e will not sign that protest then I shall not pay the
tax, and there will be a fight at once." Said he, "Why do you keep
all the time protesting against paying this small tax?" Said I,
"Why do you pay your tax?" "Well," said he, "I would not pay it
if I did not vote." Said I, "That is the very reason why I do not
want to pay it. I can not vote and I do not want to pay it." Now
the women have no right when election day comes around. Who stay
at home from the election? The women and the black and white men
who have been to the whipping-post. Nice company to put your wives
and daughters in.

It is said that the women do not want to vote. Here is an array
of women. Every woman sitting here wants to vote, and must we be
debarred the privilege of voting because some luxurious woman,
rolling around in her carriage and pair in her little downy nest
that some good, benevolent man has provided for her, does not want
to vote?

There was a society that existed up in the State of New York
called the Covenanters that never voted. A man who belonged to
that sect or society, a man whiter-haired than any of you, said to
me, "I never voted. I never intended to vote, I never felt that
I could conscientiously support a Government that had its
Constitution blotted and blackened with the word 'slave,' and I
never did vote until after the abolition of slavery." Now, were
all you men disfranchised because that class or sect up in New
York would not vote? Did you all pay your taxes and stay at home
and refrain from voting because the Covenanters did not vote? Not
a bit of it. You went to the election and told them to stay at
home if they wanted to, but that you, as citizens, were going to
take care of yourselves. That was right. We, as citizens, want to
take care of ourselves.

One more thought and I will be through. The fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments give the right of suffrage to women, so
far as I know, although you learned men perhaps see a little
differently. I see through the glass dimly; you may see through it
after it is polished up. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments,
in my opinion, and in the opinion of a great many smart men in the
country, and smart women, too, give the right to women to vote
without, any "ifs" or "ands" about it, and the United States
protects us in it;