"In the first section, strike out the word "man"; and wherever in that section the word "he" occurs, add "or she"; and wherever the word "his" occurs, add "or her.""
Mr. CURTIS said: In proposing a change so new to our political practice, but so harmonious with the spirit and principles of our Government, it is only just that I should attempt to show that it is neither repugnant to reason nor hurtful to the State. Yet I confess some embarra.s.sment; for, while the essential reason of the proposition seems to me to be clearly defined, the objection to it is vague and shadowy. From the formal opening of the general discussion of the question in this country, by the Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, down to the present moment, the opposition to the suggestion, so far as I am acquainted with it, has been only the repet.i.tion of a traditional prejudice, or the protest of mere sentimentality; and to cope with these is like wrestling with a malaria, or arguing with the east wind. I do not know, indeed, why the Committee have changed the phrase "male inhabitant or citizen," which is uniformly used in a const.i.tutional clause limiting the elective franchise. Under the circ.u.mstances, the word "man" is obscure, and undoubtedly includes women as much as the word "mankind." But the intention of the clause is evident, and the report of the Committee makes it indisputable. Had they been willing to say directly what they say indirectly, the eighth line and what follows would read, "Provided that idiots, lunatics, persons under guardianship, felons, women, and persons convicted of bribery, etc., shall not be ent.i.tled to vote." In their report, the Committee omit to tell us why they politically cla.s.s the women of New York with idiots and criminals. They a.s.sert merely that the general enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women would be a novelty, which is true of every step of political progress, and is therefore a presumption in its favor; and they speak of it in a phrase which is intended to stigmatize it as unwomanly, which is simply an a.s.sumption and a prejudice. I wish to know, sir, and I ask in the name of the political justice and consistency of this State, why it is that half of the adult population, as vitally interested in good government as the other half, who own property, manage estates, and pay taxes, who discharge all the duties of good citizens, and are perfectly intelligent and capable, are absolutely deprived of political power, and cla.s.sed with lunatics and felons. The boy will become a man and a voter; the lunatic may emerge from the cloud and resume his rights; the idiot, plastic under the tender hand of modern science, may be moulded into the full citizen; the criminal, whose hand still drips with the blood of his country and of liberty, may be pardoned and restored; but no age, no wisdom, no peculiar fitness, no public service, no effort, no desire, can remove from woman this enormous and extraordinary disability. Upon what reasonable grounds does it rest? Upon none whatever. It is contrary to natural justice, to the acknowledged and traditional principles of the American Government, and to the most enlightened political philosophy. The absolute exclusion of women from political power in this State is simply usurpation.
"In every age and country," says the historian Gibbon, nearly a hundred years ago, "the wiser or at least the stronger of the two s.e.xes has usurped the powers of the State, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life."
The historical fact is that the usurping cla.s.s, as Gibbon calls them, have always regulated the position of women by their own theories and convenience. The barbaric Persian, for instance, punished an insult to the woman with death, not because of her but of himself. She was part of him. And the civilized English Blackstone only repeats the barbaric Persian when he says that the wife and husband form but one person--that is the husband.
Sir, it would be extremely amusing, if it were not tragical, to trace the consequences of this theory on human society and the unhappy effect upon the progress of civilization of this morbid estimate of the importance of men. Gibbon gives a curious instance of it, and an instance which recalls the spirit of the modern English laws of divorce. There was a temple in Rome to the G.o.ddess who presided over the peace of marriages. "But," says the historian, "her very name, Viriplaca--the appeaser of husbands--shows that repentance and submission were always expected from the wife," as if the offense usually came from her.
In the "Lawe"s resolution of Women"s Rights," published in the year 1632, a book which I have not seen, but of which there are copies in the country, the anonymous and quaint author says, and with a sly satire: "It is true that man and woman are one person, but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little river incorporateth with Rhoda.n.u.s, Humber, or the Thames, the poor rivulet looseth her name; it is carried and recarried with the new a.s.sociate--it beareth no sway--it possesseth nothing during coverture. A woman as soon as she is married is called _covert_--in Latine, _nupta_--that is, veiled; as it were overclouded and shadowed; she hath lost her streame. I may more truly, farre away, say to a married woman, her new self is her superior; her companion her master.... See here the reason of that which I touched before--that women have no voice in Parliament; they make no laws; they consent to none; they abrogate none. All of them are understood either married or to be married, and their desires are to their husbands."
From this theory of ancient society, that woman is absorbed in man; that she is a social inferior and a subordinate part of man; springs the system of laws in regard to women which in every civilized country is now in course of such rapid modification, and it is this theory which so tenaciously lingers as a traditional prejudice in our political customs. But a State which, like New York, recognizes the equal individual rights of all its members, declaring that none of them shall be disfranchised unless by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers, and which acknowledges women as property-holders and taxable, responsible citizens, has wholly renounced the old Feudal and Pagan theory, and has no right to continue the evil condition which springs from it. The honorable and eloquent gentleman from Onondaga said that he favored every enlargement of the franchise consistent with the safety of the State. Sir, I heartily agree with him, and it was the duty of the Committee in proposing to continue the exclusion of women, to show that it is necessary to the welfare and safety of the State that the whole s.e.x shall be disfranchised. It is in vain for the Committee to say that I ask for an enlargement of the franchise and must, therefore, show the reason. Sir, I show the reason upon which this franchise itself rests, and which, in its very nature, forbids arbitrary exclusion; and I urge the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women on the ground that whatever political rights men have women have equally.
