is whether this duty shall be imposed on the whole of our sex. With the chivalrous tenderness toward woman so prevalent in our nation, this would never be done till at least a majority of women ask for it; and the time must be afar off ere such a majority will be found.
I wish to verify this statement by an extract from one of the many letters of sympathy and approbation received since it became known that I am publicly to present my views on Woman Suffrage:
"My Dear Madam: Though personally a stranger, I feel strongly impelled to write and thank you for coming before the public in opposition to the advocates of woman suffrage.
"I have no doubt that an exceedingly large majority of the educated and thoughtful women of the country feel a strong personal repugnance to becoming voters, as well as a conviction that this proposed innovation, far from working a beneficial change in the condition of the country, would actually lower the present
standard of political morality. But they form a class but little accustomed to make their voices heard outside of their own social circle, and therefore in danger of being overlooked by those reformers who, with a thankworthy zeal for 'woman's rights,' are, as I think, striving to perpetrate a great woman's wrong.
"It is sometimes said that all women ought at least to have a chance to vote, if they wish it; but none are obliged to do so unless they like. And when compliant men have said this, they consider themselves magnanimous and chivalrous, and think the whole question happily settled.
"It might be so if we had no conscience. But wider privileges mean wider duties. From the bottom of my soul I hate the idea of meeting women at the polls; and yet, if woman suffrage ever becomes a fact, I can not stay away. For my fraction of power inevitably makes me thus much responsible for the civil government of my country. If I may vote, I must vote. I have no right, by withholding my
vote, to throw its weight into the wrong scale. And yet, held back as I am, and must be, from the life of the street, the caucus, and the primary political meetings, and not more by my incapacity for man's work than by his incapacity for mine—living chiefly at home, because my work is home work—what can I know of the fitness of candidates for local offices, or of the machinery of political parties?"
This perspicuous statement expresses the present views of probably nine tenths of the most intelligent and conscientious women of our country. Were it the question whether the responsibilities of civil government should be assumed by this class of women alone, the risks of an affirmative decision would be small. But let us consider the other classes that would be included in universal woman suffrage.
Next to the more intelligent class represented by this letter-writer, would come a large body of those whose generous impulses take the lead, rather than the cool deductions of reason and experience.