ermitted to express their will at the polls. A majority of the
people of Maine are women, and from the foundation of this
government have never exercised any of the inalienable rights of
citizens. Mr. Blaine made a speech a day or two ago in Augusta.
He began by reciting the condition of affairs, owing to the
effort, as he states, "to substitute a false count for an honest
ballot," and congratulated his audience upon the
instrumentalities by which they had triumphed--

Without firing a gun, without shedding a drop of blood,
without striking a single blow, without one disorderly
assemblage. _The people_ have regained their own right
through the might and majesty of their own laws.

He goes on in this vein to speak of those whom he calls "the
people of Maine." Well, gentlemen, I do not think you will deny
that _women are people_. It appears to me that what Mr. Blaine
said in that connection was nonsense, unless indeed he forgot
that there were any others than men among the people of the State
of Maine. I don't suppose that you, gentlemen, are often so
forgetful. Mr. Blaine said further:

The Republicans of Maine and throughout the land felt that
they were not merely fighting the battle of a single year,
but for all the future of the State; not merely fighting the
battle of our own State alone, but for all the States that
are attempting the great problem of State government
throughout the world. The corruption or destruction of the
ballot is a crime against free government, and when
successful is a subversion of free government.

Does that mean the ballot _for men only_ or the ballot _for the
people_, men and women too? If it is to be received as meaning
anything, it ought to mean not for one sex alone, but for both.
Mr. Lincoln declared, in one of his noblest utterances, that no
man was good enough to govern another man without that man's
consent. Of course he meant it in its broadest terms; he meant
that no man or woman was good enough to govern another man or
woman without that other man's or woman's consent.

Mr. Blaine, on another occasion, in connection with the same
subject-matter, had much to say of the enormity of the oppression
practiced by his political opponents in