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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
table the resolution, but did not endorse their arguments. He signed the following statement: "I think it probable that the interests of society will some time require that women should have the right of suffrage, and I am not willing to say more than that the present is not an opportune time for submission to the States of the proposed amendment."
In this, it will be observed, there is no recognition of woman's right to represent herself, no disposition to grant her petition for her own sake, but simply the opinion that should there ever be a crisis when her suffrage was needed it should be allowed as a matter of expediency.
In the eyes of posterity the Judiciary Committee of this Forty-eighth Congress will be redeemed from the disgrace of these reports by that of the minority, signed by Thomas B. Reed, afterwards for many years Speaker of the House; Ezra B. Taylor (O.); Moses A. McCoid (Ia.); Thomas M. Browne (Ind.). The question of woman suffrage never has been and never can be more concisely and logically stated.
No one who listens to the reasons given by the superior class for the continuance of any system of subjection can fail to be impressed with the noble disinterestedness of mankind. When the subjection of persons of African descent was to be maintained, the good of those persons was always the main object. When it was the fashion to beat children, to regard them as little animals who had no rights, it was always for their good that they were treated with severity, and never on account of the bad temper of their parents. Hence, when it is proposed to give to the women of this country an opportunity to present their case to the various State Legislatures to demand equality of political rights, it is not surprising to find that the reasons on which the continuance of the inferiority of women is urged are drawn almost entirely from a tender consideration of their own good. The anxiety felt lest they should thereby deteriorate would be an honor to human nature were it not an historical fact that the same sweet solicitude has been put up as a barrier against all the progress which women have made since civilization began.
There is no doubt that if to-day in Turkey or Algiers, countries where woman's sphere is most thoroughly confined to the home circle, it was proposed to admit them to social life, to remove the veil from their faces and permit them to converse in open day with the friends of their husbands and brothers, the conservative and judicious Turk or Algerine of the period, if he could be brought even to consider such a horrible proposition, would point out that the sphere of woman was to make home happy by those gentle insipidities which education would destroy; that by participating in conversation
