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of Miss Anthony it was plain that she was indeed inspired by her audience.

There was much rejoicing over the enfranchisement of the women of Idaho by an amendment to the State constitution during the past year; and much sorrow over the defeat of a similar amendment in California. In her president’s address Miss Anthony said in part: ;

The year 1896 witnessed greater successes than any since the first pronunciamento was made at Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19, 1848. On January 6 President Cleveland proclaimed Utah to be a State, with a constitution which does not discriminate against women. With Utah and Wyoming we have two States coming into the Union with the principle of equal rights to women guaranteed by their constitutions.

On November 3 the men of Idaho declared in favor of woman suffrage, and for the first time in the history of judicial decisions upon the enlargement of women’s rights, civil and political, a Supreme Court gave a broad interpretation of the constitution. The Supreme Court of Idaho—Isaac N. Sullivan, Joseph W. Huston, John T. Morgan—unanimously decided that the amendment was carried constitutionally. This decision is the more remarkable because the Court might as easily have declared that the constitution requires amendments to receive a majority of the total vote cast at the election, instead of a majority of the votes cast on the amendment itself. By the former construction it would have been lost, notwithstanding two to one of all who expressed an opinion were in favor.

If anyone will study the history of our woman suffrage movement since the days of reconstruction and the adoption of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution— taking the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States in the cases of Mrs. Myra Bradwell for the protection of her civil rights ; of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor for the protection of her political rights; of the law granting Municipal Suffrage to women in Michigan; on giving women the right:to vote for County School Commissioners in New York, and various other decisions—he will find that in every case the courts have put the narrowest possible construction upon the spirit and the letter of the constitution. The Judges of Idaho did themselves the honor to make a decision in direct opposition to judicial precedent and prejudice. The Idaho victory is a great credit not only to the majority of men who voted for the amendment, but to the three Judges who made this broad and just decision.

After sketching the situation in California, and relating the