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A criticism has been made upon the exercise of this right by the women of Utah that the plural wives in that Territory are under the control of their polygamous husbands. Be that as it may, it is an undoubted fact that there is probably no city of equal size on this continent where there is less disturbance of the peace or where the citizen is any more secure in his person or property, either by day or night, than in the city of Salt Lake. A qualified right of suffrage has also been given to women in Oregon, Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Michigan, Kentucky, and New York. Of the operation of the law in the last-named State, the governor of the State, in a message to the legislature on the 12th May last, said:

The recent law making women eligible as school trustees has produced admirable results, not only in securing the election of many of them as trustees of schools, but especially in elevating the qualifications of men proposed as candidates for school boards, and also in stimulating greater interest in the management of schools generally. The effect of these new experiences is to widen the influence and usefulness of women.

So well satisfied are the representatives in the legislature of that State with these results that the assembly, by a large majority, recently passed to a third reading an act giving the full right of suffrage to women, the passage of which has been arrested in the senate by an opinion of the attorney general that a constitutional amendment is necessary to accomplish the object.

In England women are allowed to vote at all municipal elections and hold the office of guardian of the poor. In four States-Nebraska, Indiana, Oregon, and Iowa-propositions have passed their legislatures and are now pending conferring the right of suffrage upon women.

Notwithstanding all these efforts, it is the opinion of the best informed men and women, who have devoted more than a third of a century to the consideration and discussion of the subject, that an amendment to the Federal Constitution, in analogy to the fifteenth amendment of that instrument, is the most safe, direct, and expeditious mode of settling the question. It is the question of the enfranchisement of half a race now denied the right, and that, too, the most favored race in the estimation of those who deny the right. Petitions from time to time, signed by many thousand petitioners, have been presented to Congress, and there are now upon our files 75 petitions representing 18 different States. Two years ago treble the number of petitions, representing over 25 different States, were presented.

If Congress should adopt the pending resolution, the question would go before the intelligent bodies who are chosen to represent the people in the legislatures of the various States and would receive a more enlightened and careful consideration than if submitted to the masses of the male population, with all their prejudices, in the form of an amendment to the constitution of the several States. Besides, such an amendment, if adopted, would secure that uniformity in the exercise of the right which could not be expected by action from the several States.

We think the time has arrived for the submission of such an amendment to the legislatures of the States. We know the preju

dices which the movement for suffrage to all, without regard to sex, had to encounter from the very outset, prejudices which still exist in the minds of many. The period for employing the weapons of ridicule and enmity has not yet passed. Now, as in the beginning, we hear appeals to prejudice and the baser passions of men. The anathema "woe betide the hand which plucks the wizard beard of hoary error" is yet employed to deter men from acting upon their convictions as to what ought to be done with reference to this great question. To those who are inclined to cast ridicule upon the movement, we quote the answer made while one of the early conventions was in session in the State of New York:

A collection of women arguing for political rights and for the privileges usually conceded only to the other sex is one of the easiest things in the world to make fun of. There is no end to the smart speeches and the witty remarks that may be made on the subject. But when we seriously attempt to show that a woman who pays taxes ought not to have a voice in the manner in which the taxes are expended, that a woman whose property and liberty and person are controlled by the laws should have no voice in framing those laws, it is not so easy. If women are fit to rule in the monarchies, it is difficult to say why they are not qualified to vote in a republic, nor can there be greater indelicacy in a woman going up to the ballot box than there is in a woman opening à legislature or issuing orders to an army.

To all who are more serious in their opposition to the movement, we remind them of the words of Abraham Lincoln:

I go for all sharing the privileges of the Government who assist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding women.

Of Bishop Simpson:

I believe that the vices in our large cities will never be conquered until the ballot is put into the hands of women.

Of the Rev. James Freeman Clark:

I do not think our politics will be what they ought to be till women are legislators and voters.

Of George William Curtis:

Women have quite as much interest in good government as men, and I have never heard or read of any satisfactory reason for excluding them from the ballot box; I have no more doubt of their ameliorating influence upon politics than I have of the influence they exert everywhere else.

Of Bishop Gilbert Haven:

In view of the terrible corruption of our politics, people ask, Can we maintain universal suffrage? I say no, not without women. The only bear garden in our community is the town meeting and the caucus. Why is this? Because these

are the only places at which women are not present.

Of Gov. Long, of Massachusetts:

I repeat my conviction of the right of woman suffrage. Because suffrage is a right and not a grace it should be extended to women who bear their share of the public cost, and who have the same interest that I have in the selection of its officials, and the making of its laws which affect their lives, their property, and their happiness.

Of Herbert Spencer:

However much the giving of political power to women may disagree with our notions of propriety, we conclude that, being required by that first prerequisite to greater happiness, the law of equal freedom, such a concession is unques tionably right and good.

