doctrine inculcates, is increased to the greatest extent.

If this be true, it is a strong plea in the interests of the family
and of society against granting the petition of the advocates of woman
suffrage.

After all, this is a local question, which properly belongs to the
different States of the Union, each acting for itself, and to the
Territories of the Union, when not acting in conflict with the laws of
the United States.

The fact that a State adopts the rule of female suffrage neither
increases nor diminishes its power in the Union, as the number of
Representatives in Congress to which each State is entitled and the
number of members in the electoral college appointed by each is
determined by its aggregate population and not by the proportion of
its voting population, so long as no race or class as defined by the
Constitution is excluded from the exercise of the right of suffrage.

Now, Mr. President, I shall make no apology for adding to what I have
said some extracts from an able and well-written volume, entitled
"Letters from the Chimney Corner," written by a highly cultivated lady
of Chicago. This gifted lady has discussed the question with so much
clearness and force that I can make no mistake by substituting some
of the thoughts taken from her book for anything I might add on this
question. While discussing the relations of the sexes, and showing
that neither sex is of itself a whole, a unit, and that each requires
to be supplemented by the other before its true structural integrity
can be achieved, she adds: