Permit us to notice one other case, which occurred in a neighboring State. Many similar ones, no doubt, have occurred in our own, the law in both States being the same.
A woman who had a fortune of fifty thousand dollars in "personal property," married. All this, by the law, belonged absolutely to the husband. In a year he died, leaving 3 will directing that the widow should have the proceeds of a certain part of this money, so long as she remained unmarried. If she married again, or at her death, it was to go to his heirs.
How different in all these cases is the condition of the husband upon the death of the wife. There is then no officious intermeddling of the law in his domestic affairs. His house, sad and desolate though it be, is still sacred and secure from the foot of unbidden guests. There is no legal "settlement' to eat up his estate. He is not told that "one equal third part "of all his lands and tenements shall be set apart for his use during his lifetime. "He has all, everything, even his wife's bridal presents too are his. If the wife had lands in her own right, and if they have ever had a living child, he has a life estate in the whole of it, not a beggarly 'third part.'"
Such is the result of man's government 9f woman without her consent. Such is the protection he affords her. She now asks the means of protecting herself, by the same instrumentality which man considers so essential to his freedom and security, representation, political equality — The Right of Suffrage. The removal of this constitutional restriction is of great consequence, because it casts upon woman a stigma of inferiority, of incompetency, of unworthiness of trust. It ranks her with criminals and madmen and idiots. It is essential to her, practically, as being the key to all her rights, which will open to her the door of equality and justice.
Does any one believe that if woman had possessed an equal voice in making our laws, we should have standing on our statute books, for generations, laws so palpably unequal and unjust toward her? The idea is preposterous.
If our sense of natural justice and our theory of government beth agree, that the being who is 10 suffer under laws shall first personally assent to them, and that the being whose industry the government is to burden should have a voice in fixing the character and amount of that burden, then, while woman is admitted to the gallows, the jail, and the tax-list, we have no right to debar her from the ballot-box.
Your Committee recommend the adoption of the following resolution:
Resolved, That the Judiciary Committee be instructed to report to the Senate, a bill to submit to the qualified electors at the next election for senators and representatives, an amendment to the Constitution whereby the elective franchise shall be extended to the citizens of Ohio, without distinction of sex.
J. D. Cattell,
A. Canfield.
