The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 18

Either the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and the bills of rights are true, or government must rest on no principle of right whatever, but its powers may be lawfully taken by force and held by force by any person or cla.s.s who have strength to do it, and who persuade themselves that their rule is for the public interest. Either these doctrines are true, or you can give no reason for your own possession of the suffrage except that you have got it. If this doctrine be sound, it follows that no cla.s.s of persons can rightfully be excluded from their equal share in the government, unless they can be proved to lack some quality essential to the proper exercise of political power.

A person who votes helps, first, to determine the measures of government; second, to elect persons to be intrusted with public administration. He should therefore possess, first, an honest desire for the public welfare; second, sufficient intelligence to determine what measure or policy is best; third, the capacity to judge of the character of persons proposed for office; and, fourth, freedom from undue influence, so that the vote he casts is his own, and not another's. That person or cla.s.s casting his or their own vote, with an honest desire for the public welfare, and with sufficient intelligence to judge what measure is advisable and what person may be trusted, fulfill every condition that the State can rightfully impose.

We are not now dealing with the considerations which should affect the admission of citizens of other countries to acquire the right to take part in our government. All nations claim the right to impose restrictions on the admission of foreigners trained in attachment to other countries or forms of rule, and to indifference to their own, whatever they deem the safety of the State requires. We take it for granted that no person will deny that the women of America are inspired with a love of country equal to that which animates their brothers and sons. A capacity to judge of character, so sure and rapid as to be termed intuitive, is an especial attribute of woman. One of the greatest orators of modern times has declared:

I concede away nothing which I ought to a.s.sert for our s.e.x when I say that the collective womanhood of a people like our own seizes with matchless facility and certainty on the moral and personal peculiarities and character of marked and conspicuous men, and that we may very wisely address ourselves to such a body to learn if a compet.i.tor for the highest honors has revealed that truly n.o.ble nature that ent.i.tled him to a place in the hearts of a nation.

We believe that in that determining of public policies by the collective judgment of the State which const.i.tutes self-government, the contribution of woman will be of great importance and value. To all questions into the determination of which considerations of justice or injustice enter, she will bring a more refined moral sense than that of man. The most important public function of the State is the provision for the education of youths. In those States in which the public school system has reached its highest excellence, more than ninety per cent. of the teachers are women. Certainly the vote of the women of the State should be counted in determining the policy that shall regulate the school system which they are called to administer.

It is seldom that particular measures of government are decided by direct popular vote. They are more often discussed before the people after they have taken effect, when the party responsible for them is called to account. The great measures which go to make up the history of nations are determined not by the voters, but by their rulers, whether those rulers be hereditary or elected. The plans of great campaigns are conceived by men of great military genius and executed by great generals. Great systems of finance come from the brain of statesmen who have made finance a special study. The ma.s.s of the voters decide to which party they will intrust power. They do not determine particulars.

But they give to parties their general tone and direction, and hold them to their accountability. We believe that woman will give to the political parties of the country a moral temperament which will have a most beneficent and enn.o.bling effect on politics.

Woman, also, is specially fitted for the performance of that function of legislative and executive government which, with the growth of civilization, becomes yearly more and more important--the wise and practical economic adjustment of the details of public expenditures. It may be considered that it would not be for the public interest to clothe with the suffrage any cla.s.s of persons who are so dependent that they will, as a general rule, be governed by others in its exercise. But we do not admit that this is true of women. We see no reason to believe that women will not be as likely to retain their independence of political judgment, as they now retain their independence of opinion in regard to the questions which divide religious sects from one another. These questions deeply excite the feelings of mankind, yet experience shows that the influence of the wife is at least as great as that of the husband in determining the religious opinion of the household. The natural influence exerted by members of the same family upon each other would doubtless operate to bring about similarity of opinion on political questions as on others. So far as this tends to increase the influence of the family in the State, as compared with that of unmarried men, we deem it an advantage. Upon all questions which touch public morals, public education, all which concern the interest of the household, such a united exertion of political influence cannot be otherwise than beneficial.

