d defenseless; and not only
the whole country, but especially the whole people of Massachusetts,
were stirred to the very depths of their souls by that accusation.
Mrs. Clara T. Leonard, the writer of this letter, came forward and
informed the people that she had been one of the board who had managed
that institution for years, that she knew all about it through and
through, that the accusation was false and a slander; and before her
word and her character the charge of that distinguished governor went
down and sunk into merited obscurity and ignominy.

Now, the question is whether the lady who can be intrusted with the
charge of one of the most important departments of government, and
whose judgment in regard to its character or proper administration is
to be taken as gospel by the people where her reputation extends, is
not fit to be trusted to have her vote counted when the question
is who is to be the next person who is to be trusted with that
administration. Mrs. Leonard's mistake is not in misunderstanding the
nature either of woman or of man, which she understands perfectly; it
is in misunderstanding the nature of politics, that is, the political
arena; and this lady has been in the political arena for the last
ten years of her life, one of the most important and potent forces
therein.

It is true, as she says, that the wife and the mother educate the
child and the man, and when the great function of the state, as we
hold in our State and as is fast being held everywhere, is also the
education of the child and the man, how does it degrade that wife and
mother, whose important function it is to do this thing, to utter
her voice and have her vote counted in regard to the methods and the
policies by which that education shall be conducted?

Why, Mr. President, Mrs. Leonard says in that letter that woman, the
wife and the maiden and the daughter, has no political ends to serve.
If political ends be to desire office for the greed of gain, if
political ends be to get an unjust power over other men, if political
ends be to get political office by bribery or by mob violence or by
voting through the shutter of a beer-house, that is true: but the
persons who are in favor of this measure believe that those very
things that Mrs. Leonard holds up as the proper ends in the life of
women are political ends and nothing else; that the education of the
child, that the preservation of the purity of the home, that the care
for t