by whom it is
inflicted.

The condition of subjection in which women have been held is the
result of this principle; the result of superior strength, not of
superior rights, on the part of men. Superior strength, combined
with ignorance and selfishness, but not with malice. It is a
relic of the barbarism in the shadow of which nations have grown
up. Precisely as nations have receded from barbarism the severity
of that subjection has been relaxed. So long as merely physical
power governed in the affairs of the world, the wrongs done to
women were without the possibility of redress or relief; but
since nations have come to be governed by laws, there is room to
hope, though the process may still be a slow one, that injustice
in all its forms, or at least political injustice, may be
extinguished. No injustice can be greater than to deny to any
class of citizens not guilty of crime, all share in the political
power of a State, that is, all share in the choice of rulers, and
in the making and administration of the laws. Persons to which
such share is denied, are essentially slaves, because they hold
their rights, if they can be said to have any, subject to the
will of those who hold the political power. For this reason it
has been found necessary to give the ballot to the emancipated
slaves. Until this was done their emancipation was far from
complete. Without a share in the political powers of the State,
no class of citizens has any security for its rights, and the
history of nations to which I briefly alluded, shows that women
constitute no exception to the universality of this rule.

Great errors, I think, exist in the minds of both the advocates
and the opponents of this measure in their anticipation of the
immediate effects to be produced by its adoption. On the one hand
it is supposed by some that the character of women would be
radically changed--that they would be unsexed, as it were, by
clothing them with political rights, and that instead of modest,
amiable, and graceful beings, we should have bold, noisy, and
disgusting political demagogues, or something worse, if anything
worse can be imagined. I think those who entertain such opinions
are in error. The innate character of women is the result of
God's laws, not of man's, nor can t