Our conclusion, then, is that the American people must extend the right of suffrage to woman or abandon the idea that suffrage is a birthright. The claim that universal suffrage will work mischief in practice is simply a claim that justice will work mischief in practice. Many honest and excellent persons, while admitting the force of the arguments above stated, fear that taking part in politics will destroy those feminine traits which are the charm of woman, and are the chief comfort and delight of the household.

If we thought so we should agree with the majority of the committee in withholding a.s.sent to the prayer of the pet.i.tioners.

This fear is the result of treating the abuses of the political function as essential to its exercise. The study of political questions, the forming an estimate of the character of public men or public measures, the casting a vote, which is the result of that study and estimate, certainly have in themselves nothing to degrade the most delicate and refined nature. The violence, the fraud, the crime, the chicanery, which, so far as they have attended masculine struggles for political power, tend to prove, if they prove anything, the unfitness of men for the suffrage, are not the result of the act of voting, but are the expressions of course, criminal and evil natures, excited by the desire for victory. The admission to the polls of delicate and tender women would, without injury to them, tend to refine and elevate the politics in which they took a part. When, in former times, women were excluded from social banquets, such a.s.semblies were scenes of ribaldry and excess. The presence of women has subst.i.tuted for them the festival of the Christian home.

The majority of the committee state the following as their reasons for the conclusion to which they come:

_First_--If the pet.i.tioners' prayer be granted it will make several millions of female voters.

_Second_--These voters will be inexperienced in public affairs.

_Third_--They are quite generally dependent on the other s.e.x.

_Fourth_--They are incapable of military duty.

_Fifth_--They are without the power to enforce the laws which their numerical strength may enable them to make.

_Sixth_--Very few of them wish to a.s.sume the irksome and responsible duties which this measure thrusts upon them.

_Seventh_--Such a change should only be made slowly and in obedience to a general public demand.

_Eighth_--There are but thirty thousand pet.i.tioners.

_Ninth_--It would be unjust to impose "the heavy burden of governing, which so many men seek to evade, on the great ma.s.s of women who do not wish for it, to gratify the few who do."

_Tenth_--Women now have the sympathy of judges and juries "to an extent which would warrant loud complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner s.e.x."

_Eleventh_--Such a change should be made, if at all, by the States. Three-fourths of the States should not force it on the others. In any State in which "any considerable part of the women wish for the right to vote, it will be granted without the intervention of congress."

The first objection of the committee is to the large increase of the number of the voting population. We believe on the other hand, that to double the numbers of the const.i.tuent body, and to compose one-half that body of women, would tend to elevate the standard of the representative both for ability and manly character. Macaulay in one of his speeches on the Reform bill refers to the quality of the men who had for half a century been members for the five most numerous const.i.tuencies in England--Westminster, Southwark, Liverpool, Bristol and Norwich.

Among them were Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Romilly, Windham, Tierney, Canning, Huskisson. Eight of the nine greatest men who had sat in parliament for forty years sat for the five largest represented towns. To increase the numbers of const.i.tuencies diminishes the opportunity for corruption. Size is itself a conservative force in a republic. As a permanent general rule the people will desire their own best interest. Disturbing forces, evil and selfish pa.s.sions, personal ambitions, are necessarily restricted in their operation. The larger the field of operation, the more likely are such influences to neutralize each other.

The objection of inexperience in public affairs applies, of course, alike to every voter when he first votes. If it be valid, it would have prevented any extension of the suffrage, and would exclude from the franchise a very large number of masculine voters of all ages.

That women are quite generally dependent on the other s.e.x is true. So it is true that men are quite generally dependent on the other s.e.x. It is impossible so to measure this dependence as to declare that man is more dependent on woman or woman upon man. It is by no means true that the dependence of either on the other affects the right to the suffrage.

Capacity for military duty has no connection with capacity for suffrage. The former is wholly physical. It will scarcely be proposed to disfranchise men who are unfit to be soldiers by reason of age or bodily infirmity. The suggestion that the country may be plunged into wars by a majority of women who are secure from military dangers is not founded in experience. Men of the military profession, and men of the military age are commonly quite as eager for war as non-combatants, and will hereafter be quite as indifferent to its risks and hards.h.i.+ps as their mothers and wives.

