Providence, what we give is as important to our happiness as what we receive. The rich man who has done nothing to enrich the community in which he lives, has really profited very little by the wealth he has amassed and inherited. Himself commanding the means of refinement and luxury, he lives surrounded by poverty, barbarism, and crime; and these, from the beginning of his career to the end, poison the very sources of his life. As much worse is it with those who receive liberty and do not give it, as liberty is better than money. "Give me liberty or give me death!" says Patrick Henry. He receives it. Does he give it to his slave? No. To his wife? Still less. What does he have of it, then? Only one half—the selfish half of possession, not the joyous and generous side of sympathy and participation.
These Jerseyites, it seems, were wiser than any in their day and generation. They saw the anomaly, the contradiction between a free manhood and an enslaved womanhood. They saw it taking effect at the sacred hearth, beside the tender cradle. And they saw their way out of it. What they received and valued as the greatest of God's gifts, they gave to their women, rational, human creatures like themselves, bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, only made to exemplify that peaceable and loving side of human nature whose beauty has been always felt, and whose triumph is written among the eternal prophecies which time only fulfills. Honor then, to-day, to those truly brave and generous men who, with their own hands unbound, were not afraid to unbind the hands of their wives and mothers! Honor, too, to the women who were intelligent enough to appreciate the gift, and wise and brave enough to use it. No scandal accompanied its exercise. There was no talk in that time of the women deserting their household fires, their tender children, to fulfill their duty to the State. In that State, in those women, culminated the success and significance of the American Revolution. Remember the other States did not think so, neither did the men or the women who planned the International Exhibition of to-day think so. But it was so, none the less. And we to-day must light our torches at that very topmost flame of freedom, or they will smoke instead of burning.
Mrs. Antoinette L. Brown Blackwell said she came as a representative from New Jersey, her adopted State, whose unique suffrage endowment, one hundred years ago, we are here to celebrate. The ebb and flow which is the law of all progress, has temporarily deprived our women of the franchise. But it will be restored in the near future. "I have neighbors, whose mothers and grandmothers voted, and who are beginning to recall the fact with pride and satisfaction." Ex-Governor Bullock, of Massachusetts, has well said that "Historically, woman, in America, is now at the acme of her power." But at our next Centennial, men and women will stand together, acknowledged peers, at the acme of human achievement.
Mrs. Elizabeth K. Churchill said: The right of suffrage is always either inherited or earned. The women of America have earned their right by their work in the Revolution and in the Civil War. The inertia of women themselves is the greatest obstacle of our movement. But, in order to perform the duties which fall upon them in humane and charitable work, women need that their rights should be guaranteed by the franchise.