Mr. Morton: To my mind that furnishes no argument at all.
Mr. Edmunds: I am not arguing it.
Mr. Morton: It is merely putting an extreme case to say that a woman twenty-five years of age shall not have the right to vote because if she votes the child in her arms has the right to vote. Is there any force in that?
Mr. Edmunds: I have not put any case at all. I am asking the Senator from Indiana, which he seems to be very unwilling to answer, whether a child of tender years has or has not, in his opinion, the same natural rights that a grown-up person has. That can be answered one way or the other without saying it is an argument.
Mr. Morton: I suppose the child has the right, certainly the incipient right; but that amounts to nothing when you apply it to a child that has not the strength, the experience, the knowledge of the world, or the age to exercise it. The common sense of mankind in this and every other country fixes a certain age when men and women shall be regarded as mature and qualified to take care of themselves.
Mr. Edmunds: They do not fix the same age, let me suggest to the Senator.
Mr. Morton: Now, Mr. President, unless we are prepared to deny the very fundamental doctrine upon which our Government is based, we must admit that women have the same rights that men have. The Senator from North Carolina will not deny that women have the same natural rights that men have. The Senator nods his assent. Then if that is so, they have the same natural right to use the means necessary to protect those rights that men have. That right, so far as men are concerned, is the ballot.
Mr. Merrimon: Natural means.
Mr. Morton: Whatever means are necessary and proper to the protection of a natural right are natural means.
Mr. Bayward: Did the Senator from Indiana answer the Senator from Vermont in the affirmative or negative?
Mr. Morton: I tried to answer him.
Mr. Bayward: I merely ask the question. He says now very triumphantly to the Senator from North Carolina that the rights of men and women are the same, their natural rights are the same.
Mr. Morton: Yes.
Mr. Bayward: I ask are the rights of children different from those of men?
Mr. Morton: I think not, but I do not think there is any force in that argument, as I said before. There is a certain common sense and a certain practical regulation of natural rights all the world over.
Mr. Edmunds: But is it the common sense of men alone, let me suggest to the Senator. The children may differ with us; they generally do on such questions.
Mr. Morton: I will not spend any time on that argument.
Mr. Edmunds: I think that is wise.
Mr. Morton: To say that the mature woman has not the right to vote because the child in her arms must have the same right, comes so near making nonsense of the whole business that I dismiss it, and come back to the other statement, that women having the same natural rights that men have, have the right to the use the same means for their protection; and as the means under our form of government for the protection of the natural rights of men