I have no wish to refine curiously upon the origin of government.
If any one insists, with the honorable gentleman from Broome, that there are no such things as natural political rights, and that no man is born a voter, I will not now stop to argue with him; but as I believe the honorable gentleman from Broome is by profession a physician and surgeon, I will suggest to him that if no man is born a voter, so no man is born a man, for every man is born a baby. But he is born with the right of becoming a man without hindrance; and I ask the honorable gentleman, as an American citizen and political philosopher, whether, if every man is not born a voter, he is not born with the right of becoming a voter upon equal terms with other men? What else is the meaning of the phrase which I find in the New York _Tribune_ of Monday, and have so often found there, "The radical basis of government is equal rights for all citizens." There are, as I think we shall all admit, some kinds of natural rights. This summer air that breathes benignant around our national anniversary, is vocal with the traditional eloquence with which those rights were a.s.serted by our fathers. From all the burning words of the time, I quote those of Alexander Hamilton, of New York, in reply, as my honorable friend the Chairman of the Committee will remember, to the Tory farmer of Westchester: "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or dusty records.
They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power." In the next year, Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, summed up the political faith of our fathers in the Great Declaration. Its words vibrate through the history of those days. As the lyre of Amphion raised the walls of the city, so they are the music which sing course after course of the ascending structure of American civilization into its place.
Our fathers stood indeed upon technical and legal grounds when the contest with Great Britain began, but as tyranny encroached they rose naturally into the sphere of fundamental truths as into a purer air. Driven by storms beyond sight of land, the sailor steers by the stars; and our fathers, compelled to explore the whole subject of social rights and duties, derived their government from what they called self-evident truths. Despite the brilliant and vehement eloquence of Mr. Choate, they did not deal in glittering generalities, and the Declaration of Independence was not the pa.s.sionate manifesto of a revolutionary war, but the calm and simple statement of a new political philosophy and practice.
The rights which they declared to be inalienable are indeed what are usually called natural, as distinguished from political rights, but they are not limited by s.e.x. A woman has the same right to her life, liberty and property that a man has, and she has consequently the same right to an equality of protection that he has; and this, as I understand it, is what is meant by the phrase, the right of suffrage. If I have a natural right to that hand, I have an equal natural right to everything that secures to me its use, provided it does not harm the equal right of another; and if I have a natural right to my life and liberty, I have the same right to everything that protects that life and liberty which any other man enjoys. I should like my honorable friend, the Chairman of this Committee, to show me any right which G.o.d gave him, which he also gave to me, for which G.o.d gave him a claim to any defense which He has not given to me. And I ask the same question for every woman in this State. Have they less natural right to life, liberty, and property than my honorable friend the Chairman of the Committee; and is it not, to quote the words of his report, an extremely "defensible theory" that he can not justly deprive the least of those women of any protection of those rights which he claims for himself? No, sir, the natural, or what we call civil right, and its political defense, go together. This was the impregnable logic of the Revolution. Lord Gower sneered in Parliament at the American Colonists a century ago, as Mr. Robert Lowe sneers at the English Reformers to-day: "Let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights....
I am for enforcing these measures." Dr. Johnson bellowed across the Atlantic, "Taxation, no Tyranny." James Otis spoke for America, for common sense, and for eternal justice, in saying, "No good reason, however, can be given in any country, why every man of a sound mind should not have his vote in the election of a representative. If a man has but little property to protect and defend, yet his life and liberty are things of some importance."
And long before James Otis, Lord Somers said to a committee of the House of Commons, that the possession of the vote is the only true security which an Englishman has for the possession of his life and property.
Every person, then, is born with an equal claim to every kind of protection of his natural rights which any other person enjoys.
The practical question, therefore, is how shall this protection be best attained? and this is the question of government which, according to the Declaration, is established for the security of these rights. The British theory was that they could be better secured by an intelligent few than by the ignorant and pa.s.sionate mult.i.tude. Goldsmith expressed it in singing:
"For just experience shows in ever soil, That those who think must govern those who toil."
But n.o.body denies that the government of the best is the best government; the only question is how to find the best, and common sense replies:
"The good, "tis true, are heaven"s peculiar care; But who but heaven shall show us who they are?"
Our fathers answered the question of the best and surest protection of natural right by their famous phrase, "the consent of the governed." That is to say, since every man is born with equal natural rights, he is ent.i.tled to an equal protection of them with all other men; and since government is that protection, right reason and experience alike demand that every person shall have a voice in the government upon perfectly equal and practicable terms; that is, upon terms which are not necessarily and absolutely insurmountable by any part of the people.
