Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/477

toria Colonna, De Staël, Bremer, Evans, Somerville and Maria Mitchell. She does not go out of her sphere when she is so highly educated. She can darn her stockings just as well if she does know the word in half-adozen languages. There is no longer novelty in this movement; it has been tried successfully here and abroad in the universities, and always with success.

Addresses were also made by Rev. Dr. Stowe, Dr. William Draper, Joseph Choate, and others eminent in one way or another. The meeting closed by circulating a petition for presentation to the trustees of Columbia College, asking that properly qualified women be admitted to lectures and examinations.

The bill to prohibit disfranchisement on account of sex was again introduced in the Assembly by Hon. J. Hampden Robb, and referred to the Committee on Grievances, of which Major James Haggerty was chairman, who gave to it his hearty approval and granted two hearings to the officers of the State society, on behalf of the large number of memorialists who, had sent in their petitions from all parts of the State. The women of Albany were indefatigable in their personal appeals to the different members of the Assembly, urging them to vote' for the bill, while Major Haggerty was untiring in his advocacy of the measure. On May 3 there was an animated discussion:^[1] the bill passed to its third reading by an overwhelming vote, which alarmed the opponents into making a thorough canvass, that proved to them the necessity of some decisive action for the defeat of the bill. The Hon. Erastas Brooks presented a resolution, calling on the attorney-general for his opinion on the constitutionality of the proposed law, which was passed in a moment of confusion, and when many of our friends were absent. Following is the opinion elicited:

State of New York, Office of the Attorney-General,	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$
Albany, May 10, 1882.

To the Assembly:

I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the resolution of the Assembly requesting the attorney-general to report his opinion as to the constitutionality of Assembly bill No. 637, which provides that "every woman shall be free to vote under the qualifications required of men, or to refrain from voting, as she may choose; and no person shall be debarred by reason of sex from voting at any election, or at any town meeting, school meeting, or other choice of government functionaries whatsoever," and whether, without an amendment to the constitution, suffrage

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1. Major Haggerty, ex-Governor Thomas G, Alvord and Hon. James D. McMellan in its favor; Hon. Erastus Brooks and General Sharpe against.