The argument that women are without the power to enforce the laws which their numerical strength may enable them to make, proceeds from the supposition that it is probable that all the women will range themselves upon one side in politics and all the men on the other. Such supposition flatly contradicts the other arguments drawn from the dependence of women and from their alleged unwillingness to a.s.sume political burdens. So men over fifty years of age are without the power to enforce obedience to laws against which the remainder of the voters forcibly rebel. It is not physical power alone, but power aided by the respect for law of the people, on which laws depend for their enforcement.

The sixth, eighth and ninth reasons of the committee are the same proposition differently stated. It is that a share in the government of the country is a burden, and one which, in the judgment of a majority of the women of the country, they ought not to be required to a.s.sume. If any citizen deem the exercise of this franchise a burden and not a privilege, such person is under no constraint to exercise it. But if it be a birthright, then it is obvious that no other power than that of the individual concerned can rightfully restrain its exercise. The committee concede that women ought to be clothed with the ballot in any State where any considerable part of the women desire it. This is a pretty serious confession. On the vital, fundamental question whether the inst.i.tutions of this country shall be so far changed that the number of persons in it who take a part in the government shall be doubled, the judgment of women is to be and ought to be decisive. If woman may fitly determine this question, for what question of public policy is she unfit? What question of equal importance will ever be submitted to her decision? What has become of the argument that women are unfit to vote because they are dependent on men, or because they are unfit for military duty, or because they are inexperienced, or because they are without power to enforce obedience to their laws?

The next argument is that by the present arrangement the administration of justice is so far perverted that one-half the citizens of the country have an advantage from the sympathies of juries and judges which "would warrant loud complaint" on the part of the other half. If this be true, it is doubtless due to an instinctive feeling on the part of juries and judges that existing laws and inst.i.tutions are unjust to women, or to the fact that juries composed wholly of men are led to do injustice by their susceptibility to the attractions of women. But certainly it is a grave defect in any system of government that it does not administer justice impartially, and the existence of such a defect is a strong reason for preferring an arrangement which would remove the feeling that women do not have fair play, or for so composing juries that, drawn from both s.e.xes, they would be impartial between the two.

The final objection of the committee is that "such a change should be made, if at all, by the States. Three-fourths of the States should not force it upon the others. Whenever any considerable part of the women in any State wish for the right to vote, it will be granted without the intervention of congress."

Who can doubt that when two-thirds of congress and three-fourths of the States have voted for the change, a considerable number of women in the other States will be found to desire it, so that, according to the committee's own belief, it can never be forced by a majority on unwilling communities? The prevention of unjust discrimination by States against large cla.s.ses of people in respect to suffrage is even admitted to be a matter of national concern and an important function of the national const.i.tution and laws. It is the duty of congress to propose amendments to the const.i.tution whenever two-thirds of both houses deem them necessary. Certainly an amendment will be deemed necessary, if it can be shown to be required by the principles on which the const.i.tution is based, and to remove an unjust disfranchis.e.m.e.nt from one-half the citizens of the country. The const.i.tutional evidence of general public demand is to be found not in pet.i.tions, but in the a.s.sent of three-fourths of the States through their legislatures or conventions.

The lessons of experience favor the conclusion that woman is fit for a share in government. It may be true that in certain departments of intellectual effort the greatest achievements of women have as yet never equaled the greatest achievements of men. But it is equally true that in those same departments women have exhibited an intellectual ability very far beyond that of the average of men and very far beyond that of most men who have shown very great political capacity. But let the comparison be made in regard to the very thing with which we have to deal. Of men who have swayed chief executive power, a very considerable proportion have attained it by usurpation or by election, processes which imply extraordinary capacity on their part as compared with other men. The women who have held such power have come to it as sovereigns by inheritance, or as regents by the accident of bearing a particular relation to the lawful sovereign when he was under some incapacity. Yet it is an undisputed fact that the number of able and successful female sovereigns bears a vastly greater proportion to the whole number of such sovereigns, than does the number of able and successful male sovereigns to the whole number of men who have reigned. An able, energetic, virtuous king or emperor is the exception and not the rule in the history of modern Europe. With hardly an exception the female sovereigns or regents have been wise and popular. Mr. Mill, who makes this point, says:

We know how small a number of reigning queens history presents in comparison with that of kings. Of this small number a far larger proportion have shown talents for rule, though many of them have occupied the throne in difficult periods. When to queens and empresses we add regents and viceroys of provinces, the list of women who have been eminent rulers of mankind swells to a great length....

