duties; and who ever thought that in her doing it there was any derogation of her sex? Who ever thought that a duchess in France, or a queen in Russia, or an empress in Austria, or any aristocratic woman, was unsexed or demeaned by occupying a high position under the government?

It is a controversy to-day between woman aristocratic and woman democratic (applause); and I claim that what it is right for an aristocratic woman to do—what it is right for a duchess, or a queen, or am empress to do—it is right for the simplest and plainest of my countrywomen to do, that has no title, and no credientials, except the fact that God made her a woman. All that I claim for the proudest aristocrat I claim for all other woman. (Applause.) I do not object to a woman being a queen, or a president, if she has the qualifications which fit her to be one. And I claim that, where there is a woman that has the requisite qualifications for holding any office in the family, in the church, or in the state, there 09490is no reason why she should not be allowed to hold it. And we shall have a perfect crystal idea of the state, with all its contents, only when man understands the injunction, “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” (Great applause.)