“ The injustice and absurdity of allowing women in one State to be sovereign rulers, and across the line in every direction obliging them to occupy the position of a subject class, taxed without representation and governed without consent—and this in a nation which by its Constitution guarantees equal rights to all the States and equal protection to all their citizens—must soon be manifest even to the most conservative and prejudiced. We therefore congratulate the friends of woman suffrage everywhere that at last there is one spot under the American flag where equal justice is done to women. ”

“ To one has come the vision of political freedom. She saw how the avarice and ambition of one class with power made them forget the rights of another. She saw how the unjust laws embittered both—those who made them and those upon whom the injustice rested. She recognized the great principles of universal equality, seeing that all alike must be free; that humanity everywhere must be lifted out of subjection into the free and full air of divine liberty. ”

“ Could we resurrect from the archives of this Capitol all the petitions and speeches presented here by women for human freedom during this century, they would reach above this dome and make a more fitting pedestal for the Goddess of Liberty than the crowning point of an edifice beneath which the mother of the race has so long pleaded in vain for her natural right of self-government—a right her sons should have secured to her long ago of their own free will by statutes carved indelibly on the corner-stones of the Republic. ”

“ Woman's influence as a citizen has been of equal value in the jury-box. Experience shows that she is peculiarly fitted for that duty. Woe to the gambler who enriches himself by the folly or innocence of the ignorant, and the rum-seller who lures boys into his backroom! Woe to the human vultures who prey upon young lives, when they fall into the hands of a jury of mothers!...
You who have not hitherto been woman suffragists, why not espouse this cause now, when it is in the full flush of its heroic struggle? ”

“ The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself....
To throw obstacles in the way of a complete education is like putting out the eyes; to deny the rights of property is like cutting off the hands. ”

“ A dear and noble friend, one who aided our work most efficiently in the early days, said to me, "Why do you say the 'emancipation of women?'" I replied, "Because women are political slaves!" Is it not strange that men think that what to them would be degradation, slavery, is to women elevation, liberty? Men put the right of suffrage for themselves above all price, and count the denial of it the most severe punishment. ”

“ Whatever your nationality, whatever your religious creed, whatever your political party, you are either born or naturalized citizens of the United States, and because of that are voters of the State in which you reside. Will you not, gentlemen, accord to the women of this nation, having the same citizenship as yourselves, precisely the same privileges and powers which you possess because of that one fact?
The only true principle—the only safe policy—of a democratic-republican government is that every class of people shall be protected in the exercise of the right of individual representation. ”

“ It is with great pleasure that I bring you the greeting from the sun-kissed land of the West, where the flag which we all love, and of which we all sing, really waves over the land of the free and the home of the brave. Our men are brave and generous and our women are free. You and your noble co-workers stormed the heights of ridicule and prejudice to win this freedom for woman. In behalf of our Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage Association, I beg you to accept this 'loving cup' of Colorado silver. ”

“ It took a hundred years and a Civil War to evolve the principle in our nation that all men were created free and equal. Will it require another century and another Civil War before there is secured to humanity the God-given inalienable right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" The most superficial observer can see elements at work, a confusion of forces, that can only be wiped out in blood, unless some new, unifying power is brought into Government. ”

“ It would be nearer the truth to say women as a whole have opposed every advance.
The progress has come because women of a larger mold, loftier ambitions and nobler self-respect than the average have been willing to face the opposition of the world for the sake of liberty. More than one such as these deserve the rank of martyr. The sacrifice of suffering, of doubt, of obloquy, which has been endured by the pioneers in the woman movement will never be fully known or understood....
With the bold demand for perfect equality of rights in every walk of life the public have compromised. ”

“ Germans believe in monarchism, in the rule of the Emperor and Prince Bismarck, while Americans believe in the government by all the people, high or low, rich or poor. You have conferred the blessings of free citizenship upon the negro; you invite the humblest, the lowest men to cast their vote; you make them feel that they are sovereign human beings; you place those men above the most virtuous, intelligent women; you set them above your own daughters. Yes, your own child, if born a girl on this free soil, is not free, for she stands without the pale of the Constitution. ”

