If the majority of women are either not desirous to vote or are strongly opposed to voting, the minority should yield in this, as they are obliged to do in all other public matters.  In fact, they will be obliged to yield, so long as the present state of opinion exists among women in general, for legislators will naturally consult the wishes of the women of their own families and neighborhood, and be governed by them.  There can be no doubt that in this State, where women are highly respected and have great influence, the ballot would be readily granted to them by men, if they desired it, or generally approved of woman suffrage.  Women are taxed, it is true; so are minors, without the ballot; it is untrue, to say that either class is not represented.  The thousand ties of relationship and friendship cause the identity of interest between the sexes.  What is good in a community for men, is good also for their wives and sisters, daughters and friends.  The laws of Massachusetts discriminate much in favor of women, by exempting unmarried women of small estate from taxation; by allowing women, and not men, to acquire a settlement without paying a tax; by compelling husbands to support their wives, but exempting the wife, even when rich, from supporting an indigent husband; by making men liable for debts of wives, and not vice versa.  In the days of the American Revolution, the first cause of complaint was, that a whole people were taxed but not represented.

To-day there is not a single interest of woman which is not shared and defended by men, not a subject in which she takes an intelligent interest in which she cannot exert an influence in the community proportional to her character and ability.  It is because the men who govern live not in a remote country, with separate interests, but in the closest relations of family and neighborhood, and bound by the tenderest ties to the other sex, who are fully and well represented by relations, friends, and neighbors in every locality.  That women are purer and more conscientious than men, as a sex, is exceedingly doubtful when applied to politics.  The faults of the sexes are different, according to their constitution and habits of life.  Men are more violent and open in their misdeeds, but any person who knows human nature well and has examined it in its various phases knows that each sex is open to its peculiar temptation and sin; that the human heart is weak and prone to evil without distinction of sex.

It seems certain that, were women admitted to vote and to hold political office, all the intrigue, corruption, and selfishness displayed by men in political life would also be found among women.  In the temperance cause we should gain little or nothing by admitting women to vote, for two reasons:  first, that experience has proved that the strictest laws can not be enforced