selves have even a greater influence than men. Their disability to vote is, therefore, self-imposed; when they shall will otherwise, it is not too much to say that the disability will no longer exist. If in the future it shall be found that these laws deny a right to women the enjoyment of which they desire, and for the exercise of which they are qualified, it cannot be doubted that they will give way. If, on the contrary, neither of these shall be discovered, it will happen that the exclusion of suffrage will not be considered as a denial of a right, but as an exemption granted to women from cares and burdens which a tender and affectionate regard for womanhood refuses to cast on them.
We are convinced, therefore, that the best mode of disposing of the question is to leave its solution to that power most amenable to the influences and usages of society in which women have so large and so potential a share, confident that at no distant day a right result will be reached in each State which will be satisfactory to both sexes and perfectly consistent with the welfare and happiness of the people. Certainly this must be so if the people themselves, the source and foundation of all power, are capable of self-government.
At two of its meetings the committee listened with great pleasure to several eminent ladies who appeared before it as advocates of the proposed amendment. At none of the meetings of the committee, including that at which the members voted on the proposed amendment, was there any discussion of this important subject; none was asked for or desired by any member of the committee, and the vote was taken. The reports of the majority and of the minority of the committee are therefore to be construed only as the individual opinions of the members who respectively concur in them. They are in no sense to be treated as the judgment of a deliberative body charged with the examination of this important subject.
The foregoing leads us to but one recommendation: that the committee should be discharged from the further consideration of the subject, that the resolution raising it be rescinded, and that the proposed amendment be rejected.| J. Z. George, | |
| Howell E. Jackson, | |
| James G. Fair. |
In a letter from Miss Caroline Biggs to the president of the National Association the following congratulations came from the friends of suffrage in England:
| Central Committee of the National Society for Woman Suffrage, 64 Berners Street, London, W. |
At a meeting of the Executive Committee, on May 18, 1882, the following resolution was proposed by Mrs. Lucas, seconded by Miss Jane Cobden, and passed unanimously:
