State of the Union and in every Territory women will be admitted to an equal voice in the government, and that will be done whether the Federal Constitution is amended or not.  The first convention demanding suffrage for women was held at Seneca Falls, in the State of New York, in 1848.  To-day in three of the Territories of the Union women enjoy full suffrage, in a large number of States and Territories they are entitled to vote at school meetings, and in all the States and Territories there is a growing sentiment in favor of this measure which will soon compel respectful consideration by the law-making power.

No measure in this country involving such radical changes in our institutions and fraught with so great consequences to this country and to humanity has made such progress as the movement for woman suffrage.  Denunciation will not much longer answer for arguments by the opponents of this measure.  The portrayal of the evils to flow from woman suffrage such as we have heard pictured to-day by the Senator from Georgia, the loss of harmony between husband and wife, and the consequent instability of the marriage relation, the neglect of husband and children by wives and mothers for the performance of their political duties, in short the incapacitating of women for wives and mothers and companions, will not much longer serve to frighten the timid.  Proof is better than theory.  The experiment has been tried and the predicted evils to flow from it have not followed.  On the contrary, if we can believe the almost universal testimony, everywhere where it has been tried it has been followed by the most beneficial results.

In Washington Territory, since woman was enfranchised, there have been two elections.  At the first there were 8,368 votes cast by women out of a total vote of 34,000 and over.  At the second election, which was held in November last, out of 48,000 votes cast in the Territory, 12,000 votes were cast by women.  The opponents of female suffrage are silenced there.  The Territorial conventions of both parties have resolved in favor of woman suffrage, and there is not a proposition, so far as I know in all that Territory, to repeal the law conferring suffrage upon woman.

I desire also to inform my friend from Georgia that since women were enfranchised in Washington Territory nature has continued in her wonted courses.  The sun rises and sets; there is seed-time and harvest; seasons come and go.  The population has increased with the usual regularity and rapidity.  Marriages have been quite as frequent, and divorces have been no more so.  Women have not lost their influence for good upon society, but men have been elevated and refined.  If we are to believe the testimony which comes from lawyers, physicians, ministers of the gospel, merchants, mechanics, farmers, and laboring men, the united testimony of the entire people of the Territory, the results of woman suffrage there have been all that could be desired by its friends.  Some of the results in that Territory have been seen in making the polls quiet and orderly, in awaking a new interest in educational questions and in questions of moral reform, in securing the passage of beneficial laws and the proper enforcement of them; and, as I have said before, in elevating men, and that without injury to the women.