that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights * * * that to secure these rights governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed."

Gentlemen, are we allowed the opportunity of consent? These women
who are here from Maine to Oregon, from the Straits of Fuca to the
reefs of Florida, who in their representative capacity have come
up here so often, augmented in their numbers year by year, looking
with eyes of hope and hearts of faith, but oftentimes with hopes
deferred, upon the final solution of this great problem, which it
is so much in your hands to hasten in its solution--these women
are in earnest. My State is far away beyond the confines of the
Rocky Mountains, away over beside the singing Pacific sea, but the
spirit of liberty is among us there, and the public heart has been
stirred. The hearts of our men have been moved to listen to our
demands, and in Washington Territory, as one speaker has informed
you, women to-day are endowed with full and free enfranchisement,
and the rejoicing throughout that Territory is universal.

In Oregon men have also listened to our demand, and the
Legislature has in two successive sessions agreed upon a
proposition to amend our State constitution, a proposition which
will be submitted for ratification to our voters at the coming
June election. It is simply a proposition declaring that the right
of suffrage shall not hereafter be prohibited in the State of
Oregon on account of sex. Your action in the Senate of the United
States will greatly determine the action of the voters of Oregon
on our, or rather on their, election day, for we stand before the
public in the anomaly of petitioners upon a great question in