Now these terms can not rightfully be arbitrary. But the argument of the honorable gentleman from Schenectady, whose lucid and dignified discourse needs no praise of mine, and the arguments of others who have derived government from society, seemed to a.s.sume that the political people may exclude and include at their pleasure; that they may establish purely arbitrary tests, such as height, or weight, or color, or s.e.x. This was substantially the squatter sovereignty of Mr. Douglas, who held that the male white majority of the settlers in a territory might deprive a colored minority of all their rights whatever; and he declared that they had the right to do it. The same right that this Convention has to hang me at this moment to that chandelier, but no other right.
Brute force, sir, may do anything; but we are speaking of rights, and of rights under this Government, and I deny that the people of the State of New York can rightfully, that is, according to right reason and the principles of this Government derived from it, permanently exclude any cla.s.s of persons or any person whatever from a voice in the Government, unless it can be clearly established that their partic.i.p.ation in political power would be dangerous to the State; and, therefore, the honorable gentleman from Kings was logically correct in opposing the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the colored population, upon the ground that they were an inferior race, of limited intelligence, a kind of Chimpanzee at best. I think, however, sir, the honorable and scholarly gentleman--even he--will admit, that at Pillow, at Milliken"s Bend, at Fort Wagner, the Chimpanzees did uncommonly well; yes, sir, as gloriously and immortally as our own fathers at Bunker Hill and Saratoga. "There ought to be no pariahs," says John Stuart Mill, "in a full grown and civilized nation; no persons disqualified except through their own default.... Every one is degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate his destiny." "No arrangement of the suffrage, therefore, can be permanently satisfactory in which any person or cla.s.s is peremptorily excluded; in which the electoral privilege is not open to all persons of full age who desire it." (Rep. G., p.
167.) And Thomas Hare, one of the acutest of living political thinkers, says that in all cases where a woman fulfills the qualification which is imposed upon a man, "there is no sound reason for excluding her from the parliamentary franchise. The exclusion is probably a remnant of the feudal law, and is not in harmony with the other civil inst.i.tutions of the country. There would be great propriety in celebrating a reign which has been productive of so much moral benefit by the abolition of an anomaly which is so entirely without any justifiable foundation."
(Hare, p. 280.)
The Chairman of the Committee asked Miss Anthony, the other evening, whether, if suffrage was a natural right, it could be denied to children. Her answer seemed to me perfectly satisfactory. She said simply, "All that we ask is an equal and not an arbitrary regulation. If _you_ have the right, _we_ have it." The honorable Chairman would hardly deny that to regulate the exercise of a right according to obvious reason and experience is one thing, to deny it absolutely and forever is another. And this is the safe practical rule of our government, as James Madison expressed it, that "it be derived from the great body of the people, not from an inconsiderable portion or favored cla.s.s of it." When Mr. Gladstone, in his famous speech that startled England, said in effect, that no one could be justly excluded from the franchise, except upon grounds of personal unfitness or public danger, he merely echoed the sentiment of Joseph Warren, which is gradually seen to be the wisest and most practical political philosophy: "I would have such a government as should give every man the greatest liberty to do what he chooses, consistent with restraining him from doing any injury to another." Is not that the kind of government, sir, which we wish to propose for this State? And if every person in New York has a natural right to life, liberty, and property, and a co-existent claim to a share in the government which defends them, regulated only by perfectly equitable conditions, what are the practical grounds upon which it is proposed to continue the absolute and hopeless disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of half the adult population?
It is alleged that women are already represented by men? Where are they so represented? and when was the choice made? If I am told that they are virtually represented, I reply, with James Otis, that "no such phrase as virtual representation is known in law or Const.i.tution. It is altogether a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd." I repeat, if they are represented, when was the choice made? n.o.body pretends that they have ever been consulted. It is a mere a.s.sumption to the effect that the interest and affection of men will lead them to just and wise legislation for women as well as for themselves. But this is merely the old appeal for the political power of a cla.s.s. It is just what the British parliament said to the colonies a hundred years ago. "We are all under the same government," they said: "Our interests are identical; we are all Britons; Britannia rules the wave; G.o.d save the King! and down with sedition and the Sons of Liberty!" The colonies chafed and indignantly protested, because the a.s.sumption that therefore fair laws were made was not true; because they were discovering for themselves what every nation has discovered--the truth that shakes England to-day, and brings Disraeli and the Tory party to their knees, and has already brought this country to blood--that there is no cla.s.s of citizens, and no single citizen, who can safely be intrusted with the permanent and exclusive possession of political power. "There is no instance on record," says Buckle, in his history of civilization in England, "of any cla.s.s possessing power without abusing it." It is as true of men as a cla.s.s as it is of an hereditary n.o.bility, or of a cla.s.s of property-holders. Men are not wise enough, nor generous enough, nor pure enough, to legislate fairly for women. The laws of the most civilized nations depress and degrade women. The legislation is in favor of the legislating cla.s.s. In the celebrated debate upon the Marriage Amendment Act in England, Mr. Gladstone said that "when the gospel came into the world woman was elevated to an equality with her stronger companion." Yet, at the very time he was speaking, the English law of divorce, made by men to regulate their domestic relations with women, was denounced by the law lords themselves as "disgusting and demoralizing" in its operation, "barbarous," "indecent," "a disgrace to the country," and "shocking to the sense of right." Now, if the equality of which Mr. Gladstone spoke had been political as well as sentimental, does he or any statesman suppose that the law of divorce would have been what it then was, or that the law of England to-day would give all the earnings of a married woman to her husband, or that of France forbid a woman to receive any gift without her husband"s permission?
