justly to this defenceless army of intelligent beings, so like, yet so different from themselves. The imperious necessity which is upon each sex to stand well with the other when brought fairly facing it, would agitate them, and, almost before any deputation could leave our tents to crave a hearing, they would be ready to grant us all that we desired.
To enforce my meaning, manhood suffrage is an instrument forged and tempered by men for their own use, and to answer their own necessities. Why should we tease them for it, when they do not want to give it to us, and when if we had it perhaps we could not use it any better than we could lift the sledge-hammers which yet they wield so easily? Womanhood suffrage, however,—that is, the regulation of our own affairs, the expression of our united opinion, and the preferring of our united request,—we have now, and without asking any one for it. At any moment we choose we can select some town as our headquarters, elect our delegates, and send them there with our instructions as to the favour, or petition, or remonstrance we wished them to frame for presentation to the law-making power; and I believe, with Gail Hamilton, that if the request were at all wise or reasonable, and were understood to come from the numerical majority of women, the legislature would no more think of refusing it than a just man would think of refusing the wile whom he trusted. Thus every end of justice which some women now hope for from the extension to them of manhood suffrage would be gained, while all this conflict of custom and prejudice would be avoided.
And how, in truth, can we bear to give up what is so far the peculiar and essential glory of feminine enfranchisement, that no blood, (except our Saviour's) has been shed for it? How bear to part with the grand and perfect sisterhood now within our power, since women are in fact of no nationality? If I love and reverence some Englishwoman as the rarest and wisest of her sex, I am glad to think that she and I have sworn allegiance to no government, so that we can never be arrayed by the passions of rulers in enmity
