ded them to invade the
sphere of work given to men, tearing down and destroying all the
best influences for which God has intended them.

The great evil in this country to-day is in emotional suffrage.
The great danger to-day is in excitable suffrage. If the voters
of this country could think always coolly, and if they could
deliberate, if they could go by judgment and not by passion, our
institutions would survive forever, eternal as the foundations of
the continent itself; but massed together, subject to the
excitement of mobs and of these terrible political contests that
come upon us from year to year under the autonomy of our
government, what would be the result if suffrage were given to
the women of the United States?

Women are essentially emotional. It is no disparagement to them
they are so. It is no more insulting to say that women are
emotional than to say that they are delicately constructed
physically and unfitted to become soldiers or workmen under the
sterner, harder pursuits of life. What we want in this country is
to avoid emotional suffrage, and what we need is to put more
logic into public affairs and less feeling.[54]

There are spheres in which feeling should be paramount. There are
kingdoms in which the heart should reign supreme. That kingdom
belongs to woman, the realm of sentiment, the realm of love, the
realm of the gentler and holier and kindlier attributes that make
the name of wife, mother and sister next to that of God himself.

I would not, and I say it deliberately, degrade woman by giving
her the right of suffrage. I mean the word in its full
signification, because I believe that woman as she is today, the
queen of home and of hearts, is above the political collisions of
this world, and should always be kept above them....

Sir, if it be said to us that this is a natural right belonging
to women, I deny it. The right of suffrage is one to be
determined by expediency and by policy, and given by the State to
whom it pleases. It is not a natural right; it is a right that
comes from the State.[55]

It is claimed that if the suffrage be given to women it is to
protect them. Protect them from whom? The brute that would invade
their rights would coerce the suffrage of his wife or sister or
mother as he