g of extracts from
a little volume entitled, "Letters from a Chimney Corner," written
by a highly cultivated lady, Mrs. ----, of Chicago, This gifted
lady has discussed the question with so much clearness and force
that we make no apology to the Senate for substituting quotations
from her book in place of anything we might produce. We quote
first from chapter 3, which is entitled "The value of suffrage to
women much overestimated."

The fair authoress says:

"If women were to be considered in their highest and final estate
as merely individual beings, and if the right to the ballot were
to be conceded to man as an individual, it might perhaps be
logically argued that women also possessed the inherent right to
vote. But from the oldest times, and through all the history
of the race, has run the glimmer of an idea, more or less
distinguishable in different ages and under different
circumstances, that neither man nor woman is, as such, individual;
that neither being is of itself a whole, a unit, but each requires
to be supplemented by the other before its true structural
integrity can be achieved. Of this idea, the science of botany
furnishes the moat perfect illustration. The stamens on the one
hand, and the ovary and pistil on the other, may indeed reside in
one blossom, which then exists in a married or reproductive state.
But equally well, the stamens or male organs may reside in one
plant, and the ovary and pistil or female organs may reside in
another. In that case, the two plants are required to make one
structurally complete organization. Each is but half a plant, an
incomplete individual by itself. The life principle of each must
be united to that of the other; the twain must be indeed one flesh
before the organization is either structurally or functionally
complete."

This is a concession of the whole argument, unless the highest and
final estate of woman is to be something else than a mere individual.
It would also follow that if such be her destiny--that is, to be
something else than a mere "individual being"--and if for that reason
she is to be denied the suffrage, then man equally should be denied
the ballot if his highest and final estate is to be something else
than a "mere individual."

Thereupon the minority of the committee, through the "Fair Authoress,"
proceed to show that both man