We ask women to confide in us, as having the same interests with them. Did any despot ever say anything else? And, if it be safe or proper for any intelligent part of the people to relinquish exclusive political power to any cla.s.s, I ask the Committee, who proposed that women should be compelled to do this? To what cla.s.s, however rich, or intelligent, or honest, they would themselves surrender _their_ power? and what they would do if any cla.s.s attempted to usurp that power? They know, as we all know, as our own experience has taught us, that the only security of natural right is the ballot. They know, and the instinct of the whole loyal land knows, that, when we had abolished slavery, the emanc.i.p.ation could be completed and secured only by the ballot in the hands of the emanc.i.p.ated cla.s.s. Civil rights were a mere mocking name until political power gave them substance. A year ago, Gov. Orr of South Carolina told us that the rights of the freedmen were safest in the hands of their old masters. "Will you walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?" New Orleans, Memphis, and countless and constant crimes, showed what that safety was. Then, hesitating no longer, the nation handed the ballot to the freedmen, and said, "Protect yourselves!" And now Gov. Orr says that the part of wisdom for South Carolina is to cut loose from all parties, and make a cordial alliance with the colored citizens. Gov. Orr knows that a man with civil rights merely is a blank cartridge. Give him the ballot, and you add a bullet, and make him effective. In that section of the country, seething with old hatreds and wounded pride, and a social system upheaved from the foundation, no other measure could have done for real pacification in a century what the mere promise of the ballot has done in a year. The one formidable peril in the whole subject of reconstruction has been the chance that Congress would continue in the Southern States the political power in the hands of a cla.s.s, as the report of the Committee proposes that we shall do in New York.
If I am asked what do women want the ballot for, I answer the question with another, what do men want it for? Why do the British workmen at this moment so urgently demand it? Look into the British laws regulating labor, and you will see why. They want the ballot because the laws affecting labor and capital are made by the capitalist cla.s.s alone and are therefore unjust. I do not forget the progressive legislation of New York in regard to the rights of women. The Property Bill of 1860, and its supplement, according to the _New York Tribune_, redeemed five thousand women from pauperism. In the next year, Illinois put women in the same position with men, as far as property rights and remedies are concerned. I mention these facts with pleasure, as I read that Louis Napoleon will, under certain conditions, permit the French people to say what they think. But, if such reforms are desirable, they would certainly have been sooner and more wisely effected could women have been a positive political power. Upon this point one honorable gentleman asked Mrs.
Stanton whether the laws both for men and women were not constantly improving, and whether, therefore, it was not unfair to attribute the character of the laws about women to the fact that men made them. The reply is very evident. If women alone made the laws, legislation for both men and women would undoubtedly be progressive. Does the honorable gentleman think, therefore, that women only should make the laws?
It is true, Mr. Chairman, that, in the ordinary and honorable sense of the words, women are represented. Laws are made for them by another cla.s.s, and upon the theories which that cla.s.s, without the fear of political opposition, may choose to entertain, and in direct violation of the principles upon which, in their own case, they tenaciously insist. I live, sir, in the county of Richmond.
It has a population of some 27,000 persons. They own property, and manage it. They are taxed, and pay their taxes; and they fulfill the duties of citizens with average fidelity. But if the Committee had introduced a clause into the section they propose to this effect, "Provided that idiots, lunatics, persons under guardianship, felons, inhabitants of the county of Richmond, and persons convicted of bribery, shall not be ent.i.tled to vote,"
they would not have proposed a more monstrous injustice, nor a grosser inconsistency with every fundamental right and American principle, than in the clause they recommend; and in that case, sir, what do you suppose would have been my reception had I returned to my friends and neighbors, and had said to them, "The Convention thinks that you are virtually represented by the voters of Westchester and Chautauqua"?
Mr. Chairman, I have no superst.i.tion about the ballot. I do not suppose it would immediately right all the wrongs of women, any more than it has righted all those of men. But what political agency has righted so many? Here are thousands of miserable men all around us; but they have every path opened to them. They have their advocates; they have their votes; they make the laws, and, at last and at worst, they have their strong right hands for defense. And here are thousands of miserable women p.r.i.c.king back death and dishonor with a little needle; and now the sly hand of science is stealing that little needle away. The ballot does not make those men happy nor respectable nor rich nor n.o.ble; but they guard it for themselves with sleepless jealousy, because they know it is the golden gate to every opportunity; and precisely the _kind_ of advantage it gives to one s.e.x, it would give to the other. It would arm it with the most powerful weapon known to political society; it would maintain the natural balance of the s.e.xes in human affairs, and secure to each fair play within its sphere.