Especially is this true if we take into consideration Asia as well as Europe. If a Hindoo princ.i.p.ality is strongly, vigilantly and economically governed; if order is preserved without oppression; if cultivation is extending and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that princ.i.p.ality is under a woman's rule. This fact, to me an entirely unexpected one, I have collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo governments.

Certainly history gives no warning that should deter the American people from carrying out the principles upon which their government rests to this most just and legitimate conclusion.

Those persons who think that free government has anywhere failed, can only claim that this tends to prove, not the failure of universal suffrage, but the failure of masculine suffrage. Like failure has attended the operation of every other great human inst.i.tution, the family, the school, the church, whenever woman has not been permitted to contribute to it her full share. As to the best example of the perfect family, the perfect school, the perfect church, the love, the purity, the truth of woman are essential, so they are equally essential to the perfect example of the self-governing State.

GEO. F. h.o.a.r, JOHN H. MITCh.e.l.l, ANGUS CAMERON.

Thousands of copies of this report were published and franked to every part of the country. On February 7, just one week after the presentation of the able minority report, the bill allowing women to practice before the Supreme Court pa.s.sed the Senate[47] and received the signature of President Hayes. Senators McDonald, h.o.a.r and Sargent made the princ.i.p.al speeches. We give Mr. h.o.a.r's speech in full because of its terse and vigorous presentation of the fact that congress is a body superior to the Supreme Court of the United States. Mr. h.o.a.r said:

_Mr. President_--I understand the brief statement which was made, I think, during this last session by the majority of the Judiciary Committee in support of their opposition to this bill, did not disclose that the majority of that committee were opposed to permitting women to engage in the practice of law or to be admitted to practice it in the Supreme Court of the United States, but the point they made, was that the legislation of the United States left to the Supreme Court the power of determining by rule who should be admitted to practice before that tribunal, and that we ought not by legislation to undertake to interfere with its rules. Now, with the greatest respect for that tribunal, I conceive that the law-making and not the law-expounding power in this government ought to determine the question what cla.s.s of citizens shall be clothed with the office of the advocate. I believe that leaving to the Supreme Court by rule to determine the qualifications or disqualifications of attorneys and counselors in that court is an exception to the nearly uniform policy of the States of the Union. Would it be tolerated if the Supreme Court undertook by rule to establish any other disqualification, any of those disqualifications which have existed in regard to holding any other office in the country?

Suppose the court were of the opinion we had been too fast in relieving persons who took part in the late rebellion from their disabilities, and that it would not admit persons who had so taken part to practice before the Supreme Court; is there any doubt that congress would at once interfere? Suppose the Supreme Court were of opinion that the people of the United States had erred in the amendment which had removed the disqualification from colored persons and declined to admit such persons to practice in that court; is there any doubt that congress would interfere and would deem it a fit occasion for the exercise of the law-making power?

Now, Mr. President, this bill is not a bill merely to admit women to the privilege of engaging in a particular profession; it is a bill to secure to the citizen of the United States the right to select his counsel, and that is all. At present a case is tried and decided in the State courts of any State of this Union which may be removed to the Supreme Court of the United States. In the courts of the State, women are permitted to practice as advocates, and a woman has been the advocate under whose direction and care and advocacy the case has been won in the court below. Is it tolerable that the counsel who has attended the case from its commencement to its successful termination in the highest court of the State should not be permitted to attend upon and defend the rights of that client when the case is transferred to the Supreme Court of the United States? Everybody knows, at least every lawyer of experience knows, the impossibility of transferring with justice to the interests of a client, a cause from one counsel to another. A suit is inst.i.tuted under the advice of a counsel on a certain theory, a certain remedy is selected, a certain theory of the cause is the one on which it is staked. Now that must be attended to and defended by the counsel under whose advice the suit has taken its shape; the pleadings have been shaped in the courts below.

