es in withholding
the suffrage even from men, whenever it has believed that the grant
would prove injurious to the nation.

Here we have the whole question clearly defined. The good of society is
the true object of all human government. To this principle suffrage
itself is subordinate. It can never be more than a means looking to the
attainment of good government, and not necessarily its corner-stone.
Just so far is it wise and right. Move one step beyond that point, and
instead of a benefit the suffrage may become a cruel injury. The
governing power of our own country--the most free of all great
nations--practically proclaims that it has no right to bestow the
suffrage wherever its effects are likely to become injurious to the
whole nation, by allotting different restrictions to the suffrage in
every State of the Union. The right of suffrage is, therefore, most
clearly not an absolutely inalienable right universal in its
application. It has its limits. These limits are marked out by plain
justice and common-sense. Women have thus far been excluded from the
suffrage precisely on the same principles--from the conviction that to
grant them this particular privilege would, in different ways, and
especially by withdrawing them from higher and more urgent duties, and
allotting to them other duties for which they are not so well fitted,
become injurious to the nation, and, we add, ultimately injurious to
themselves, also, as part of the nation. If it can be proved that this
conviction is sound and just, founded on truth, the assumed inalienable
right of suffrage, of which we have been hearing so much lately,
vanishes into the "baseless fabric of a vision." If the right were
indeed inalienable, it should be granted, without regard to
consequences, as an act of abstract justice. But, happily for us, none
but the very wildest theorists are prepared to take this view of the
question of suffrage. The advocates of female suffrage must, therefore,
abandon the claim of inalienable right. Such a claim can not logically
be maintained for one moment in the face of existing facts. We proceed
to the third point.

THIRDLY. THE ELEVATION OF THE ENTIRE SEX, THE GENERAL PURIFICATION OF
POLITICS THROUGH THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN, AND THE CONSEQUENT ADVANCE OF
THE WHOLE RACE. Such, we are told, must be the inevitable results of
what is called the emancipation of woman, the entire independence of
woman through the suffrage.

Here we find ours