olitical duties, in short the incapacitating of women for wives and
mothers and companions, will not much longer serve to frighten the
timid. Proof is better than theory. The experiment has been tried
and the predicted evils to flow from it have not followed. On the
contrary, if we can believe the almost universal testimony, everywhere
where it has been tried it has been followed by the most beneficial
results.

In Washington Territory, since woman was enfranchised, there have been
two elections. At the first there were 8,368 votes cast by women out
of a total vote of 34,000 and over. At the second election, which was
held in November last, out of 48,000 votes cast in the Territory,
12,000 votes were cast by women. The opponents of female suffrage
are silenced there. The Territorial conventions of both parties have
resolved in favor of woman suffrage, and there is not a proposition,
so far as I know in all that Territory, to repeal the law conferring
suffrage upon woman.

I desire also to inform my friend from Georgia that since women were
enfranchised in Washington Territory nature has continued in her
wonted courses. The sun rises and sets; there is seed-time and
harvest; seasons come and go. The population has increased with the
usual regularity and rapidity. Marriages have been quite as frequent,
and divorces have been no more so. Women have not lost their influence
for good upon society, but men have been elevated and refined. If we
are to believe the testimony which comes from lawyers, physicians,
ministers of the gospel, merchants, mechanics, farmers, and laboring
men, the united testimony of the entire people of the Territory, the
results of woman suffrage there have been all that could be desired by
its friends. Some of the results in that Territory have been seen
in making the polls quiet and orderly, in awaking a new interest in
educational questions and in questions of moral reform, in securing
the passage of beneficial laws and the proper enforcement of them;
and, as I have said before, in elevating men, and that without injury
to the women.

Mr. EUSTIS. Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. DOLPH. The Senator can ask me a question, if he chooses.

Mr. EUSTIS. If it be right and proper to confer the right of suffrage
on women, I ask the Senator whether he does not think that women ought
to be required to serve on juries?

Mr. DOLPH. I can answer that very readily. It does not necessar