ce admit the right
of a representative body to disfranchise its own
constituents, and who can establish the limits to which that
right may not be carried? If this legislature takes from
women their franchises or privileges, what is to prevent a
future legislature from depriving certain men, or classes of
men, that, from any consideration they desire to
disfranchise, of the same rights? We should be careful how
we inaugurate precedents which may "return to plague the
inventors," and be used as a pretext for taking away our
liberties.

It will be remembered that in my message to the legislature
at the commencement of the present session I said: "There is
upon our statue book an act granting to the women of Wyoming
territory the right of suffrage and to hold office which has
now been in force two years. Under its liberal provisions
women have voted in the territory, served on juries, and
held office. It is simple justice to say that the women,
entering for the first time in the history of the country
upon these new and untried duties, have conducted themselves
with as much tact, sound judgment, and good sense as the
men. While it would be claiming more than the facts justify,
to say that this experiment, in a limited field, has
demonstrated beyond a doubt the perfect fitness of woman, at
all times and under all circumstances, for taking a part in
the government, it furnishes at least reasonable presumptive
evidence in her favor, and she has a right to claim that, so
long as none but good results are made manifest, the law
should remain unrepealed."

These were no hastily formed conclusions, but the result of
deliberation and conviction, and my judgment to-day approves
the language I then used. For the first time in the history
of our country we have a government to which the noble words
of our _Magna Charta_ of freedom may be applied,--not as a
mere figure of speech, but as expressing a simple grand
truth,--for it is a government which "derives all its just
powers from the consent of the governed." We should pause
long and weigh carefully the probable result