to be so ignorant of what has happened during the last year. We need a paper—an organ that shall keep those who can not mingle actively in our public labors better informed. The Standard has done much; and I find in many other papers a disposition to do justice, to a great extent, to our cause. It is not ridiculed as it was in the beginning. We do not have the difficulties, the opposition, and the contumely to confront that we had at an early day. I am very glad to find such an audience here to-day; and far be it from me to occupy the time so as to prevent Mr. May, Mr. Burleigh, and others, from having their proper place.
Mr. Purvis resumed the chair, and introduced Mrs. Stanton, who spoke to the following resolutions:
Resolved, That government, of all sciences, is the most exalted and comprehensive, including, as it does, all the political, commercial, religious, educational, and social interests of the race.
Resolved, That to speak of the ballot as an "article of merchandise," and of the science of government as the "muddy pool of politics," is most demoralizing to a nation based on universal suffrage.
In considering the question of suffrage, there are two starting points: one, that this right is a gift of society, in which certain men, having inherited this privilege from some abstract body and abstract place, have now the right to secure it for themselves and their privileged order to the end of time. This principle leads logically to governing races, classes, families; and, in direct antagonism to our idea of self-government, takes us back to monarchies and despotisms, to an experiment that has been tried over and over again, 6,000 years, and uniformly failed.
Ignoring this point of view as untenable and anti-republican, and taking the opposite, that suffrage is a natural right—as necessary to man under government, for the protection of person and property, as are air and motion to life—we hold the talisman by which to show the right of all classes to the ballot, to remove every obstacle, to answer every objection, to point out the tyranny of every qualification to the free exercise of this sacred right. To discuss this question of suffrage for women and negroes, as women and negroes, and not as citizens of a republic, implies that there are some reasons for demanding this right for these classes that do not apply to "white males."
The obstinate persistence with which fallacious and absurd objections are pressed against their enfranchisement—as if they were anomalous beings, outside all human laws and necessities—is most humiliating and insulting to every black man and woman who has one particle of healthy, high-toned self-respect. There are no special claims to propose for women and negroes, no new arguments to make in their behalf. The same already made to extend suffrage to all white men in this country, the same John Bright makes for the working men of England, the same made for the emancipation of 22,000,000 Russian serfs, are all we have to make for black men and women. As the greater includes the less, an argument for universal suffrage covers the whole question, the rights of all citizens. In thus relaying the foundations of government, we settle all these side issues of race, color, and sex, end class legislation, and remove forever the fruitful cause of the jealousies, dissensions, and revolutions of the