“ The touch of sentiment must come in, uplifting what law knocks down, freeing what it trammels, satisfying man's love for freedom by ministering to his sense of beauty. When this subtle power joins itself to the demonstrations of reason, the victory is sure and lasting.
It is in the grand order of these ideas that I stand here to advocate the enfranchisement of my sex. Morally, socially, intellectually equal with men, it is right that we should be politically equal with them in a society which claims to recognize and uphold one equal humanity. ”

“ While the grand motto, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God," has echoed and re-echoed around the globe, electrifying the lovers of liberty in every latitude and making crowned heads tremble on their thrones; while every right achieved by the oppressed has been wrung from tyrants by force; while the darkest page on human history is the outrages on women—shall men still tell us to be patient, persuasive, womanly? ”

“ I learned at her knee to vote according to my conscience, and not according to the dictation of the bosses. The strongest argument for the suffrage of any class exists in behalf of womankind, because women will not be bound by mere partisanship. If the world is to be redeemed, it must be by the conscience of the individual voter. The woman goes to the truth by instinct. Men have to confer together and go down street and look through glasses darkly. The woman stays at home and rocks the cradle, and God tells her what to do. The suffrage never was abused by women in Utah. ”

“ I pity the man who can consider any question affecting the influence of woman with the cold, dry logic of business. What man can, without aversion, turn from the blessed memory of that dear old grandmother, or the gentle words and caressing hand of that blessed mother gone to the unknown world, to face in its stead the idea of a female justice of the peace or township constable? ”

“ Whatever of fortune or misfortune befalls the Suffrage Association in the carrying on of its work, this belief is the root which is calculated to sustain and inspire us—that this movement is the next step in the progress of the race towards the unification of humanity....
I look forward to the time when men and women, labor and capital, all classes and all sections, shall work side by side with one great co-operative spirit, the denizens of the world and the keepers of human progress. When that time comes we may not have reached the millennium but we shall be nearer to it. ”

“ We can better leave the "sphere" of woman to the future than confine it in the chains of the past. Words change nothing. Prejudices are none the less prejudices because we vaguely call them "nature," and prate about what nature has forbidden, when we only mean that the thing we are opposing has not been hitherto done. "Nature" forbade a steamship to cross the Atlantic the very moment it was crossing, and yet it arrived just the same. What the majority call "nature" has stood in the way of all progress of the past and present, and will stand in the way of all future progress. ”

“ We place the ballot in the hands of the foreigner who can not read or speak our language, and who knows nothing of our government; we enfranchised a slave race, most of whom can not read; and yet we deny to the women of America the ballot, which in their hands would be the strongest protection of this republic against the ignorance and vice of the great centers of our population. Give to woman the ballot, and you give her equal pay with men for the same work; you break down prejudice and open to her every vocation in which she is competent to engage ”

“ I maintain there is no political question paramount to that of woman suffrage before the people of America to-day. Political parties would have us believe that tariff is the great question of the hour. It is an insult to the intelligence of the present to say that when one-half of the citizens of this republic are denied a direct voice in making the laws under which they shall live, that the tariff, the civil rights of the negro, or any other question which can be brought up, is equal to the one of giving political freedom to women. ”

“ I never have been against woman suffrage. I have been against universal suffrage of any kind, regardless of sex. I think that morally woman has exactly as much right to the suffrage as man. It is a disgrace that such women as you and I have not the suffrage, but I do think that all suffrage should be regarded as a privilege and should not be demanded as a right. It should be the privilege of education and, if you please—I will not quarrel about that—of a certain property qualification. ”

“ In music women speak again the language of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, and are worthy interpreters of their great thoughts. The poetry and novels of the century are theirs, and they have touched the keynote of reform in religion, politics and social life. They fill the editor's and professor's chair, plead at the bar of justice, walk the wards of the hospital, speak from the pulpit and the platform. Such is the type of womanhood that an enlightened public sentiment welcomes to-day, and such the triumph of the facts of life over the false theories of the past. ”