And of Plato:

In the administration of a state, neither a woman as a woman, nor a man as a man has any special functions, but the gifts are equally diffused in both sexes. The same opportunity for self-development which makes man a good guardian will make woman a good guardian, for their original nature is the same.

It has become a custom, almost universal, to invite and to welcome the presence of women at political assemblages to listen to discussions upon the topics involved in the canvass. Their presence has done much toward the elevation, refinement, and freedom from insincerity and hypocrisy in such discussions. Why would not the same results be wrought out by their presence at the ballot box? Wherever the right has been exercised by law, both in England and in this country, such has been its effect in the conduct of elections.

The framers of our system of government embodied in the Declaration of Independence the statement that to secure the rights which are therein declared to be inalienable and in respect to which all men are created equal, "governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." The system of representative government they inaugurated can only be maintained and perpetuated by allowing ali citizens to give that consent through the medium of the ballot box; the only mode in which the "consent of the governed" can be obtained. To deny to one-half of the citizens of the Republic all participation in framing the laws by which they are to be governed, simply on account of their sex, is political despotism to those who are excluded, and "taxation without representation" to such of them as have property liable to taxation. Their investiture with separate estates leads, logically and necessarily, to their right to the ballot as the only means afforded them for the protection of their property, as it is the only means of their full protection in the enjoyment of the immeasurably greater right to life and liberty. To be governed without such consent is a clear denial of a right declared to be inalienable.

It is said that the majority of women do not desire and would not exercise the right, if acknowledged. The assertion rests in conjecture. In ordinary elections multitudes of men do not exercise the right. It is only in extraordinary cases, and when their interests and patriotism are appealed to, that male voters are with unanimity found at the polls. It would doubtless be the same with women. In the exceptional instances in which the exercise of the right has been permitted they have engaged with zeal in every important canvass. Even if the statement were founded in fact, it furnishes no argument in favor of excluding women from the exercise of the franchise. It is the denial of the right of which they complain. There are multitudes of men whose vote can be purchased at an election for the smallest and most trifling consideration. Yet all such would spurn with scorn and unutterable contempt a proposition to purchase their right to vote, and no consideration would be deemed an equivalent for such a surrender. Women are more sensitive upon this question than men, and so long as this right, deemed by them to be sacred, is denied, so long the agitation which has marked the progress of this contest thus far

will be continued.

Entertaining these views, your committee report back the proposed resolution without amendment for the consideration of the Senate, and recommend its passage.

E. G. LAPHAM.

T. M. FERRY.
H. W. BLAIR.

The Constitution is wisely conservative in the provision for its own amendment. It is eminently proper that whenever a large number of the people have indicated a desire for an amendment the judgment of the amending power should be consulted. In view of the extensive agitation of the question of woman suffrage, and the numerous and respectable petitions that have been presented to Congress in its support, I unite with the committee in recommending that the proposed amendment be submitted to the States.

H. B. ANTHONY.

[Senate Report 686, part 2, Forty-seventh Congress, first session.]

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES.

JUNF 5, 1882.-Ordered to be printed.

VIEWS OF THE MINORITY.

Mr. George, from the Committee on Woman Suffrage, submitted the following views of the minority (to accompany S. J. Res. 60):

The undersigned are unable to concur in the report of the majority recommending the adoption of the joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, for reasons which they will now proceed to state.

We do not base our dissent upon any ground having relation to the expediency or inexpediency of vesting in women the right to vote. Hence we shall not discuss the very grave and important social and political questions which have arisen from the agitation to admit to equal political rights the women of our country, and to impose on them the burden of discharging, equally with men, political and public duties.

Whether so radical a change in our political and social system would advance the happiness and welfare of the American people, considered as a whole, without distinction of sex, is a question on which there is a marked disagreement among the most enlightened and thoughtful of both sexes. Its solution involves considerations so intimately pertaining to all the relations of social and private life-the family circle the status of women as wives, mothers, daughters, and companions to the functions in private and public life which they ought to perform, and their ability and willingness to perform them— the harmony and stabilty of marriage, and the division of the labors and cares of that union-that we are convinced that the proper and safe discussion and weighing of them would be best secured by deliberations in the separate communities which have so deep an interest in the rightful solution of this grave question.

Great organic changes in government, especially when they involve, as this proposed change does, a revolution in the modes of life, longstanding habits, and the most sacred domestic relations of the people, should result only upon the demand of the people who are to be affected by them. Such changes should originate with and be molded and guided in their operation and extent by the people themselves. They should neither precede their demand for them nor be delayed in opposition to their clearly expressed wishes. Their happiness, their welfare, their advancement are the sole objects of the institution of government; of these they are not only the best, but they are the exclusive judges. They have commissioned us to exercise for their good the great powers which they have intrusted to us by their letter of attorney, the Constitution; not to assume to ourselves a superior wisdom or usurp a guardianship over them, dictating reforms not demanded by them and attempting to grasp power not granted.

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