enfranchisement of women is urged are false and untenable, and that our experience demonstrates this, influences me not a little in my present action.
While I fully appreciate the great danger of too much attention to abstract speculation or metaphysical reasoning in political affairs, I cannot but perceive that there are times and circumstances when it is not only proper but absolutely necessary to appeal to principles somewhat general and abstract, when they alone can point out the way and they alone can guide our conduct. So it was when, two years ago, the act which this bill is designed to repeal was presented for my approval. There was at that time no experience to which I might refer and test by its results the conclusions to which the application of certain universally admitted principles led me. In the absence of all such experience I was driven to the application of principles which through the whole course of our national history have been powerfully and beneficially operative in making our institutions more and more popular, in framing laws more and more just and in securing amendments to our federal constitution. If the ballot be an expression of the wish, or a declaration of the will, of the tax-payer as to the manner in which taxes should be levied and collected and revenues disbursed, why should those who hold in their own right a large proportion of the wealth of the country be excluded from a voice in making the laws which regulate this whole subject? If, again, the ballot be for the physically weak a guarantee of protection against the aggression and violence of the strong, upon what ground can the delicate bodily organism of woman be forbidden this shelter for her protection? If, once more, each ballot be the declaration of the individual will of the person casting it, as to the relative merit of opposed measures or men, surely the ability to judge and determine—the power of choice—does not depend upon sex, nor does womanhood deprive of personality. If these principles are too general to be free from criticism, and if this reasoning be too abstract to be always practically applicable, neither the principles nor the reasoning can fail of approbation when contrasted with the gloomy misgivings for the future and the dark forebodings of evils, imaginary, vague and undefined, by dwelling upon which the opponents of this reform endeavor to stay its progress. Aggressive reasoning and positive principles like these must be met with something more than mere doubtful conjectures, must be resisted by something more than popular prejudices, and overthrown—if overthrown at all—by something stronger than the force of inert conservatism; yet what is there but conjecture, prejudice and conservatism opposing this reform? ********
The law granting to women the right to vote and to hold office in this territory was a natural and logical sequence to the other laws upon our statute-book. Our laws give to the widow the guardianship of her minor children. Will you take from her all voice in relation to the public schools established for the education of those children? Our laws permit women to acquire and possess property. Will you forbid them having any voice in relation to the taxation of that property? This bill says too little or too much. Too little, if you legislate upon the assumption that woman is an inferior who should be kept in a subordinate position, for in that case the other laws affecting her should be repealed or amended; and too much, if she is, as no one will deny, the equal of man in heart and mind, for in that case we cannot afford to dispense with her counsel and assistance in the government of the territory.
I need only instance section 9 of the school act, which declares that, "In the employment of teachers no discrimination shall be made in the question of pay on account of sex when the persons are equally qualified." What is more natural than that the men who thought that women were competent to instruct the future voters and legislators of our land, should take the one step in advance of the public sentiment of yesterday and give to her equal wages for equal work? And when this step had been taken, what more natural than that they should again move forward—this time perhaps a little in advance of the public sentiment of to-day—and give to those whom they consider competent to instruct voters, the right to vote.
To the statement, so often made, that the law which this bill is intended to repeal was passed thoughtlessly and without proper consideration, I oppose the fact to which