I have said I would not speak of the inconveniences to arise from woman suffrage—­I care not—­whether the mother is called upon to decide as a juryman or jury-woman rights of property or rights of life, whilst her baby is “mewling and puking” in solitary confinement at home.  There are other considerations more important, and one of them to my mind is insuperable.  I speak now respecting women as a sex.  I believe that they are better than men, but I do not believe they are adapted to the political work of this world.  I do not believe that the Great Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work given to men, tearing down and destroying all the best influences for which God has intended them.

The great evil in this country to-day is in emotional suffrage.  The great danger to-day is in excitable suffrage.  If the voters of this country could think always coolly, and if they could deliberate, if they could go by judgment and not by passion, our institutions would survive forever, eternal as the foundations of the continent itself; but massed together, subject to the excitements of mobs and of these terrible political contests that come upon us from year to year under the autonomy of our Government, what would be the result if suffrage were given to the women of the United States?

Women are essentially emotional.  It is no disparagement to them they are so.  It is no more insulting to say that women are emotional than to say that they are delicately constructed physically and unfitted to become soldiers or workmen under the sterner, harder pursuits of life.

What we want in this country is to avoid emotional suffrage, and what we need is to put more logic into public affairs and less feeling.  There are spheres in which feeling should be paramount.  There are kingdoms in which the heart should reign supreme.  That kingdom belongs to woman.  The realm of sentiment, the realm of love, the realm of the gentler and the holier and kindlier attributes that make the name of wife, mother, and sister next to that of God himself.

I would not, and I say it deliberately, degrade woman by giving her the right of suffrage.  I mean the word in its full signification, because I believe that woman as she is to-day, the queen of home and of hearts, is above the political collisions of this world, and should always be kept above them.

Sir, if it be said to us that this is a natural right belonging to women, I deny it.  The right of suffrage is one to be determined by expediency and by policy, and given by the State to whom it pleases.  It is not a natural right; it is a right that comes from the state.

It is claimed that if the suffrage be given to women it is to protect them.  Protect them from whom?  The brute that would invade their rights would coerce the suffrage of his wife, or sister, or mother as he would wring from her the hard earnings of her toil to gratify his own beastly appetites and passions.