Under the present system, a citizen of any State in the Union having selected a counsel of good moral character who has practiced three years, who possesses all-sufficient professional and personal qualifications, and having had a cause brought to a successful result in the State court, is denied by the present existing and unjust rule having counsel of his choice argue the cause in the Supreme Court of the United States.

The greatest master of human manners, who read the human heart and who understood better than any man who ever lived the varieties of human character, when he desired to solve just what had puzzled the lawyers and doctors, placed a woman upon the judgment seat; and yet, under the present existing law, if Portia herself were alive, she could not defend the opinion she had given, before the Supreme Court of the United States.

The press commented favorably upon this new point gained for women.

We give a few extracts:

The senators who voted to-day against the bill "to relieve certain legal disabilities of women" are marked men and have reason to fear the result of their action.--[Telegraph to the New York _Tribune_, February 7.

The women get into the Supreme Court in spite of the determination of the justices. They gained a decided advantage to-day in the pa.s.sage by the Senate of a bill providing that any woman who shall have been a member of the highest court in any State or territory, or of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, for three years, may be admitted to the Supreme Court.

The bill was called up by Senator McDonald, in antagonism to Mr.

Edmunds' amendment to the const.i.tution which was the pending order. Mr. Edmunds objected to the consideration of the bill and voted against it. There was not much discussion, the main speeches being by Mr. Sargent and Mr. h.o.a.r.--[Special dispatch to the New York _World_, February 7.

A WOMAN'S RIGHTS VICTORY IN THE SENATE.--The Lockwood bill, giving women authority to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States, pa.s.sed the Senate yesterday by a vote of two to one, and now it only requires the approval of Mr. Hayes to become a law. The powerful effect of persistent and industrious lobbying is manifested in the success of this bill. When it was first introduced, it is doubtful if one-fourth the members of congress would have voted for it. Some of the strong-minded women, who were interested in the bill, stuck to it, held the fort from day to day, and talked members and senators into believing it a just measure. Senator McDonald gave Mr. Edmunds a rebuff yesterday that he will not soon forget. The latter attempted to administer a rebuke to the Indiana senator for calling up a bill during the absence of the senator who had reported it. Mr. McDonald retorted that he knew the objection of the senator from Vermont was made for the purpose of defeating the bill and not, as pretended, to give an absent senator opportunity to speak upon it.--[Was.h.i.+ngton _Post_, February 8.

The credit for this victory belongs to Mrs. Belva Lockwood, of this city, who, having been refused admission to the bar of the United States Supreme Court, appealed to congress, and by dint of hard work has finally succeeded in having her bill pa.s.sed by both houses. She called on Mrs. Hayes last evening, who complimented her upon her achievement, and informed her that she had sent a bouquet to Senator h.o.a.r, in token of his efforts in behalf of the bill.--[Was.h.i.+ngton _Star_, February 8.

The bill was carried through merely by the energetic advocacy of Senators McDonald, Sargent and h.o.a.r, whose oratorical efforts were reenforced by the presence of Mrs. Lockwood. After the struggle was over, all the senators who advocated the bill were made the recipients of bouquets, while the three senators whose names we have given received large baskets of flowers. This is a pleasing omen of that purification of legal business which it is hoped will flow from the introduction of women to the courts. It was not flowers that used to be distributed at Was.h.i.+ngton and Albany in the old corrupt times, among legislators, in testimony of grat.i.tude for their votes. Let us hope that venal legislation at Was.h.i.+ngton will be extirpated by the rise of this beautiful custom.--[New York _Nation_.

It was noticeable that all the presidential candidates dodged the issue except Senator Blaine, who voted for the bill.--[Chicago _Inter-Ocean_.

How humiliated poor old Judge Magruder must feel, since the congress of the United States paid the woman whom he forbade to open her mouth in his august presence, in his little court, so much consideration as to pa.s.s an act opening to her the doors of the Supreme Court of the United States. All honor to the brave woman, who by her own unaided efforts thus achieved honor, fortune and fame--the just rewards of her own true worth.--[_Havre Republican_, Havre de Grace, Maryland.