opinion upon
it. In Wyoming this right of our women has been recognized, has
been enjoyed; there are such things in law as vested rights, and
the decisions of our courts are unanimous that it is not within
the power of the Legislature ever to take away from any person
his rights or his property and to confer them upon another, and
that is what this clause proposes to do, to submit to a vote
whether we shall take away from one-half of our citizens--and, as
my friend has well stated, the better half--a certain right, and
increase the rights of the other half by so doing....

MR. BROWN: I was a member of that second Legislature which tried
to disfranchise women.... From that day to the present no man in
the Legislature of Wyoming has been heard to lift his voice
against woman suffrage. It has become one of the fundamental laws
of the land, and to raise any question about it at this time is
as improper, in my judgment, as to raise a question as to any
other fundamental right guaranteed to any citizen in this
Territory. I would sooner think, Mr. Chairman, of submitting to
the people of Wyoming a separate and distinct proposition as to
whether a male citizen of the Territory shall be entitled to
vote....

MR. HOYT: ... For twenty years the women of this Territory have
taken part with the men in its government, and have exercised
this right of suffrage equally with them, and we are all proud of
the results. No man in Wyoming ever has dared to say that woman
suffrage is a failure. There has been no disturbance of the
domestic relations, there has been no diminution of the social
order, there has been no lessening of the dignity which
characterizes the exercise of the elective franchise; there have
been, on the contrary, an improvement of the social order, better
laws, better officials, a higher civilization. Why, then, this
extraordinary proposition that, after so many years, having
exercised with us the right of suffrage since the foundation of
this Territorial government, women are now to be singled out, to
be set aside, and the question submitted to a vote as to whether
they shall have a continuance of the rights which have been given
to them by unanimous consent, and which they have exercised
wisely and properly and, as my friend says, wit