be no further morning
business, and no motion is interposed, the chair, although the
morning hour has not expired, will call up the unfinished
business, which is the bill (S, No. 1) to regulate the elective
franchise in the District of Columbia, the pending question being
on the amendment of the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan] to
strike out the word "male" before the word "person" in the second
line of the first section of the amendment, reported by the
Committee on the District of Columbia as a substitute for the
original bill.

Mr. ANTHONY: I suppose the Senator from Pennsylvania introduced
this amendment rather as a satire upon the bill itself, or if he
had any serious intention it was only a mischievous one to injure
the bill; but it will not probably have that effect, for I
suppose nobody will vote for it except the Senator himself, who
can hardly avoid it, and I, who shall vote for it because it
accords with a conclusion to which I have been brought by
considerable study upon the subject of suffrage. I do not contend
for female suffrage on the ground that it is a natural right,
because I believe that suffrage is a right derived from society,
and that society is competent to impose upon the exercise of that
right whatever conditions it chooses. I hold that the suffrage is
a delegated trust--a trust delegated to certain designated
classes of society--and that the whole body-politic has the same
right to withdraw any part of that trust, that we have to
withdraw any part of the powers or the trusts that we have
imposed upon any executive officer, and that it is no more a
punishment to restrict the suffrage, and thereby deprive certain
persons of the exercise of that right who have heretofore
exercised it, than it is a punishment on the Secretary of the
Treasury if we should take from him the appointment of certain
persons whose appointment is now vested in him. The power that
confers in each case has the right to withdraw.

The true basis of suffrage, of course, is intelligence and
virtue; but as we can not define those, as we can not draw the
line that shall mark the amount of intelligence and virtue that
any individual possesses, we come as near as we can to it by
imperfect conditions. It certainly will not be contended that