n, with minds as enlightened and as intelligent as
our own, have done immense good to their sex by agitating these
great subjects against all the ridicule and all the contempt that
has been wielded against them from the time they commenced the
agitation. I know that in my own State we had, a few years ago, a
great many laws on our statute-book depriving females of a great
many rights without the least reason upon earth. Perhaps it was
because the question was not agitated, and because it did not
particularly concern the males, that they did not turn their
attention to it; but when agitated in the Women's Rights
Conventions that have been so abused and ridiculed throughout the
country, man could no longer shut his eyes to the glaring defects
that existed in our system, and our Legislature has corrected
many of those abuses, and placed the rights of the female upon
infinitely higher grounds than they occupied there thirty years
ago; I believe this remark is as applicable to many other States
as it is to Ohio. I tell you the agitation of these subjects has
been salutary and good; and our male population would no more go
back to divest women of the rights they have acquired, than they
would go back now to slavery itself, in the advance we have
lately made.

What do I infer, then, from all this? Seeing that their rights
rest upon the same foundation and are only kept down by
proscription and prejudice, I think I know that the time will
come--not to-day, but the time is approaching--when every female
in the country will be made responsible for the just government
of our country as much as the male; her right to participate in
the Government will be just as unquestioned as that of the male.
I know that my opinions on this subject are a little in advance
of the great mass, probably, of the community in which I live;
but I am advancing a principle. I shall give a vote on this
amendment that will be deemed an unpopular vote, but I am not
frightened by that. I have been accustomed to give such votes all
my life almost, but I believe they have been given in the cause
of human liberty and right and in the way of the advancing
intelligence of our age; and whenever the landmark has been set
up the community have marched up to it. I think I am advocating