because, if it is her right, then, if there were but one poor woman
in all the United States demanding the right of suffrage, it would be
tyranny to refuse the demand.

But our friends say that suffrage is not a right; that it is a matter
of grace only; that it is a privilege which is conferred upon or
withheld from individual members of society by society at pleasure.
Society as here used means man's government, and the proposition
assumes the fact that men have a right to institute and control
governments for themselves and for women. I admit that in the
governments of the world, past and present, men as a rule have assumed
to be the ruling classes; that they have instituted governments from
participation in which they have excluded women; that they have made
laws for themselves and for women, and as a rule have themselves
administered them; but that the provisions conferring or regulating
suffrage in the constitutions and laws of governments so constituted
determined the question of the right of suffrage can not be
maintained.

Let us suppose, if we can, a community separated from all other
communities, having no organized government, owing no allegiance to
any existing governments, without any knowledge of the character
of present or past governments, so that when they come to form a
government for themselves they can do so free from the bias or
prejudice of custom or education, composed of an equal number of
men and women, having equal property rights to be defined and to
be protected by law. When such community came to institute a
government--and it would have an undoubted right to institute a
government for itself, and the instinct of self-preservation would
soon lead them to do so--will my friend from Georgia tell me by what