But, sir, the Committee tell us that the suffrage of women would be a revolutionary innovation; it would disturb the venerable traditions. Well, sir, about the year 1790, women were first recognized as school-teachers in Ma.s.sachusetts. At that time, the New England "school-marm" (and I use the word with affectionate respect) was a revolutionary innovation. She has been abroad ever since, and has been by no means the least efficient, but always the most modest and unnoticed, of the great civilizing influences in this country. Innovation!--why, sir, when Sir Samuel Romilly proposed to abolish the death-penalty for stealing a handkerchief, the law officers of the crown said it would endanger the whole criminal law of England. When the bill abolishing the slave-trade pa.s.sed the House of Lords, Lord St.
Vincent rose and stalked out, declaring that he washed his hands of the ruin of the British empire. When the Greenwich pensioners saw the first steamer upon the Thames, they protested that they did not like the steamer, for it was contrary to nature. When, at the close of the reign of Charles II., London had half a million of people, there was a fierce opposition to street-lamps,--such is the hostility of venerable traditions to an increase of light.
When Mr. Jefferson learned that New York had explored the route of a ca.n.a.l, he benignly regarded it, in the spirit of our Committee, as, doubtless, "defensible in theory"; for he said that it was "a very fine project, and might be executed a century hence." And, fifty-six years ago, Chancellor Livingston wrote from this city, that the proposition of a railroad, shod with iron, to move heavy weights four miles an hour, was ingenious, perhaps "theoretically defensible"; but, upon the whole, the road would not be so cheap or convenient as a ca.n.a.l. In this country, sir, the venerable traditions are used to being disturbed.
America was clearly designed to be a disturber of traditions, and to leave n.o.bler precedents than she found. So, a few months ago, what the committee call a revolutionary innovation was proposed by giving the ballot to the freedmen in the District of Columbia.
The awful results of such a revolution were duly set forth in one of the myriad veto messages of the President of the United States. But they have voted. If anybody proposed to disturb the election, it was certainly not the new voters. The election was perfectly peaceful, and not one of the presidential pangs has been justified. So with this reform. It _is_ new in the extent proposed. It is as new as the harvest after the sowing, and it is as natural. The resumption of rights long denied or withheld never made a social convulsion: that is produced by refusing them. The West-Indian slaves received their liberty, praying upon their knees; and the influence of the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women will glide into society as noiselessly as the dawn increases into day.
Or shall I be told that women, if not numerically counted at the polls, do yet exert an immense influence upon politics, and do not really need the ballot. If this argument was seriously urged, I should suffer my eyes to rove through this chamber and they would show me many honorable gentlemen of reputed political influence. May they, therefore, be properly and justly disfranchised? I ask the honorable Chairman of the Committee, whether he thinks that a citizen should have no vote because he has influence? What gives influence? Ability, intelligence, honesty. Are these to be excluded from the polls? Is it only stupidity, ignorance and rascality which ought to possess political power?
Or, will it be said that women do not want the ballot and ought to be asked? And upon what principle ought they to be asked? When natural rights or their means of defense have been immemorially denied to a large cla.s.s, does humanity, or justice, or good sense require that they should be registered and called to vote upon their own restoration? Why, Mr. Chairman, it might as well be said that Jack the Giant Killer ought to have gravely asked the captives in the ogre"s dungeon whether they wished to be released. It must be a.s.sumed that men and women wish to enjoy their natural rights, as that the eyes wish light or the lungs an atmosphere. Did we wait for emanc.i.p.ation until the slaves pet.i.tioned to be free? No, sir, all our lives had been pa.s.sed in ingenious and ignominious efforts to sophisticate and stultify ourselves for keeping them chained; and when war gave us a legal right to snap their bonds, we did not ask them whether they preferred to remain slaves. We knew that they were men, and that men by nature walk upright, and if we find them bent and crawling, we know that the posture is unnatural whether they may think so or not. In the case of women we acknowledge that they have the same natural rights as ourselves--we see that they hold property and pay taxes, and we must of necessity suppose that they wish to enjoy every security of those rights that we possess. So when in this State, every year, thousands of boys come of age, we do not solemnly require them to tell us whether they wish to vote. We a.s.sume, of course, that they do, and we say to them, "Go, and upon the same terms with the rest of us, vote as you choose." But gentlemen say that they know a great many women who do not wish to vote, who think it is not ladylike, or whatever the proper term may be. Well, sir, I have known many men who have habitually abstained from politics because they were so "ungentlemanly," and who thought that no man could touch pitch without defilement. Now what would the honorable gentlemen who know women who do not wish to vote, have thought of a proposition that I should not vote, because my neighbors did not wish to?
There may have been slaves who preferred to remain slaves--was that an argument against freedom? Suppose that there are a majority of the women of this State who do not wish to vote--is that a reason for depriving _one_ woman who is taxed of her equal representation, or one innocent person of the equal protection of his life and liberty?
