common-sense. Women have thus far been excluded from the
suffrage precisely on the same principles--from the conviction that to
grant them this particular privilege would, in different ways, and
especially by withdrawing them from higher and more urgent duties,
and allotting to them other duties for which they are not so well
fitted, become injurious to the nation, and, we add, ultimately
injurious to themselves, also, as part of the nation. If it can be
proved that this conviction is sound and just, founded on truth, the
assumed inalienable right of suffrage, of which we have been hearing
so much lately, vanishes into the "baseless fabric of a vision." If the
right were indeed inalienable, it should be granted, without regard to
consequences, as an act of abstract justice. But, happily for us,
none but the very wildest theorists are prepared to take this view of
the question of suffrage. The advocates of female suffrage must,
therefore, abandon the claim of inalienable right. Such a claim can
not logically be maintained for one moment in the face of existing
facts. We proceed to the third point.

THIRDLY. THE ELEVATION OF THE ENTIRE SEX, THE GENERAL
PURIFICATION OF POLITICS THROUGH THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN,
AND THE CONSEQUENT ADVANCE OF THE WHOLE RACE. Such, we are
told, must be the inevitable results of what is called the
emancipation of woman, the entire independence of woman through
the suffrage.

Here we find ourselves in a peculiar position. While considering the
previous points of this question we have been guided by positive
facts, clearly indisputable in their character. Actual, practical
experience, with the manifold teachings at her command, has come
to our aid. But we are now called upon, by the advocates of this