inherited property and separate earnings, the right
of women to vote at school elections in a dozen States, full
suffrage in two Territories, all have been gained through the
legislatures. Had any one of these beneficent propositions been
submitted to the vote of the rank and file do you believe a
majority would have placed their sanction upon it? I do not; and I
beg you, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, that you will
at once recommend to the House the submission of the proposition
now before you, and thus place the decision of this great
constitutional question of the right of one-half the people of this
republic to a voice in the government, with the legislatures of the
several States. You need not fear that our enfranchisement will
come too suddenly or too soon by this method. After the proposition
shall have passed Congress by the requisite two-thirds vote, it may
require five, ten or twenty years to secure its ratification by the
necessary three-fourths of the State legislatures; but, _once
submitted by Congress, it always will stand until ratified by the
States_.

It takes all too many of us women from our homes and from the works
of charity and education in our respective localities, even to come
to Washington, session after session, until Congress shall have
submitted the proposition, and then to go from legislature to
legislature, urging its adoption. But when you insist that we shall
beg at the feet of each individual voter of every one of the
States, native and foreign, black and white, learned and ignorant,
you doom us to incalculable hardships and sacrifices, and to most
exasperating insults and humiliations. I pray you to save us from
the fate of waiting and working for our freedom until we shall have
educated the ignorant masses of men to consent to give their wives
and sisters equality of rights with themselves. You surely will not
compel us to await the enlightenment of all the freedmen of this
nation and the newly-made voters from the monarchial governments of
the old world!

Liberty for one's self is a natural instinct possessed alike by all
men, but to be willing to accord liberty to another is the result
of education, of self-discipline, of the practice of the golden
rule. Therefore we ask that the question of