The great evil in this country to-day is in emotional suffrage. The great danger to-day is in excitable suffrage. If the voters of this country could think always coolly, and if they could deliberate, if they could go by judgment and not by passion, our institutions would survive forever, eternal as the foundations of the continent itself; but massed together, subject to the excitements of mobs and of these terrible political contests that come upon us from year to year under the autonomy of our Government, what would be the result if suffrage were given to the women of the United States?
Women are essentially emotional. It is no disparagement to them they are so. It is no more insulting to say that women are emotional than to say that they are delicately constructed physically and unfitted to become soldiers or workmen under the sterner, harder pursuits of life.
What we want in this country is to avoid emotional suffrage, and what we need is to put more logic into public affairs and less feeling. There are spheres in which feeling should be paramount. There are kingdoms in which the heart should reign supreme. That kingdom belongs to woman. The realm of sentiment, the realm of love, the realm of the gentler and the holier and kindlier attributes that make the name of wife, mother, and sister next to that of God himself.
I would not, and I say it deliberately, degrade woman by giving her the right of suffrage. I mean the word in its full signification, because I believe that woman as she is to-day, the queen of home and of hearts, is above the political collisions of this world, and should always be kept above them.
Sir, if it be said to us that this is a natural right belonging to women, I deny it. The right of suffrage is one to be determined by expediency and by policy, and given by the State to whom it pleases. It is not a natural right; it is a right that comes from the state.
It is claimed that if the suffrage be given to women it is to protect them. Protect them from whom? The brute that would invade their rights would coerce the suffrage of his wife, or sister, or mother as he would wring from her the hard earnings of her toil to gratify his own beastly appetites and passions.
It is said that the suffrage is to be given to enlarge the sphere of woman's influence. Mr. President, it would destroy her influence. It would take her down from that pedestal where she is to-day, influencing as a mother the minds of her offspring, influencing by her gentle and kindly caress the action of her husband toward the good and pure.
But I rise not to discuss this question, but to discharge a request. I know that when a man attacks this claim for woman suffrage he is sneered at and ridiculed as afraid to meet women in the contests for political honor and supremacy. If so, I oppose to the request of these ladies the arguments of their own sex; but first, I ask the Secretary to read a paper which has been sent to me with a request that I place it before the Senate.
The Chief Clerk read as follows:
To the honorable Senate and House of Representatives:
We, the undersigned, respectfully remonstrate against the further extension of suffrage to women.
H.P. Kidder.
O.W. Peabody.
R.M. Morse, jr.
Charles A. Welch.
Augustus Lowell.
Francis Parkman, LL.D.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Edmund Dwight.
Charles H. Dalton.
Henry Lee.
W. Endicott, jr.
Samuel Wells.
Hon. John Lowell.
William G. Russell.
John C. Ropes.
Robert D. Smith.
George A. Gardner.
F. Haven, jr.
W. Powell Mason.
B.F. Stevens.
Charles Marsh.
Charles W. Eliot, president, Harvard University.
Prof. C.F. Dunbar.
Prof. J.P. Cook.
Prof. J. Lovering.
Prof. W.W. Goodwin.
Prof. Francis Bowen.
Prof. Wolcott Gibbs.
Prof. F.J. Child.
Prof. John Trowbridge.
Prof. G.I. Goodale.
Prof. J.B. Greenough.
Prof. H.W. Torrey.
Prof. J.H. Thayer.
Prof. E.W. Gurney.
Justin Winsor.
H.W. Paine.
Hon. W.E. Russell.
James C. Fiske.
George Putnam.
C.A. Curtis.
T. Jefferson Coolidge.
T.K. Lothrop.
Augustus P. Loring.
W.F. Draper.
George Draper.
Francis Brooks.
Rev. J.P. Bodfish, chancellor, Cathedral Holy Cross.
Rt. Rev. B.H. Paddock, bishop of Massachusetts.
Rev. Henry M. Dexter.
Rev. H. Brooke Herford.
