Litchfield enquirer., 1874-04-30
7vor
No. ,9552

not be considerably frightened if one soli-
 tasy crusader were to try praying at hundred rum-sellers in body for while, and see how 1t felt to have everybody against her instead of for her. ..-'
 Would you consider the conduct of these crusaders justifiable? I do thoroughly justifable. They find them selves voiceless in the making of laws and
 the election of officers to execute them. Born with brains, born in the country, educated, having large interests at stake, they ind their tongues tied and their hands fettered, while every ignorant, whis- ky-drlnklng, foreign-born savage in the
 land may hold office, help to make the
 laws, degrade the dignity of the former
 and break the latter at his own sweet will. They see their fathers, husbands and
 brothers sit namely at home and allow the | scum of the country to assemble at the primaries, name the candidates for office from their own vile ranks, and, un- rebuked, elect them. They live in the 1 midst of a country where there is no end
 to the laws and no beginning to the exc cutlon of them. And when the laws in- tended to protect their sons from destruc- ! ton by intemperance lie torpid and with out sign of life, year after year, they. re- cognIze that here is a matter that inter
 ests them personally, a matter which
 comes straight home to them. And since ! they are allowed to lift no legal voice agalnst the outrageous state of things they suffer under in this regard, I thiuk ! 1t is no wonder that their patience has broken down, at last, and they have tried ! to persuade themselves that they are just I latlable Tn breaking the law of trespass
 when the laws that should make the tres pass needless are allowed by the voters to
 lie dead and imperative.
 The present crusade will, doubtless. do
 but little work against intemperance that will Ro really Purmanent, put 1t will do what IS as much, or even more, to the pur- pose, think. I think it will suggest to more than one man that if women could
 vote they would vote on the side of moral lty, even If they did vote and speak rath-
 CT fantically and furiously, and it will also
 suggest that when the women once made up their minds that it was not good to
 have the all-powerful "primaries" in the
 hands ot loafers, thieves, and pernicious
 little politicians, they would not sit indo- lently at home as their husbands and brothers do now, but would hoist their praying banners, take the field in force,
 pray the assembled political scum back to
 the holes and slums where they belong,
 and set up some candidates fit for decent
 human beings to vote for I dearly want
 the women to be raised to the political
 altitude of the negro, the imported savage
 and the pardoned thief, and allowed to
 vote It is our last chance, I think. The
 women will be voting. before long, and
 then if B. F. Butler can still continue
 to lord it in Congress; if the highest of-
 fees in the land can still continue to be
 occupied by perjurers and robbers; if an-
 other Congress like the 42d, consisting of
 15 honest men and 296 of the other kind,
 can once more be created, it will at last
 be time, fear, to give over trying to save
 the country by human means, and appeal
 to Providence. Both the great parties
 have failed. wish we might have a wom- ans party now, and see how that would
 work. feel persuaded that, in extend ing the suffrage to women, this country
 could lose absolutely nothing and might | gain great deal. For thirty centuries history has been reiterating and reiterat- l ing that in moral fight woman is simply dauntless, and we all know, evenswith our eyes shut upon Congress and our voters,
 that, from the day that Adam ate of the
 apple and told on Eve down to the pre-
 sent day, man, in moral fight, has pretty
 uniformly shown himself to be an arrant
 coward.