Woman's chronicle. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1888-1???, 1890-09-06
United States Senate Report.


ing the right of suffrage TO women" by direction
of the majority of the committee reports the same
fayorably, recommending its passage.
The joint resolution is in the following words
JOINT RESOLUTION proposing an amendment to the Const
ton of the United States extending the right of suffrage
Resolved the Senate and House of Representatives
United States of America Congress assembled (two thirds
be proposed to the legislature Of the States as an
amendment to the Constitution Of the United States which,
be valid as part of said Constitution, namely:
ARTICLE
SECTION The right citizens of the United States
shall not be denied abridged by the United States by
SEC The Congress shall have power, BY appropriate
legislation, to enforce the provisions of this article.
Favorable reports have been submitted in former
Congresses with views of the minority, TO which
we feel justified in referring for an exhaustive dis
cussion of this important subject to-wit: Majority
reports submitted by Senator Lapham in the Forty
seventh, Senator Palmer in the Forty eighth, Sen
ator Blair in the Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Con-
crosses, and views of the minority submitted by
Senator Brown in the Forty-eighth and Forty
NINTH and by Senator Cockrell in the Fifteth Con-
gress.
Only very brief and general suggestions will be
presented at this time.
Prejudice and custom have denied to woman the
suffage; but it is impossible to give reason for
the exercise of suffrage by man which does not
apply with equal or with greater force in favor of
the exercise Of suffrage by woman. There may
be strong reasons why neither man nor woman
should be permitted to VOTE Free government,
based upon the sovereignty of the individual man,
is comparatively new thing upon the earth. His
tory has known scarcely single real democracy.
Despotisms and monarchies, absolute or limited,
oigarches and arstocracies, have been the forms
in which government has been exerted throughout
nearly the entire course of time. 1t is hardly too
strong an assertion to say that our own govern
ment is the first which even approximately is based
upon the popular will, as exerted by all mature
male individuals of society. And there is scarcely
greater Indifference between proposition to give
the suffrage to all men and women in the commu-
nifty, wholly aboshng all restrictions upon the
right growing out of the distinction of sex, and
our own present form of government based upon
the suffrage of men only, than there is between
our present form and other so-called republics or
democracies known in history before the establish
ment of ours.
AT Athens there were hardly 10000 citizens and
that great and conquerng community, like Sparta,
and all the so-called free governments OF Greece,
and of Rome, and of medieval and modern Eu-
rope, were at best aristocracies. There may have
been something like equality among the aristocrats
who constituted the governing power; but the
gradations of rank were as distinct as between the
the nobility and the common people of England in
the olden times
Under our form Of government we have taken
the long and irreversible step which carries the
sovereignty to the level of the general mass OF the
people, and therein is erected thatprmary author
ty which formulates rules of order and preserves
society. Having done this, and by custom and
law having vested the sovereignty in men, alone
(one-half the individuals who constitute society,",
we find ourselves confronted by the logic OF our
own precepts and action when we deny to women
the like extension of the suffrage, which is the
government. Upon what theory is the governing
power placed in the hands of the masses OF men,
xuh; H. ;L,,ir linda