consideration how far such an element introduced into your
political control would go to obviate these barbarous resorts to
force which you now deem essential and which we all deplore, but
which it is a folly, if not a crime, to say constitute a reason
woman should be denied any right to which she would be otherwise
entitled.

Mr. President, a second objection has been taken to any extension
of the franchise in this direction, and it is one that perhaps
has more seeming force in it than the other. It has been said
with a great deal of pathos by the Senator from New Jersey: what,
would you have your wives and your daughters mingle in the scenes
at the election-booths, go into the riotous demonstrations that
attend upon the exercise of the ballot, and become participants
in the angry and turbulent strifes that are so characteristic of
our political modes. I say with frankness that I would not have
wife or daughter mingle in any such scene; I would be loth to
have their purity and their virtue exposed to such demoralized
surroundings, surroundings that are only too apt to corrupt even
the males that mingle in the political arena. But, sir, I contend
that that is an argument against the ballot and the hustings and
the polling-booths, and not against the rights of woman. It is an
argument against those corruptions that you have permitted to
grow and fasten upon your political methods and appliances, and
not an argument against her rights as contrasted with the rights
of man. What! usurp an exclusive control--then degrade the modes
of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason
why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation
of the very powers of thought is that! On the contrary, I am
prepared to say that I see no reason, I never have seen any
reason, why there might not be changes introduced in your modes
of taking the sense of the community, of ascertaining public
opinion upon public measures, of making selection even of its
individuals for important offices, that would conform them far
more to those refinements and those elevations which should
characterize and control them, purifications that must render
them appropriate for participation in by the most refined of the
land, whether male or female. I se