The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony

and intelligence are the only forces which enter into the exercise of these primary and highest functions of government. The remaining department is the executive or administrative, and in all forms of government the primary element of administration is force, but even in this department conscience and intelligence are indispensable to its direction.

      "If, now, we are to decide who of our sixty millions of human beings are, by virtue of their qualifications, to be the law-making power, by what tests shall the selection be determined? The suffrage is this great primary law-making power. It is not the executive power. It is not founded upon force. Never in the history of this or any other genuine republic has the law-making power, whether in general elections or in the framing of laws in legislative assemblies, been vested in individuals by reason of their physical powers....

      "The executive power of itself is a mere physical instrumentality—an animal quality—and it is confided from necessity to those who possess that quality, but always with danger, except so far as wisdom and virtue control its exercise. Therefore it is obvious that the greater the spiritual forces, whether found in those who execute the law, or in the large body by whom the suffrage is exercised, and who direct its execution, the greater will be the safety and the surer will be the happiness of the State.

      "It is too late to question the intellectual and moral capacity of woman to understand political issues and intelligently decide them at the polls. Indeed the pretense is no longer advanced that woman should not vote because of her mental or moral unfitness to perform this legislative function; but the suffrage is denied to her because she can neither hang criminals, suppress mobs nor handle the enginery of war. We have already seen the untenable nature of this assumption, because those who make it bestow the suffrage upon very large classes of men who, however well qualified they may be to vote, are physically unable to perform any of the duties which appertain to the execution of the law and the defense of the State. Scarcely a Senator on this floor is liable by law to perform military or other administrative duty, yet this rule set up against the right of women to vote would disfranchise nearly this whole body.

      "But it is unnecessary to grant that woman can not fight. History is full of examples of her heroism in danger, of her endurance and fortitude in trial, of her indispensable and supreme service in hospital and field.... It is hardly worth while to consider this trivial objection—that she is incompetent for purposes of national murder or of bloody self-defense—as the basis for denying a fundamental right, when we consider that if this right were given to her she would by its very exercise almost certainly abolish this great crime of the nations, which has always inflicted upon woman the chief burden of woe."

      Mr. Blair then demonstrated the intellectual ability of the woman of the present day, proving in this respect her capacity and fitness to vote. He quoted from the minority report of the Senate Committee, which had been submitted by Senators Brown and Cockrell, saying:

      It proceeds to show that both man and woman are designed for a higher final estate—to-wit, that of matrimony. It seems to be conceded that man is just as well fitted for matrimony as woman herself, and the whole subject is illuminated with certain botanical lore about stamens and pistils, which, however relevant to matrimony, does not prove that woman should not vote unless at the same time it proves that man should not vote. And certainly it can not apply to those women, any more than to those men, whose highest and final estate never is merged in the family relation at all....

      The right to vote is the great primitive right in which all freedom originates and culminates. It is the right from which all others spring, in which they merge, and without which they fall whenever assailed. This right makes all the difference between government by and with the consent of the governed, and government without and against the consent of the governed; and that is the difference between freedom and slavery. If the right to vote be not that difference, what is? If either sex as a class can dispense with the right to vote, then take it from the strong and do not longer rob the weak of their defense for the benefit of the strong. But it is impossible to conceive of the suffrage as a right dependent at all upon such an irrelevant condition as sex. It is an individual, a personal right, and if withheld by reason of sex it is a moral robbery.

      It is said that the duties of maternity disqualify for the performance of the act of voting. It can not be, and I think is not claimed by any one, that the mother who otherwise would be fit to vote is rendered mentally or morally less fit to exercise this high function in the State because of motherhood. On the contrary, if any woman has a motive more than another person, man or woman, to secure the enactment and enforcement of good laws, it is the mother, who, besides her own life, person and property—to the protection of which the ballot is as essential as to those of man—has her little contingent of immortal beings to conduct safely to the portals of active life through all the snares and pitfalls woven around them by bad men and bad laws, and to prepare rightly for the discharge of all the duties of their day and generation, including, if boys, the exercise of the very right denied to their mother.

      Certainly if but for motherhood woman should vote, then ten thousand times more necessary is it that the mother should be armed with this great social and political power for the sake of all men and women who are yet to be. It is said that she has not the time. Let us see. By the best deductions I can make from the census and from other sources, of the women of voting age in this country not more than one-half are married and still liable to the duties of maternity; for it will be remembered that a considerable proportion of the mothers at any given time are below the voting age, while another large proportion have passed beyond the point of this objection. Then why disfranchise the half to whom your objection, even if valid as to any, does not apply at all; and most of these, too, the most mature and therefore the best qualified to vote of any of their sex?

      But how much is there of this objection of want of time or physical strength to vote in its application to those women who are bearing and training the coming millions?... The average mother will attend church at least forty times yearly from her cradle to her grave; and there is, besides, an infinity of other social, religious and industrial obligations which she performs because she is a married woman and a mother rather than for any other reason whatever. Yet it is proposed to deprive all women alike of an inestimable privilege for the reason that on any given day of election perhaps one woman in twenty of voting age may not be able to reach the polls....

      When one thinks of the innumerable and trifling causes which keep many of the best of men and the strongest opponents of woman suffrage from the polls upon important occasions, it is difficult to be tolerant of the objection that woman by reason of motherhood has no time to vote....

      It is urged that woman does not desire the privilege. If the right exist at all it is an individual right, and not one which belongs to a class or to the sex as such. Yet men tell us that they will vote to give the suffrage to women whenever the majority of women desire it. What would we say if it were seriously proposed to recall the suffrage from all colored or from all white men because a majority of either class should decline or for any cause fail to vote? If one or many choose not to claim their right it is no argument for depriving me of mine or one woman of hers. There are many reasons why some women declare themselves opposed to the extension of suffrage to their sex. Some well-fed and pampered, without serious experiences in life, are incapable of comprehending the subject at all. Vast numbers, who secretly and earnestly desire it, from the long habit of deference to the wishes of the other sex upon whom they are so entirely dependent, and knowing the hostility of their "protectors" to it, conceal their real sentiments. The "lord" of the family referring this question to his wife, who has heard him sneer or worse than sneer at suffragists for half a lifetime, ought not expect an answer which she knows will subject her to his censure and ridicule. It is like the old appeal of the master to his slave to know if he would like to be free. Full well did the wise and wary slave know that happiness depended upon declaring contentment with his lot....

      We are told that husband and wife will disagree and thus the suffrage will destroy the family and ruin society. If a married couple will quarrel at all, they will find the occasion, and it would be fortunate indeed if their contention might concern important affairs. There is no peace in the family save where love is, and the same spirit which enables husband and wife to enforce the toleration act between themselves in religious matters will keep the peace between them in political