superintendents, and employed in these several capacities long before
the specific interpretations of the pronouns were made. They were so
appointed and employed in Saint Paul's Church in this city during the
pastorate of that sainted man, John M'Clintock, in 1860, and could the
voice of that great leader and lover of the Church reach us to day from
the skies it would be in protest against the views presented in this
debate by the supporters of the committee's report and its amendment.

It is a well-established and incontrovertible principle of law that any
elector is eligible to the office for which said elector votes, unless
there be a _specific enactment discriminating against the elector_. Our
law says that a lay delegate shall be twenty-five years of age, and five
years a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. It does not say that a
delegate must not be a woman, or must be a man.

Women are eligible to membership in this General Conference. Women have
been chosen delegates as provided by law. They are here in their seats
ready for any duty on committees, or otherwise, as they may be invited.
We cannot turn them out and slam the door on their exit. It would be
revolutionary so to do by a simple vote of this body. It would be a
violation of the guarantees of personal liberty, a holding of the
just rights of the laity of the Church. We cannot exclude them from
membership in the General Conference, except by directing the Annual
Conferences to vote on the question of their exclusion. Are we ready to
send that question in that form down to the Annual Conferences for their
action? I trust that a large majority of this General Conference will
say with emphasis we are not ready for any such action. The women of our
Methodism have a place in the heart of the Church from which they cannot
be dislodged. They are our chief working members. They are at the very
front of every great movement of the Church at home or abroad. In the