ffrage
is based? All power centers in the people. Our Federal
Constitution, as well as that of every State, opens with the
words, "We, the people." However this phrase may have been
understood and acted on in the past, women to-day are awake to
the fact that they constitute one half the American people; that
they have the right to demand that the constitution shall secure
to them "justice," "domestic tranquillity," and the "blessings of
liberty." So long as women are not represented in the government
they are in a condition of tutelage, perpetual minority, slavery.

You smile at the idea of women being slaves in this country.
Benjamin Franklin said long ago, "that they who have no voice in
making the laws, or in the election of those who administer them,
do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who
have votes and to their representatives." I might occupy hours in
quoting grand liberal sentiments from the fathers--Madison,
Jefferson, Otis, and Adams--in favor of individual
representation. I might quote equally noble words from the
statesmen of our day--Seward, Sumner, Wade, Trumbull, Schurz,
Thurman, Groesbeck, and Julian--to prove "that no just government
can be formed without the consent of the governed"; that "the
ballot is the columbiad of our political life, and every man who
holds it is a full-armed Monitor." But what do lofty utterances
and logical arguments avail so long as men, blinded by old
prejudices and customs, fail to see their application to the
women by their side? Alas! gentlemen, women are your subjects.
Your own selfish interests are too closely interwoven for you to
feel their degradation, and they are too dependent to reveal
themselves to you in their nobler aspirations, their native
dignity. Did Southern slaveholders ever understand the
humiliations of slavery to a proud man like Frederick Douglass?
Did the coarse, low-bred master ever doubt his capacity to govern
the negro better than he could govern himself? Do cow-boys,
hostlers, pot-house politicians ever doubt their capacity to
prescribe woman's sphere better than she could herself? We have
yet to learn that, with the wonderful progress in art, science,
education, morals, religion, and government we have witnessed in
the last century, woman ha