and, if this be the government, every person in the nation has a right to participate in its administration. There is no partiality possible in such a conception of the system of government under which we live.
Charles Sumner said that "equality of rights is the first of rights," and this will reveal itself in every department of citizenship. Our Government requires the expression of the views of the whole people upon every national question; it is a human right belonging to the political status of every individual, the woman as well as the man. The history of Christianity has been a history of the gradual enlarging of the sphere of woman; and this meeting to-night is one of the effects of Christianity. We stand now at the beginning of a new century; the last has been one of great development, and yet the very root fact of our national being lies in the first line of the Declaration. When we declared ourselves to be a Nation, we declared equality for all men, and we never meant by that, equality simply for all males. Jefferson never had that narrow view of human nature. He knew it meant all the people of America. Every one had a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the woman as well as the man.
It is said women can not rule. Not rule! look through history. Where are Cleopatra and Semiramis, and Zenobia and Catharine, and Elizabeth and Victoria? Not rule? Did not Joan of Arc save France when the king had fled, and the armies were scattered, and English soldiers did their will in all that land? So Elizabeth picked up a prostrate nation, lowest of the low, despised of emperor, king, and Pope, and made it the sovereign power of Europe. So Victoria held back Palmerston and Russell and Gladstone and Derby, who would have plunged England into war with us, and left us free to subdue our enemy. Had not a woman ruled England we should have had a harder task than we did by far. Christianity has lifted woman to a level with man. It has given her liberty of movement, of faith, of life. It also demands her political deliberation. May this beginning of our second Centennial see the perfection of our political system, in this admission of woman to all the rights and duties of citizenship. It has worked well in Wyoming. It will everywhere. Let it come.
Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, of Somerville, N. J., said: A few days ago, in one of the New York dailies, I saw the announcement that one subject which now occupies the minds of the American people can never be settled till it is settled right. Knowing that this Convention was just at hand, I mentally exclaimed, "It is certainly woman suffrage!" But no! it was the question of the National currency. Well, the currency question did suggest great moral issues, and it was vital enough in character to justify the editorial claim. I believe it never can be settled till it is settled right. But what is the currency problem to a direct question of human rights, involving the highest moral and civil interests not only of all the women in the country, but of all the men likewise? This suffrage question never can be settled till it is settled right. So surely as the law of justice must yet prevail, it will continue to vex and trouble the whole nation continually.
Because the sexes are so unlike in their natures and in all their relations to the State, there is imperative need of representation for both. Women in beleaguered cities have again and again stood heroically side by side with men, suffering danger and privation without a murmur, ready to endure