of modern civilization has been toward according them
greater equality of condition is attested by the current history
of every nation within its pale. Rights of married women and
minors are constantly finding new expression in our laws and new
force in our public opinion, which is only law in process of
formation. While it will not be necessary, therefore, to go into
those deeper and anterior questions of social life involving the
substitution of voluntary for compulsory modes which are
agitating so profoundly the intellect of this age, it is
important to note that of the three great departments of control
in human affairs, namely, morals or conscience, manners or
society, governments or laws, the two former have been
unreservedly conceded to the full and equal participation of
women. And furthermore, I venture to affirm with all confidence,
that although the social relation, as it embraces a recognition
of family dependence, may present obstacles to an equal influence
under present forms of government and to the full exercise of
citizen rights on the part of women, yet that the purity, the
refinement, the instinctive reading of character, the elegant
culture of the women of our land, if brought to bear upon the
conduct of political affairs, would do much to elevate them in
all their aims, and conform them to higher standards of justice.

Mr. President, I have listened in vain for the argument on which
is predicated the assertion that sex alone affords a rightful
ground for exclusion from the rights of franchise. I do not find
anything to justify that view, even in the position of those who
contend that franchise is a mere political privilege and not
founded in any right, for that would apply to men equally as to
women, and does not touch the question of relative rights. The
position would still remain to be established why the franchise
should be given to the one and not to the other. It would remain
still to present grounds of principle on which that right as such
may be denied to her and not denied to him. I have heard reasons
of policy, reasons of sentiment, reasons of precedent advanced to
justify this exclusion; but in all frankness, and with no
disrespect intended, I must say that those which have been
presented during this debate see