cted them, and would have withheld their votes from every
one who would not correct these most glaring evils.

The Senator tells us that the community in which he lives is so
barbarous and rude that a lady could not go to the polls to
perform a duty which the law permitted without insult and
rudeness. That is a state of things that I did not believe
existed anywhere. I do not believe that it exists in Baltimore
to-day. I do not believe if the ladies of Baltimore should go up
to the polls clothed with the legal right to select their own
legislators that there is anybody in Baltimore who would insult
them on their way in performing that duty. I do not believe that
our communities have got to that degree of depravity yet that
such kind of rascally prudence is necessary to be exercised in
making laws. On the other hand, I have always found wherever I
have gone that the rude and the rough in their conduct were
civilized and ameliorated by the presence of females; for I do
believe, as much as I believe anything else, that, take the world
as it is, the female part of it are really more virtuous than the
males. I think so; and I think if we were to permit them to have
this right, it would tend to a universal reform instead of the
reverse; and I do not believe any lady would be insulted in any
community that I know anything about while on her way to perform
this duty.

As I can see no good reason to the contrary, I shall vote for
this proposition. I shall vote as I have often voted, as the
Senator from Massachusetts has often voted, what he believed to
be right; not because he believed a majority were with him, but
because he believed the proposition which he was called upon to
vote for was right, just, and proper. It is because I can not see
that this is not so that I vote for it. It comes from a Senator
who does not generally vote with us; it is a proposition unlooked
for from his general course of action in this body, being, as he
says, on the conservative list, and generally for holding things
just as they are. Well, sir, I am for holding them just as they
are, when I think they are right, and when I think they are not,
I am for changing them and making them right. I do not think it
is right to exclude females from the right of suffrage. As I said