dress of grievances are mockery for any class that have no
voice in the laws, and law-makers; hence we demand the ballot,
that scepter of power in our own hands, as the only sure
protection for our rights of person and property under all
conditions. If the few may grant and withhold rights at their
pleasure, the many cannot be said to enjoy the blessings of
self-government.

William H. Seward said in his great speech on "Freedom and
Union," in the United States Senate, February 29, 1860:

Mankind have a natural right, a natural instinct, and a
natural capacity for self-government; and when, as here,
they are sufficiently ripened by culture, they will and must
have self-government, and no other.

Jefferson said:

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time;
the hand of freedom may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

Few people comprehend the length and breadth of the principle we
are advocating to-day, and how closely it is allied to everything
vital in our system of government. Our personal grievances, such
as being robbed of property and children by unjust husbands;
denied admission into the colleges, the trades and professions;
compelled to work at starving prices, by no means round out this
whole question. In asking for a sixteenth amendment to the United
States Constitution, and the protection of congress against the
injustice of State law, we are fighting the same battle as
Jefferson and Hamilton fought in 1776, as Calhoun and Clay in
1828, as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in 1860, namely, the
limit of State rights and federal power. The enfranchisement of
woman involves the same vital principle of our government that is
dividing and distracting the two great political parties at this
hour.

There is nothing a foreigner coming here finds it so difficult to
understand as the wheel within a wheel in our national and State
governments, and the possibility of carrying them on without
friction; and this is the difficulty and danger we are fast
finding out. The recent amendments are steps in the right
direction toward national unity, securing equal rights to all
citizens, in every latitude and longitude. But our congressional
debates, judicial decisions, and the utterances of ca