Shall nothing ever be done by statesmen until wrongs are so intolerable that they take society by the throat? Did it show the wisdom of British Conservatism that it waited to grant the Reform bill of 1832 until England hung upon the edge of civil war? When women and children were worked sixteen hours a day in English factories, did it show practical good sense to delay a "short time" bill until hundreds of thousands of starving workmen agreed to starve yet more, if need be, to relieve the overwork of their families, and until the most pitiful procession the sun ever shone upon, that of the factory children, just as they left their work, marched through the streets of Manchester, that burst into sobs and tears at the sight? Yet if, in such instances, where there was so plausible an adverse appeal founded upon vested interests and upon the very theory of the government, it was unwise to wait until a general public outcry imperatively demanded the reform, how wholly needless to delay in this State a measure which is the natural result of our most cherished principles, and which threatens to disturb or injure nothing whatever. The amendment proposes no compulsion like the old New England law, which fined every voter who did not vote. If there are citizens of the State who think it unladylike or ungentlemanlike to take their part in the government, let them stay at home. But do not, I pray you, give them authority to detain wiser and better citizens from their duty.
But I shall be told, in the language of the Report of the Committee, that the proposition is openly at war with the distribution of functions and duties between the s.e.xes.
Translated into English, Mr. Chairman, this means that it is unwomanly to vote. Well, sir, I know that at the very mention of the political rights of women, there arises in many minds a dreadful vision of a mighty exodus of the whole female world, in bloomers and spectacles, from the nursery and kitchen to the polls. It seems to be thought that if women practically took part in politics, the home would be left a howling wilderness of cradles, and a chaos of undarned stockings and b.u.t.tonless shirts.
But how is it with men? Do they desert their workshops, their plows, and offices, to pa.s.s their time at the polls? Is it a credit to a _man_ to be called a professional politician? The pursuits of men in the world, to which they are directed by the natural apt.i.tude of s.e.x, and to which they must devote their lives, are as foreign from political functions as those of women.
To take an extreme case: there is nothing more incompatible with political duties in cooking and taking care of children than there is in digging ditches or making shoes, or in any other necessary employment, while in every superior interest of society growing out of the family, the stake of women is not less than men, and their knowledge is greater. In England, a woman who owns shares in the East-India Company may vote. In this country she may vote as a stockholder upon a railroad from one end of the country to another. But if she sells her stock, and buys a house with the money, she has no voice in the laying out of the road before her door, which her house is taxed to keep and pay for.
And why, in the name of good sense, if a responsible human being may vote upon specific industrial projects, may she not vote upon the industrial regulation of the State? There is no more reason that men should a.s.sume to decide partic.i.p.ation in politics to be unwomanly than that woman should decide for men that it is unmanly. It is not our prerogative to keep women feminine. I think, sir, they may be trusted to defend the delicacy of their own s.e.x. Our success in managing ours has not been so conspicuous that we should urgently desire more labor of the same kind.
Nature is quite as wise as we. Whatever their s.e.x incapacitates women from doing they will not do. Whatever duty is consistent with their s.e.x and their relation to society, they will properly demand to do until they are permitted.
The reply to the a.s.sertion that partic.i.p.ation in political power is unwomanly, and tends to subvert the family relation, is simple and unanswerable. It is that we can not know what is womanly until we see the folly of insisting that the theories of men settle the question. We know now what the convenience and feelings of men decide to be womanly. We shall know what _is_ womanly in the same sense that we know what is manly, only when women have the same equality of development and the same liberty of choice as men. The amendment I offer is merely a prayer that you will remove from women a disability, and secure to them the same freedom of choice that we enjoy. If the instincts of s.e.x, of maternity, of domesticity, are not persuasive enough to keep them in the truest sense women, it is the most serious defect yet discovered in the divine order of nature. When, therefore, the Committee declare that voting is at war with the distribution of functions between the s.e.xes, what do they mean? Are not women as much interested in good government as men? There is fraud in the Legislature; there is corruption in the courts; there are hospitals, and tenement-houses, and prisons; there are gambling-houses, and billiard-rooms, and brothels; there are grog-shops at every corner, and I know not what enormous proportion of crime in the State proceeds from them; there are 40,000 drunkards in the State, and their hundreds of thousands of children--all these things are subjects of legislation, and under the exclusive legislation of men the crime a.s.sociated with all these things becomes vast and complicated. Have the wives, and mothers, and sisters of New York less vital interest in them, less practical knowledge of them and their proper treatment, than the husbands and fathers? No man is so insane as to pretend it.
Is there then any natural incapacity in women to understand politics? It is not a.s.serted. Are they lacking in the necessary intelligence? But the moment that you erect a standard of intelligence which is sufficient to exclude women as a s.e.x, that moment most of the male s.e.x would be disfranchised. Is it that they ought not to go to public political meetings? But we earnestly invite them. Or that they should not go to the polls?
Some polls, I allow, in the larger cities, are dirty and dangerous places; and those it is the duty of the police to reform. But no decent man wishes to vote in a grog-shop, nor to have his head broken while he is doing it, while the mere act of dropping a ballot in a box is about the simplest, shortest, and cleanest that can be done. Last winter Senator Frelinghuysen, repeating, I am sure thoughtlessly, the common rhetoric of the question, spoke of the high and holy mission of women. But if people, with a high and holy mission, may innocently sit bare-necked in hot theatres to be studied through pocket-telescopes until midnight by any one who chooses, how can their high and holy mission be harmed by their quietly dropping a ballot in a box? What is the high and holy mission of any woman but to be the best and most efficient human being possible? To enlarge the sphere of duty and the range of responsibility, where there are adequate power and intelligence, is to heighten, not to lessen, the holiness of life.
