ave great
influence, the ballot would be readily granted to them by men, if
they desired it, or generally approved of woman suffrage. Women
are taxed, it is true; so are minors, without the ballot; it is
untrue, to say that either class is not represented. The thousand
ties of relationship and friendship cause the identity of interest
between the sexes. What is good in a community for men, is good
also for their wives and sisters, daughters and friends. The laws
of Massachusetts discriminate much in favor of women, by exempting
unmarried women of small estate from taxation; by allowing women,
and not men, to acquire a settlement without paying a tax; by
compelling husbands to support their wives, but exempting the
wife, even when rich, from supporting an indigent husband; by
making men liable for debts of wives, and not _vice versa_. In the
days of the American Revolution, the first cause of complaint was,
that a whole people were taxed but not represented.

To-day there is not a single interest of woman which is not
shared and defended by men, not a subject in which she takes an
intelligent interest in which she cannot exert an influence in the
community proportional to her character and ability. It is because
the men who govern live not in a remote country, with separate
interests, but in the closest relations of family and
neighborhood, and bound by the tenderest ties to the other sex,
who are fully and well represented by relations, friends, and
neighbors in every locality. That women are purer and more
conscientious than men, as a sex, is exceedingly doubtful when
applied to politics. The faults of the sexes are different,
according to their constitution and habits of life. Men are more
violent and open in their misdeeds, but any person who knows human
nature well and has examined it in its various phases knows that
each sex is open to its peculiar temptation and sin; that the
human heart is weak and prone to evil without distinction of sex.

It seems certain that, were women admitted to vote and to hold
political office, all the intrigue, corruption, and selfishness
displayed by men in political life would also be found among
women. In the temperance cause we should gain little or nothing by
admitting women to vote, for two reasons: first, that experience
has proved