le number of people to be heard on this issue, I desire
to read one or two documents in my possession. I offer in this
connection, in addition to the innumerable petitions which have been
placed before the Senate and before the other House, the petition of
the Women's Christian Temperance Union. I take it that no Senator will
raise the question whether this organization be or be not composed
of the very _elite_ of the women of America. At least two hundred
thousand of the Christian women of this country are represented in
this organization. It is national in its character and scope; it is
international, and it exists in every State and in every Territory of
the Union. By their officers, Miss Frances E. Willard, the president;
Mrs. Caroline B. Buell, corresponding secretary; Mrs. Mary A.
Woodbridge, recording secretary; Mrs. L.M.N. Stevens, assistant
recording secretary; Miss Esther Pugh, treasurer; Mrs. Zerelda G.
Wallace, superintendent of department of franchise, and Mrs. Henrietta
B. Wall, secretary of department of franchise, they bring this
petition to the Senate. It has been indorsed by the action of the body
at large. They say:

Believing that governments can be just only when deriving their
powers from the consent of the governed, and that in a government
professing to be a government of the people, all the people of a
mature age should have a voice, and that all class-legislation and
unjust discrimination against the rights and privileges of any
citizen is fraught with danger to the republic, and inasmuch as
the ballot in popular governments is a most potent element in all
moral and social reforms:

We, therefore, on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Christian
women engaged in philanthropic effort, pray you to use your
influence, and vote for the passage of a sixteenth amendment
to the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting the
disfranchisement of any citizen on the ground of sex.

I have also just received, in addition to other matter before the
Senate, the petition of the Indianapolis Suffrage Association, or of
that department of the Women's Christian Temperance Union which has
the control of the discussion and management of the operations of the
union with reference to the suffrage. I shall not take the time of the
Senate to read it. The letter transmitting the petition is as follows:

INDIANAPOLIS, IND., _January_ 12, 1886.

DEA