Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887 by Various
page 91 of 234 (38%)
page 91 of 234 (38%)
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women are political ends and nothing else; that the education of the
child, that the preservation of the purity of the home, that the care for the insane and the idiot and the blind and the deaf and the ruined and deserted, are not only political ends but are the chief political ends for which this political body, the state, is created: and those who desire the help of women in the administration of the state desire it because of the ability which could write such a letter as that on the wrong side, and because the qualities of heart and brain which God has given to understand this class of political ends better than He has given it to the masculine heart and brain are needed for their administration. I have no word of disrespect for Mrs. Leonard, but I say that, in spite of herself and her letter, her life and her character are the most abundant and ample refutation of the belief which she erroneously thinks she entertains. Nobody invites these ladies to a contest of bayonets; nobody who believes that government is a matter of mere physical force asks the co-operation of woman in its administration. It is because government is a conflict of such arguments as that letter states on the one side, because the object of government is the object to which this lady's own life is devoted, that the friends of woman suffrage and of this amendment ask that it shall be adopted. Mr. VEST. Mr. President, my great personal respect for the Senator from Massachusetts has given me an interval of enforced silence, and I have only to say that if I should print my desultory remarks I should be compelled to omit his interruption for fear that the amendment would be larger than the original bill. [Laughter.] I fail to see that anything which has fallen from the distinguished |
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