“ No man there could have stood by the side of his mother and heard her tell of all that the pioneers endured, and then have refused to grant her the same right of liberty he wanted for himself, without being unworthy of such a mother. They are the crown of our Union, those three States on the crest of the Rockies, above all the others. In the name of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, we extend our welcome, our thanks and our congratulations to Utah, as one of the three so dear to the heart of every woman who loves liberty in these United States. ”

“ If manhood suffrage is a mistake; if voting is a privilege and not a right; if government does not derive its just powers from the consent of the governed; if Lincoln's aphorism that ours is a "government of the people, for the people and by the people" is only a rhetorical generality, then women have no case. If not, they see no reason why, as they are governed, they should not have a voice in choosing their rulers; why, as people, they are not covered by Lincoln's definition. They feel naturally that their exclusion is unjust. ”

“ I have the sensations of a Revolutionary veteran, almost, in coming back to Philadelphia and remembering our early suffrage meetings here in that time of storm, in contrasting the audiences of to-day with the audiences of that day, and in thinking what are the difficulties that come before us now as compared with those of our youth. The audiences have changed, the atmosphere of the community has changed; nothing but the cause remains the same, and that remains because it is a part of the necessary evolution of democratic society and is an immortal thing. ”

“ What would we say if it were seriously proposed to recall the suffrage from all colored or from all white men because a majority of either class should decline or for any cause fail to vote? If one or many choose not to claim their right it is no argument for depriving me of mine or one woman of hers. There are many reasons why some women declare themselves opposed to the extension of suffrage to their sex. Some well-fed and pampered, without serious experiences in life, are incapable of comprehending the subject at all. ”

“ When the laws are based on the idea that the caprices of the ruler regulate the privileges granted to the people, it is at least logical, even if it is cruel, to refuse the right of suffrage to any class of the community. You will agree that this is not a monarchy, where power flows from the sovereign to the people, but a republic, where the sovereign people give to the Executive they have chosen the power to carry out their will. Can you really claim that we live under a republican form of government when one-half the adult inhabitants are denied all voice in the affairs of the nation? ”

“ There is nothing in liberty which can harm either man or woman. There is nothing in justice which can work against the highest good of humanity; and when on the ground of expediency this measure is opposed, in the words of Wendell Phillips, "Whatever is just, God will see that it is expedient." There is no greater inexpediency than injustice....
We do not ask the ballot because we do not believe in men or because we think men unjust or unfair. We do not ask to speak for ourselves because we believe men unwilling to speak for us; but because men by their very nature never can speak for women. ”

“ All history shows that one class never did legislate with justice for another, and all philosophy shows they never can, as the relations of class grow out of either natural or artificial advantages which one has over the other and which it will maintain if possible. It is folly to say that women are not a class, so long as there is any difference in the code of laws for men and women, any discrimination in the customs of society, giving advantages to men over women; so long as in all our State constitutions women are ranked with lunatics, idiots, paupers and criminals. ”

“ But if you exclude them you shut out a class of citizens pre-eminently orderly, law-abiding and peaceful, and especially interested in the welfare of the home and the safety of society. If, at the same time, you admit all classes of men, however worthless, provided they are out of prison, and if you make them free to stamp their impress upon the government, in the long run you will find the moral tone of the community lowered and cheapened, and your most sacred institutions imperiled by the dangerous classes to whom you entrusted the power which you denied to orderly and good women. ”

“ In an impassioned address Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) contrasted The Present and the Past, saying:
The destiny of the world to-day lies in the hearts and brains of her women. The world can not travel upward faster than the feet of her women are climbing the paths of progress. Put us back if you can; veil us in harems; make us beasts of burden; take from us all knowledge; teach us we are only material; and humanity will go back to the dark ages. The nineteenth century is closing over a world arising from bondage. It is the grandest, sublimest spectacle ever beheld. ”