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

cendiary document." The Republic offered, as its only excuse for coming into being, that it meant to establish "equality for all,”—yet it is ever ready to brand as a traitress every woman therein who objects to being placed by it under the absolute and irresponsible despotism of millions of rulers. The Republie was founded upon the principle that people have a right to overthrow a government based upon any other standard than liberty and equality for all its members-yet it is ever ready to brand as a traitress every woman who objects to being placed by it upon the identical public plane she would occupy as a subject of Turkey.

QUOTATIONS AND SUMMARIES

(The following are quotations and summaries from the writings and speeches of noted Americans and others. A few of them being quoted from memory, may deviate slightly verbally from the original, but in no case is the sense altered or modified.)

OPINIONS OF WOMEN

The American Republic dishonours woman, and it should expect no woman to honour it.— Mrs. Z. Wallace (Mother of General Lew Wallace).

To the everlasting shame of the American Republic, a delegation of ladies from the aristocracies of England, Russia, Sweden and Norway, appeared before its Congress, February, 1902, to implore it to pass a National enactment which would force the States of the Union to cease classing women politically with their criminals and lunatics, with their mental and moral outcasts. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, in introducing the speakers, said: “Although I have always lived in this Republic, having been a resident of four different States, a tax-payer, and able to pass every qualification, I have never been permitted to vote for the smallest thing, and yet I have the privilege of introducing to the American Congress a Russian woman who has voted in her country ever since she was twenty-one years of age."

Madam Freedland said: "Mr. Chairman, and Gentlemen of the Congress-In a country like Russia, with an absolute government, there is but little suffrage for either men or women, but what there is is equally shared by men and women. We do not (men or women) vote for our Czars, but about all the municipal officers are elected by the votes of real-estate owners, regardless of sex, and this is a far greater justice than is shown to American women. Russia has the most liberal laws in Europe regarding the civil capacity of her women. For centuries marriage has not changed the rights of a wife to her property; the husband has no legal right over the property of the wife, and the wife is in no respect under the husband's guardianship."

Mrs. Ewald, of Sweden, said: "I stand before the legislative power of America, representing country where women have voted since the seventeenth century, and Swedish women voted before any man upon American soil ever voted. Our men granted votes to women without women ever requesting the same. The tax-payers of Sweden, irrespective of sex, can vote. Women have voted