Rev. O.B. Frothingham.
Rev. Ellis Wendell.
Rev. Geo. F. Staunton.
Rev. A.H. Heath.
Rev. W.H. Dowden.
Rev. J.B. Seabury.
Rev. C. Woodworth.
Rev. Leonard K. Storrs.
Rev. Howard N. Brown.
Rev. Edward J. Young.
Rev. Andrew P. Peabody.
Rev. George Z. Gray.
Rev. William Lawrence.
Rev. E.H. Hall.
Rev. Nicholas Hoppin.
Rev. David G. Haskins.
Rev. L.S. Crawford.
Rev. J.I.T. Coolidge.
Rev. Henry A. Hazen.
Rev. F.H. Hedge.
Rev. H.A. Parker.
Rev. Asa Bullard.
Rev. Alexander McKenzie.
Rev. J.F. Spaulding.
Rev. S.K. Lothrop.
Rev. E. Osborne, S.S.J.E.
Rev. Leighton Parks.
Rev. H.W. Foote.
Rev. Morton Dexter.
Rev. David H. Brewer.
Rev. Judson Smith.
Rev. L.W. Shearman.
Rev. Charles F. Dole.
Rev. George M. Boynton.
Rev. D.W. Waldron.
Rev. John A. Hamilton.
Rev. Isaac P. Langworthy.
Rev. E.K. Alden.
Rev. E.E. Strong.
Rev. M.D. Bisbee.
Rev. Oliver S. Dean.
Henry Parkman.
W.H. Sayward.
Charles A. Cummings.
Hon. S.C. Cobb.
Sidney Bartlett.
John C. Gray.
Louis Brandeis.
Hon. George G. Crocker.
John Bartlett.
John Fiske.
J.T.G. Nichols, M.D.
C.E. Vaughan, M.D.
John Homans, M.D.
Chauncey Smith.
Benj. Vaughan.
Charles F. Walcott.
J.B. Warner.
Walter Dean.
S.H. Kennard.
E. Whitney.
W.P.P. Longfellow.
H.O. Houghton.
J.M. Spelman.
J.C. Dodge.
E.S. Dixwell.
L.S. Jones.
G.W.C. Noble.
Charles Theodore Russell.
Clement L. Smith.
Ezra Farnsworth.
H.H. Edes.
Hon. R.R. Bishop.
H.H. Sprague.
Charles R. Codman.
Darwin E. Ware.
Arthur E. Thayer.
C.F. Choate.
Richard H. Dana.
O.D. Forbes.
Edward L. Geddings.
William V. Hutchings.
John L. Gardner.
L.M. Sargent.
H.L. Hallett.
E.P. Brown.
W.A. Tower.
J. Edwards.
G.H. Campbell.
Samuel Carr, jr.
Edward Brooks.
J. Randolph Coolidge.
J. Eliot Cabot.
Fred. Law Olmstead.
Charles S. Sargent.
C.A. Richardson.
Charles F. Shimmin.
Edward Bangs.
J.G. Freeman.
H.H. Coolidge.
David Hunt.
Alfred D. Hurd.
Edward I. Brown.
W.G. Saltonstall.
Thomas Weston, jr.
Richard M. Hodges, M.D.
Henry J. Bigelow, M.D.
Charles D. Homans, M.D.
George H. Lyman, M.D.
John Dixwell, M.D.
R.M. Pulsifer.
Edward L. Beard.
Solomon Lincoln.
G.B. Haskell.
John Boyle O'Reilly.
Arlo Bates.
Horace P. Chandler.
George O. Shattuck.
Hon. Alex. H. Rice.
Henry Cabot Lodge.
Francis Peabody, jr.
Harcourt Amory.
F.E. Parker.
A.S. Wheeler.
Jacob C. Rogers.
S.G. Snelling.
C.H. Barker.
J.H. Walker.
Forrest E. Barker.
John D. Wasbburn.
Martin Brimmer.
Fred L. Ames.
Hon. A.P. Martin.