arguments against woman suffrage are abandoned, we hear more
and more of the final objection, that the majority of women have not yet
expressed themselves on the subject. It is common for such reasoners to
make the remark, that if they knew a given number of women--say fifty, or a
hundred, or five hundred--who honestly wished to vote, they would favor it.
Produce that number of unimpeachable names, and they say that they have
reconsidered the matter, and must demand more,--perhaps ten thousand. Bring
ten thousand, and the demand again rises. "Prove that the majority of women
wish to vote, and they shall vote." "Precisely," we say: "give us a chance
to prove it by taking a vote;" and they answer, "By no means."

And, in a certain sense, they are right. It ought not to be settled that
way,--by dealing with woman as a class, and taking the vote. The agitators
do not merely claim the right of suffrage for her as a class: they claim it
for each individual woman, without reference to any other. If there is only
one woman in the nation who claims the right to vote, she ought to have it.
In Oriental countries all legislation is for classes, and in England it is
still mainly so. A man is expected to remain in the station in which he is
born; or, if he leaves it, it is by a distinct process, and he comes under
the influence, in various ways, of different laws. If the iniquities of the
"Contagious Diseases" act in England, for instance, had not been confined
in their legal application to the lower social grades, the act would never
have passed. It was easy for men of the higher classes to legislate away
the modesty of women of the lower classes; but if the daughter of an earl
could have been arrested, and submitted to a surgical examination at the
will of any policeman, as the daughter of a mechanic might be, the law
would not have stood a day. So, through all our slave States, there was
class legislation for every person of negro blood: the laws of crime, of
punishment, of testimony, were all adapted to classes, not individuals.
Emancipation swept this all away, in most cases: classes ceased to exist
before the law, so far as men at least were concerned; there were only
individuals. The more progress, the less class in legislation. We claim the
application of this principle as rapidly as possible to women.

Our community does not refuse permission for women to go unveiled till it
is proved that the majority of women desire it; it d