But if women vote, they must sit on juries. Why not? Nothing is plainer than that thousands of women who are tried every year as criminals are not tried by their peers. And if a woman is bad enough to commit a heinous crime, must we absurdly a.s.sume that women are too good to know that there is such a crime? If they may not sit on juries, certainly they ought not to be witnesses.
A note in Howell"s State Trials, to which my attention was drawn by one of my distinguished colleagues in the convention, quotes an ancient work, "Probation by Witnesses," by Sir George Mackenzie, in which he says: "The reason why women are excluded from witnessing must be either that they are subject to too much compa.s.sion, and so ought not to be more received in criminal cases than in civil cases; or else the law was unwilling to trouble them, and thought it might learn them too much confidence, and make them subject to too much familiarity with men and strangers, if they were necessitated to vague up and down at all courts upon all occasions." Hume says this rule was held as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. But if too much familiarity with men be so pernicious, are men so pure that they alone should make laws for women, and so honorable that they alone should try women for breaking them? It is within a very few years at the Liverpool a.s.sizes in a case involving peculiar evidence, that Mr. Russell said: "The evidence of women is, in some respects, superior to that of men. Their power of judging of minute details is better, and when there are more than two facts and something be wanting, their intuitions supply the deficiency." "And precisely the qualities which fit them to give evidence," says Mrs. Dall, to whom we owe this fact, "fit them to sift and test it."
But, the objectors continue, would you have women hold office? If they are capable and desirous, why not? They hold office now most acceptably. In my immediate neighborhood, a postmistress has been so faithful an officer for seven years, that when there was a rumor of her removal, it was a matter of public concern. This is a familiar instance in this country. Scott"s "Antiquary" shows that a similar service was not unknown in Scotland. In "Notes and Queries," ten years ago (Vol. II., Sec. 2, 1856, pp. 83, 204), Alexander Andrews says: "It was by no means unusual for females to serve the office of overseer in small rural parishes," and a communication in the same publication (First Series, Vol. II., p.
383) speaks of a curious entry in the Harleian Miscellany (MS.
980, fol. 153): "The Countess of Richmond, mother to Henry VII., was a Justice of the Peace. Mr. Atturney said if it was so, it ought to have been by commission, for which he had made many an hower"s search for the record, but could never find it, but he had seen many arbitriments that were made by her. Justice Joanes affirmed that he had often heard from his mother of the Lady Bartlett, mother to the Lord Bartlett, that she was a Justice of the Peace, and did set usually upon the bench with the other Justices in Gloucestershire; that she was made so by Queen Mary, upon her complaint to her of the injuries she sustained by some of that county, and desiring for redress thereof; that as she herself, was Chief-Justice of all England, so this lady might be in her own county, which accordingly the Queen granted. Another example was alleged of one ---- Rowse, in Suffolk, who usually at the a.s.sizes and sessions there held, set upon the bench among the Justices _gladio cincta_." The Countess of Pembroke was hereditary sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised her office.
Henry the VIIIth granted a commission of inquiry, under the great seal, to Lady Ann Berkeley, who opened it at Gloucester, and pa.s.sed sentence under it. Henry VIII"s daughter, Elizabeth Tudor, was Queen of England, in name and in fact, during the most ill.u.s.trious epoch of English history. Was Elizabeth incompetent?
Did Elizabeth uns.e.x herself? Or do you say that she was an exceptional woman? So she was, but no more an exceptional woman than Alfred, Marcus Aurelius, or Napoleon were exceptional men.
It was held by some of the old English writers that a woman might serve in almost any of the great offices of the kingdom. And, indeed, if Victoria may deliberate in council with her ministers, why may not any intelligent English woman deliberate in Parliament, or any such American woman in Congress? I mention Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, Catherine, and all the famous Empresses and Queens, not to prove the capacity of women for the most arduous and responsible office, for that is undeniable, but to show the hollowness of the a.s.sertion that there is an instinctive objection to the fulfillment of such offices by women. Men who say so do not really think so. The whole history of the voting and office-holding of women shows that whenever men"s theories of the relation of property to the political franchise, or of the lineal succession of the government, require that women shall vote or hold office, the objection of impropriety and incapacity wholly disappears. If it be unwomanly for a woman to vote, or to hold office, it is unwomanly for Victoria to be Queen of England.
Surely if our neighbors had thought they would be better represented in this convention by certain women, there is no good reason why they should have been compelled to send us. Why should I or any person be forbidden to select the agent whom we think the most competent and truly representative of our will? There is no talent or training required in the making of laws which is peculiar to the male s.e.x. What is needed is intelligence and experience. The rest is routine.
