REMARKS BY MRS. JULIA SMITH PARKER, OF GLASTONBURY, CONN.

Mrs. PARKER. Gentlemen: You may be surprised, and not so much
surprised as I am, to see a woman of over four-score years of
age appear before you at this time. She came into the world and
reached years of maturity and discretion before any person in this
room was born. She now comes before you to plead that she can vote
and have all the privileges that men have. She has suffered so
much individually that she thought when she was young she had no
right to speak before the men; but still she had courage to get an
education equal to that of any man at the college, and she had
to suffer a great deal on that account. She went to New Haven to
school, and it was noised that she had studied the languages. It
was such an astonishing thing for girls at that time to have the
advantages of education that I had absolutely to go to cotillon
parties to let people see that I had common sense. [Laughter.]

She has suffered; she had to pay money. She has had to pay $200 a
year in taxes without the least privilege of knowing what becomes
of it. She does not know but that it goes to support grog-shops.
She knows nothing about it. She has had to suffer her cows to be
sold at the sign-post six times. She suffered her meadow land to
be sold, worth $2,000, for a tax of less than $50. If she could
vote as the men do she would not have suffered this insult; and so
much would not have been said against her as has been said if men
did not have the whole power. I was told that they had the power
to take any thing that I owned if I would not exert myself to
pay the money. I felt that fought to have some little voice in