THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

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participation in governmental affairs, the peculiar characteristics of their nature have never been developed in the nation’s life, therefore republics have always become weak and have ultimately come to their death through the decay of the moral and spiritual side of their life.

The question before us then is this: Is there anything in the nature of woman, differing from the nature of man in such a manner, that if women were permitted to vote it would enable them to affect the government differently from the way in which men affect it? Ina speech made in Kansas some time since a United States senator said, “The nature of woman is as different from the nature of man, as the East is from the West.” From which fact, he drew the conclusion that women ought to be dis­franchised. He further states that, “If women were permitted to vote, the result would not be changed, as they would affect the government just as men affect it.” In his speech the senator made a strong plea for the superiority of his sex on the ground of their reasoning and logical powers, and said: “Women cannot reason, but arrive at their conclusions intuitively.” On reading the senator’s speech one is led to inquire what woman’s head he borrowed to enable him to arrive at his conclusions from the premises with which he started. If in a republic every class that votes affects the government in the long run along the line of its nature, and the nature of woman differs from the nature of man as the East differs from the West, how can any reasoning or logical mind conclude that the votes of women would affect the government exactly as those of men? Reason, or intuition, or by whatever mental process women reach their con­clusions, they would claim the result of woman’s voting to be as different from that of men as the East is from the West.

We need no argument to prove that the liquor class is able to affect the govern­ment, and that it influences it because of its power in the caucus, at the ballot box and in halls of legislation. Recent laws in many states show us how men interested in many forms of gambling and vice are able to affect the government through the power of the ballot. In one of my old parishes in Massachusetts, a body of men interested in cranberry culture were equally successful in defeating another body of men engaged in the fishing industry, because the cranberry men elected their candidate to the legis­lature, who through his ability to exchange votes, secured the passage of a bill in the' interests of his constituents. Had women owned the property, in whose behalf legis­lation was secured, they could have done nothing but watch the shiny herring swim up and down the stream which was dammed by legislative enactment, until the last trump had sounded; because, not having votes,they could have sent no represent­ative to the legislature to look after their special interests. If in a republic liquor men, gambling men and cranberry men having votes are able to affect the govern­ment, and to affect it along the line of their nature, then women, if they have votes, could affect it along the line of their nature; and if women differ from men, as the East does from the West, then the effect of their participation in government would differ less from that of men in like manner.

Wherein does the nature of women differ from that of men in such a way that if they voted they would be able to affect the government. It is universally admitted that women are more moral than men. The great moral factor of the world is its womanhood. Men recognize this fact even more than women, as, in all their argu­ments against the extension of suffrage to women, they claim it would degrade them to the level of men*. In the congressional debate over the admission of Wyomiitg territory into the Union as a state, every gentleman who opposed it based his argu­ment upon the woman suffrage plank in its constitution, urging that women are “ too good and pure to vote.” For the first time in history goodness and virtue were made the basis of disfranchisement. In response to this sentiment Mr. Carey, the United States delegate from Wyoming, declared this very characteristic of womanhood had compelled both great political parties in that territory to nominate their best men in the caucuses, since the women defeated the immoral men.at the polls. Said a woman in Wyoming: “ We are not particular to hold offices ourselves, but we are very par-