teaches such doctrines has advanced or can advance woman is an absurdity so apparent that I am surprised that anybody should ever give credence to it. Such doctrines could not by any possibility be the civilisers of womankind. On the contrary, they have necessarily polluted the imagination of men, robbed our sex of the highest esteem, and covered the cradle of every girl with disfavour. Nowhere is masculine selfpreference, self-idolatry, so constantly nurtured as in a republic. Think of the harmful influence it has upon every boy to grow to manhood in absolute certainty that without any merit or effort of his own, the government makes him the absolute ruler, during his entire adult life, of every woman in the land! Of his privilege he is sure, and that although he be the most grossly ignorant and the vilest of the vile; for his standing is secure just because of the accident of being born a male. No matter how superior she may be in goodness, character, or education, woman must perforce be placed in a lower class!

Then think of the effect of such teachings on

low negroes, whose minds are filled with outrage and murder! Think how debased and ignorant foreigners are affected by the rampant spirit! The effects of these teachings I shall show you later on. But I feel sure that you recognize the complete lack of agreement between pretensions and actual facts; and that the imagined rights of our sex in republics vanish when impartially examined in the light of history.

The pre-eminent American, Wendell Phillips, known to the world as one of the staunchest advocates of democracy who ever lived, confessed the following to a gentleman in his latter days. "Strange as it may sound I fear our republic will never be made to understand that the rights of men and women must rise or fall togetherderived as they are from the same authority, involved in the same axioms, demonstrated by the same arguments-that the laws of equal freedom apply alike to both sexes, and any other hypothesis will involve it in extricable difficulties. Nothing so discourages me as the realization that a republic constantly fosters and nurtures sex-prejudice—the prejudice of men in

favor of men against woman, a prejudice compared with which that of race or class is of trifling importance."

"It is inexplicable to me that the government which is based upon loftier liberty, justice, equality than any other, should, by special enactment, empower men to intrench upon the rights, liberties and privileges of women to an extent unsanctioned by other forms of government. When our national government inserted the word "male" into its Constitution, it evinced a greater preference and partiality for all the men over the women of the nation than any government ever before showed for its men over all its women; it thus notified the States that they could take away and confiscate any of the privileges which they grant to women (and this they constantly do) and that women had no higher tribunal to appeal to than the judgment of the separate localities wherein they reside. It told the several States that any legal or political or civil privilege which they grant to woman is a mere local privilege (not a right) which they at any time can take away from her, and

that the general government will never intervene in her behalf, because it has placed women outside its Constitution and beyond its jurisdiction. The National government* protects the rights

"Wherever American women use the ballot, it is as a privilege and not as a right, as its use is not protected by the Constitution of the United States. Men can take that privilege away from women on account of their sex, whenever so inclined. The right of male citizens to vote is, on the other hand, protected by the constitution, and no State can take that right away. The States can affix qualifications (qualifications mean requirements which a little time or effort can overcome). But the right to vote cannot be permanently taken away. The State may regulate, but not prohibit, the right of a male to vote. Had Congress intended to secure to the women of the nation equal rights and protection with the men, the word "male" would never have been inserted in the National Constitution."-From a speech by the Hon. J. L. Routt, three times Governor of Colorado.

"Sex cannot be a qualification-any standard that could be required by any State, either physical, mental, financial or educational, as a qualification for the exercise of the right of suffrage, can be met by a very great number of women (to the exclusion of many men), but to make of sex (an unsurmountable thing) a requirement for the use of the ballot, is a piece of arrogant despotism that no monarch ever arrogated to himself."-Mrs. L. D. Blake.

of every male citizen beneath its flag and it leaves all the women absolutely without its protection or recognition and at the mercy of the States. Thus our Republic, after due and mature deliberation, purposely robbed its women of every right, and left them merely the possessors of precarious privileges which they must gain and retain as favors (and not as rights), just as women in any despotism gain and retain favors and privileges."

"The very basic principle of our Republicthe very foundation upon which it stands-is the right to individual representation. Yet when a woman asks the government to live up to its principles, she is insultingly told that when all women ask for the ballot it will be granted. We have a law that murder shall be punished. Now suppose when a woman is murdered the court should announce that the murderer would be released untried; and when the murdered woman's mother should appear to plead for justice and to demand the enforcement of the law, the court should say: "Yes, madam, the law says that a murderer shall be punished, but as all the women