property; if so, they have a natural right of self-defense in the enjoyment of these rights. Now, in a state of nature, self-defense takes the form of individual violence—of the pistol or the club; but in a state of civilization men appeal to the law, and government is nothing but an organized system of self-defense for the benefit of the individual citizen." The old Democratic party said, "Poor men have rights of life, liberty, and property, poor men have a natural right of self-defense; therefore, in a state of society they have a right to the ballot which is the organized weapon of self-defense for the individual citizen." What was the result? The Democratic party swept the Union on that platform. They obtained a majority in the government of the States and in the Federal Government. For more than a generation they ruled this country as the poor man's party. That result followed inevitably from their principles, because parties, like individuals, are sure to obtain their deserts in the long run. When any party appeals to that fine sense of justice which is in the heart of every human being, sooner or later its success is certain. The Democratic party obtained the control of the Government for two generations because it appealed to that sense of justice? But what was the result to the country? America became known all over the world as the country of the poor man. In America alone the masses had the ballot. That was what brought from the shores of Europe this great influx of foreign labor which has felled our forests, and fenced our prairies, and built up the waste places of our continent. There are to-day in Russia hundreds of thousands of acres of land as good as any in the world, which have never been cultivated, and yet Europeans, by thousands, turn their backs on Russia, coming to America and going far into the interior to make their homes, not because our land is better, or our climate more genial, but because our Government is established upon the basis of equal rights for every human being. The child of the poor man becomes educated, he acquires property, he becomes a member of the commonwealth, he does his own thinking, and, thank God, his own voting, too.
But the Democratic party has lost power. To-day the Republicans control three-fourths of the States of this Union. There was a reason for these reverses. Before the abolition of slavery, a certain race was denied the advantages of the Democratic principle. It was a "white man's government." In the course of time the inevitable collision came. Slavery was abolished, and the Republican party attempted a new application of the Jeffersonian principle. It demanded suffrage for the negro and the Chinese. The principles of justice again prevailed. The sentiment of liberty came to the support of the Republican party; manhood suffrage is forever fixed in the Constitution of the country, and to-day every man, whether learned or ignorant, rich or poor, white, yellow, or black, whether he can read the English language or not, is by the Constitution of the United States forever made a voter. Now, ladies and gentlemen, every argument through which an extension of the suffrage has been already accomplished, applies with still greater force in the case of women. The extension of the suffrage to woman, will be the last crowning step in political progress, the final application of the principles of Christianity and human brotherhood to the political structure.
We do not advocate a new principle. We only desire to make a wider