pretended to have any; but I have a claim to some knowledge of Methodist
history, to some ability to state my sentiments, and to be without any
fear of the results, either present or prospective.

Now, Mr. President, you notice from my friends that if they cannot
command the judgment of the Conference they propose to say the women are
in, and defy us to put them out. I am sorry that my friend did not take
in the full significance of that. And they say that everybody who has
a certificate in form is in until he is put out. Why, they do not
discriminate between ordinary contested cases and a case where the
constitutional point is involved. If these women have a right here,
they have had it from the beginning by the Constitution. It is not a
contested case as to whether John Smith was voted for by the people who
ought to vote for him, or in the right place. Now, they talk of bringing
up documents here. I wrote to the Hon. George F. Edmunds, the most
distinguished member of the United States Senate, and simply put this
question, If a certificate of election in the Senate shows anything that
would prove the person unworthy of a seat, would he be seated pending an
investigation or not? He did not know what it referred to, and I read
it _verbatim_. I never mentioned the name of Methodist, and I read
_verbatim_ from his letter:

"No officer of the Senate has any right to decide any such question,
and, therefore, every person admitted to a seat is admitted by, in fact,
a vote of the Senate. The ordinary course in the Senate is, when
the credentials appear to be perfectly regular, and there is no
notorious and undisputed fact or circumstance against the qualifications
and election of a senator, to admit him at once and settle the question
of his right afterward. But there have been cases in which the Senate
declined to admit a claimant holding a regular certificate upon the