believe rather that it will elevate men. I believe the tone of our politics will be higher, that our caucuses will be more jealously guarded and our conventions more orderly and decorous. I believe the polls will be freed from the vulgarity and coarseness which now too often surround them, and that the polling booths, instead of being in the least attractive parts of a ward or town, will be in the most attractive; instead of being in stables, will be in parlors. I believe the character of candidates will be more closely scrutinized and that better officers will be chosen to make and administer the laws. I believe that the casting of the ballot will be invested with a seriousness—I had almost said a sanctity—second only to a religious observance.
The objections enumerated above appear to be the only profferings against this measure excepting certain fragmentary quotations and deductions from the sacred Scriptures; and here, Mr. President, I desire to enter my most solemn protest. The opinions of Paul and Peter as to what was the best policy for the struggling churches under their supervision, in deferring to the prejudices of the communities which they desired to attract and benefit, were not inspirations for the guidance of our civilization in matters of political co-operation; and every apparent inhibition of the levelment of the caste of sex may be neutralized by selections of other paragraphs and by the general spirit and trend of the Holy Book. . . . Sir, my reverence for this grandest of all compilations, human or divine, compels a protest against its being cast into the street as a barricade against every moral, political and social reform; lest, when the march of progress shall have swept on and over to its consummation, it may appear to the superficial observer that it is the Bible which has been overthrown and not its erroneous interpretation.
If with our present experience of the needs and dangers of cooperative government and our present observation of woman's social and economic status, we could divest ourselves of our traditions and prejudices, and the question of suffrage should come up for incorporation into a new organic law, a distinction based upon sex would not be entertained for a moment. It seems to me that we should divest ourselves to the utmost extent possible of these entanglements of tradition, and judicially examine three questions relative to the proposed extension of suffrage: First, Is it right? Second, Is it desirable? Third, Is it expedient? If these be determined affirmatively our duty is plain.
If the right of the governed and the taxed to a voice in determining by whom they shall be governed and to what extent and for what purposes they may be taxed is not a natural right, it is nevertheless a right to the declaration and establishment of which by the fathers we owe all that we possess of liberty. They declared taxation without representation to be tyranny, and grappled with the most powerful nation of their day in a seven-years' struggle for the overthrow of such tyranny. It appears incredible to me that any one can indorse the principles proclaimed by the patriots of 1776 and deny their application to women.
