I am not going to discuss the question at length at this time.  The arguments for and against woman suffrage have been often stated in this Chamber, and are pretty fully set forth in the majority and minority reports of the Senate committee upon the pending joint resolution.  The arguments in its favor were fully stated by the senior Senator from New Hampshire in his able speech upon the question before alluded to, and now the objections to it have been forcibly and elaborately presented by the senior Senator from Georgia [Mr. Brown].  I could not expect by anything I could say to change a single vote in this body, and the public is already fully informed upon the question, as the arguments in favor of woman suffrage have been voiced in every hamlet in the land with great ability.  No question in this country has been more ably discussed than this has been by the women themselves.

I do not think a single objection which is made to woman suffrage is tenable.  No one will contend but that women have sufficient capacity to vote intelligently.

Sir, sacred and profane history is full of the records of great deeds by women.  They have ruled kingdoms, and, my friend from Georgia to the contrary notwithstanding, they have commanded armies.  They have excelled in statecraft, they have shone in literature, and, rising superior to their environments and breaking the shackles with which custom and tyranny have bound them, they have stood side by side with men in the fields of the arts and the sciences.

If it were a fact that woman is intellectually inferior to man, which I do not admit, still that would be no reason why she should not be permitted to participate in the formation and control of the Government to which she owes allegiance.  If we are to have as a test for the exercise of the right of suffrage a qualification based upon intelligence, let it be applied to women and to men alike.  If it be admitted that suffrage is a right, that is the end of controversy; there can no longer be any argument made against woman suffrage, because, if it is her right, then, if there were but one poor woman in all the United States demanding the right of suffrage, it would be tyranny to refuse the demand.

But our friends say that suffrage is not a right; that it is a matter of grace only; that it is a privilege which is conferred upon or withheld from individual members of society by society at pleasure.  Society as here used means man’s government, and the proposition assumes the fact that men have a right to institute and control governments for themselves and for women.  I admit that in the governments of the world, past and present, men as a rule have assumed to be the ruling classes; that they have instituted governments from participation in which they have excluded women; that they have made laws for themselves and for women, and as a rule have themselves administered them; but that the provisions conferring or regulating suffrage in the constitutions and laws of governments so constituted determined the question of the right of suffrage can not be maintained.