, for
the people and by the people" is only a rhetorical generality,
then women have no case. If not, they see no reason why, as they
are governed, they should not have a voice in choosing their
rulers; why, as people, they are not covered by Lincoln's
definition. They feel naturally that their exclusion is unjust.

Woman suffragists are not unconscious of the glaring contrast
between declared principles and actual practice, and they venture
to believe that a professed self-government which deliberately
ignores its own axioms is tending to decadence. They are not
unmindful of the slow evolution of human government from earliest
history, beginning in force and greed, reaching through struggles
of blood, in the course of time, to the legislative stage where
differences are adjudicated by reason, and the sword reserved as
the last resort. This vantage ground has been gained only by a
recognition of the primal right of the people to be consulted in
regard to public affairs; and in proportion as this right has
been respected and the franchise extended has government grown
more stable and society more safe. It has come through a
succession of steps, invariably opposed by the dominant classes,
and only permitted after long contest and a changed public
opinion.

In England, where the progress of constitutional government can
be most accurately traced, there was a time when the landowning
aristocracy controlled the franchise and elected the members of
Parliament. The dawn of a sense of injustice in the minds of the
mercantile classes brought with it a demand for the extension of
the suffrage, which was of course vigorously combated. It was an
illogical resistance, which ended in the admission of the
tradesmen. Later the workingmen awakened to their political
disability and asserted their rights, only to be promptly
antagonized by both classes in power. Eventually logic and
justice won in this issue. In the light of history none of the
objections urged against the extension of the right of voting
have been sustained by subsequent facts. On the contrary, the
broadening of the suffrage base has been found to add stability
to the superstructure of British government and to have been in
the interest of true conservatism.

In the course of time