POLITICAL STATUS OF WOMEN T HE RUSSIAN was the first government to grant any political recognition and rights to large numbers of women. SWEDEN in 1735 gave women tax-payers votes. FRANCE (a monarchy), about the year 1831, gave widows votes by proxy. This right the Republic took away from them. BRUNSWICK (Germany) in 1850 gave widows and unmarried women who owned property votes by proxy. PRUSSIA and WESTPHALIA in 1856 gave all women with property qualifications votes by proxy. GALICIA in 1866 gave women tax-payers votes by proxy-the married women through their husbands, the unmarried through elected proxy. SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN (Germany) in 1867 gave all women of required property qualifications votes by proxy. Since then the right to vote has been extended in Norway, Sweden, Russia, England, Prussia and Austria; while municipal suffrage has been granted to women in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Norway and Canada; and complete suffrage to all women (numbering 1,500,000) in the Isle of Man, New Zealand, New South Wales, South Australia, West Australia, and Tasmania. The States of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho grant women full suffrage-Wyoming, in 1890, being the first State in any republic in the world to give women complete suffrage. In republics the right of women to vote lags far behind the right of women to vote in other civilized governments; indeed it is to be doubted if any republic will ever grant women generally the right to vote. For example in a white population of 60,000,000 in the British Empire, 5,000,000 women have more liberal suffrage than have 500,000 women in the American Republic of 80,000,000 people. And in a population of 60,000,000 people in the British Empire, 1,500,000 woinen have fuller suffrage and greater political power than have 150,000 women in the American Republic of 80,000,000 people. Within a given population of 160,000,000 people in European aristocracies, 10,000,000 women possess more liberal municipal suffrage than do 1,000,000 women in a combined population of republics of 160,000,000 people. The woman who seeks equality between the sexes makes the mistake of her life in seeking such in a republic. Before the American government was established, women begged that this new government should fulfil the promise of the Revolution, viz.: No taxation without individual representation. Mrs. Adams (the wife of a future President), wrote to her husband to the Continental Congress, imploring him to see to it that women were recognized by the Republic as units of power, and that the men be not given arbitrary power over women (which their having exclusive use of the ballot meant). And from Virginia and Maryland went protests from women against women being excluded from political power. The most famous of these women were: A sister of the famous General, R. H. Lee, and Miss Brent, of Maryland. Other educated Southern women, headed by Mrs. Brevard, of North Carolina, asked that the new government should give women political power. Miss Livingston, a distant cousin of Philip Livingston (one of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence), a cultured Northern woman, wrote to the Philip Livingston mentioned that it would be a pity for the new government to succeed if it did not give women political recognition, as the women would, otherwise, occupy a far lower position therein than they had previously held as subjects of England. She prophesied that political recognition not being granted to women they would, as time went on, constantly grow more helpless in the hands of their masters and rulers. She said that no woman on the American continent with an ounce of brains would have lifted her voice against English supremacy if she had for a moment thought that the new government would ostracise and ignore her sex. THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE Although prior to 1776, when the American colonies were subject to England, the Americans were denied the right to send representatives to the English Parliament, the Colonies had local and municipal self-government. The Declaration of Independence starts out by asserting that all human beings are born equal and with inalienable rights to liberty; and that, to serve these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever a government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to abolish it. At the close the States declare they will will carry these pledges into effect and for this end they aver "we mutually pledge our sacred honour." The government which was founded upon this document considers this same Declaration of Independence, when used by women an "in |