self-government for themselves, yet such is the case, as the following protest shows:
We acknowledge no inferiority to men. We claim to have no less ability to perform the duties which God has imposed upon us than they have to perform those imposed upon them. We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties of each. We believe our trusts to be as important and as sacred as any that exist on earth. We feel that our present duties fill up the whole measure of our time and abilities; and that they are such as none but ourselves can perform. Their importance requires us to protest against all efforts to compel us to assume those obligations which cannot be separated from suffrage; but which cannot be performed by us without the sacrifice of the highest interests of our families and of society. It is our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, who represent us at the ballot-box. Our fathers and brothers love us. Our husbands are our choice, and one with us. Our sons are what we make them. We are content that they represent us in the corn-field, the battle-field, at the ballot-box and the jury-box, and we them, in the church, the school-room, at the fireside and at the cradle; believing our representation, even at the ballot-box, to be thus more full and impartial than it could possibly be, were all women allowed to vote. We do, therefore respectively protest against legislation to establish woman suffrage in Ohio.
The above paper, signed by more than one hundred ladies of Lorain county, was presented, March 14, 1870, to the legislature assembled at Columbus. Mrs. Sarah Knowles Bolton, criticising the Oberlin protestants, said:
That so many signed is not strange, because the non-suffrage side is the popular one at present. Years hence, when it shall be customary for women to vote, it is questionable whether the lady who drew up that document would have many supporters.
If "we are not inferior to men," we must have as clear opinions and as good judgment as they. To say, then, that we are not capable of judging of political questions, is untrue. To say that we are not interested in such things is absurd, for who can be more anxious for good laws and good law-makers than women, who, for the most part, have sons and daughters in this whirlpool of temptation, called social and business life. If we are too ignorant to have an opinion, the fault lies at our own door.
These ladies reason upon the premises that the duties imposed upon us as we find them in this nineteenth century, are the duties, conditions, and relations established of God. Two things we do certainly find in the Bible with regard to this matter; that women are to bear children, and men to earn bread. The first duty we believe has been confined entirely to the female sex, but the male sex have not kept the other in all cases. If anybody has belonged for any considerable time to a benevolent institution, he has ascertained that women sometimes are obliged to earn bread and bear children also. A century or two ago, when women seldom thought of writing books, or being physicians or lawyers, professors or teachers, or doing anything but housework, probably they thought, as the ladies of Lorain county do to-day, they were in the blessed noonday of woman's enlightenment and happiness. Their husbands, very likely, needed something of the same companionship as the men of the present, but it was unpopular for girls to attend school. If these ladies, after careful study and thought, believe that woman suffrage will work evil in the land, they ought to say that, rather than base it upon lack of time. The enfranchisement of 15,000,000 women will be a balance of power for good or evil that will need looking after. As for our representing men at the fireside, I think it a great deal pleasanter that they be there in person. Nothing is more blessed than the home circle, and here I think if husbands were not so often represented by their wives, while they are absent evening after evening on "important business," the condition of things would be improved. If the ladies aforesaid cannot vote without the highest interests of their families being sacrificed, they ought to be allowed to remain in peace. I am glad they made this protest, not only