The capacity for making laws is necessarily a.s.sumed when women are permitted to hold and manage property and to submit to taxation. How often the woman, widowed, or married, or single, is the guiding genius of the family--educating the children, directing the estate, originating, counseling, deciding. Is there anything essentially different in such duties and the powers necessary to perform them from the functions of legislation? In New Jersey the Const.i.tution of 1776 admitted to vote all inhabitants of a certain age, residence, and property. In 1797, in an act to regulate elections, the ninth section provides: "Every voter shall openly and in full view deliver his or her ballot, which shall be a single written ticket, containing the names of the persons for whom he or she votes." An old citizen of New Jersey says that "the right was recognized, and very little said or thought about it in any way." But in 1807 the suffrage was restricted to white male adult citizens of a certain age, residence, and property, and in 1844 the property qualification was abolished. At the hearing before the committee, the other evening, a gentleman asked whether the change of the qualification excluding women did not show that their voting was found to be inconvenient or undesirable. Not at all. It merely showed that the male property-holders out-voted the female. It certainly showed nothing as to the right or expediency of the voting of women. Mr. Douglas, as I said, had a theory that the white male adult squatters in a territory might decide whether the colored people in the territory should be enslaved. They might, indeed, so decide, and with adequate power they might enforce their decision. But it proved very little as to the right, the expediency, or the const.i.tutionality of slavery in a territory. The truth is that men deal with the practical question of female suffrage to suit their own purposes. About twenty-five years ago the Canadian government by statute rigorously and in terms forbade women to vote. But in 1850, to subserve a sectarian purpose, they were permitted to vote for school trustees. I am ashamed to argue a point so plain. What public affairs need in this State is "conscience," and woman is the conscience of the race. If we in this convention shall make a wise Const.i.tution, if the Legislatures that follow us in this chamber shall purify the laws and see that they are honorably executed, it will be just in the degree that we shall have accustomed ourselves to the refined, moral, and mental atmosphere in which women habitually converse.
But would you, seriously, I am asked, would you drag women down into the mire of politics? No, sir, I would have them lift us out of it. The duty of this Convention is to devise means for the improvement of the government of this State. Now, the science of government is not an ign.o.ble science, and the practice of politics is not necessarily mean and degrading. If the making and administering of law has become so corrupt as to justify calling politics filthy, and a thing in which no clean hands can meddle without danger, may we not wisely remember, as we begin our work of purification, that politics have been wholly managed by men?
How can we purify them? Is there no radical method, no force yet untried, a power not only of skillful checks, which I do not undervalue, but of controlling character? Mr. Chairman, if we sat in this chamber with closed windows until the air became thick and fetid, should we not be fools if we brought in deodorizers--if we sprinkled chloride of lime and burned a.s.safoetida, while we disdained the great purifier? If we would cleanse the foul chamber, let us throw the windows wide open, and the sweet summer air would sweep all impurity away and fill our lungs with fresher life. If we would purge politics let us turn upon them the great stream of the purest human influence we know.
But I hear some one say, if they vote they must do military duty.
Undoubtedly when a nation goes to war it may rightfully claim the service of all its citizens, men and women. But the question of fighting is not the blow merely, but its quality and persistence.
The important point is, to make the blow effective. Did any brave Englishman who rode into the jaws of death at Balaklava serve England on the field more truly than Florence Nightingale? That which sustains and serves and repairs the physical force is just as essential as the force itself. Thus the law, in view of the moral service they are supposed to render, excuses clergymen from the field, and in the field it details ten per cent of the army to serve the rest, and they do not carry muskets nor fight.
Women, as citizens, have always done, and always will do that work in the public defense for which their s.e.x peculiarly fits them, and men do no more. The care of the young warriors, the nameless and innumerable duties of the hospital and home, are just as essential to the national safety as fighting in the field. A nation of men alone could not carry on a contest any longer than a nation of women. Each would be obliged to divide its forces and delegate half to the duties of the other s.e.x.
But while the physical services of war are equally divided between the s.e.xes, the moral forces are stronger with women. It was the women of the South, we are constantly and doubtless very truly told, who sustained the rebellion, and certainly without the women of the North the Government had not been saved. From the first moment to the last, in all the roaring cities, in the remote valleys, in the deep woods, on the country hill-sides, on the open prairie, wherever there were wives, mothers, sisters, lovers, there were the busy fingers which, by day and by night, for four long years, like the great forces of spring-time and harvest, never failed. The mother paused only to bless her sons, eager for the battle; the wife to kiss her children"s father, as he went; the sister smiled upon her brother, and prayed for the lover who marched away. Out of how many hundreds of thousands of homes and hearts they went who never returned. But those homes were both the inspiration and the consolation of the field. They nerved the arm that struck for them. When the son and husband fell in the wild storm of battle, the brave woman-heart broke in silence, but the busy fingers did not falter. When the comely brother and lover were tortured into idiocy and despair, that woman-heart of love kept the man"s faith steady, and her unceasing toil repaired his wasted frame. It was not love of the soldier only, great as that was; it was knowledge of the cause.
It was that supreme moral force operating through innumerable channels like the sunshine in nature, without which successful war would have been impossible. There are thousands and thousands of these women who ask for a voice in the government they have so defended. Shall we refuse them?