would make an argument. I do not propose to do so, because I take
it for granted that the members of this committee understand that
we have all the argument on our side, and such an argument would
be simply a series of platitudes and maxims of government. The
theory of this Government from the beginning has been perfect
equality to all the people. That is shown by every one of the
fundamental principles, which I need not stop to repeat. Such
being the theory, the application would be, of course, that all
persons not having forfeited their right to representation in the
Government should be possessed of it at the age of twenty-one. But
instead of adopting a practice in conformity with the theory of
our Government, we began first by saying that all men of property
were the people of the nation upon whom the Constitution conferred
equality of rights. The next step was that all white men were
the people to whom should be practically applied the fundamental
theories. There we halt to-day and stand at a deadlock, so far as
the application of our theory may go. We women have been standing
before the American republic for thirty years, asking the men to
take yet one step further and extend the practical application of
the theory of equality of rights to all the people to the other
half of the people--the women. That is all that I stand here
to-day to attempt to demand.

Of course, I take it for granted that the committee are in
sympathy at least with the reports of the Judiciary Committees
presented both in the Senate and the House. I remember that after
the adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments Senator
EDMUNDS reported on the petition of the ten thousand foreign-born
citizens of Rhode Island who were denied equality of rights in
Rhode Island simply because of their foreign birth; and in that