The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1895-04-15

| power is requisite. but this physical
disqualification in this sense would
! not in the least debar her from active
participation in public affairs. more
especially as to voting. If she
so choose to enter the arena OF pub
lie debate, (the instances would be
| few, confined principally to those
whose masculinity predominates, and
prospects Of matrimony waning), it is
her unimpeachable privilege, if she re-
ceive the requisite endorsement.
Marquis de Condorcet, in $780, in an
address before the French assembly,
said: I'm the name of what principle,
in the name of what right, are women
| deprived OF political functions in a
republican state 1 cannot discover.
The words national representation
signify representation of the nation.
Are not women a part of the nation
The object OF this assembly is to con-
stitute and maintain the rights of the
French people. Are not women part
of the French people? The right of
electing and being elected is, in the
case of men, founded solely upon their
title OF intelligent and free creatures;
Are not women intelligent and free
creatures? Do you allege the corpo-
real weakness of women ? Then it
should be necessary to bring the rep
resentatives before a medical Jury,
and reject all those who have the
govt every winter. Is their want of
education, their lack of political ge-
MUS, an objection? 1t seems to me
that there are many representatives
men) who do without either. The
more we interrogate good sense and
republican principles, the less can we
find a serious reason for depriving
women of participation in political af-
r.
settles the question by a sublime ut
terance: Woman has the right to as
cend the tribune, since she has the
right to ascend the Scaffold.'
The foregoing is unanswerable in
favor of woman's rights, in a repre-
sentative government, where the pow
ers delegated and exercised, are de-
rived from the consent of the gov
erned.
The so-called family argument of
anti-suffragists is frail and pregnant
with sophistry, scarcely deserving of
a commentary, and yet the one that
Is invariably produced as a seeming
clincher. That woman suffrage would
ALLEVIATE the woman from domestic
duties, and incapacitate them from
discharging the essential obligations
Of the household ito any appreciable
extent, is absurd and most unnatural.
The eternal and immutable DEGREES of
nature are opposed to it, and no
grave infractions of her laws, in this
particular, would occur. There might
be a few instances, but would only
demonstrate the exception. If 1t is
urged that participation in public af-
fairs would incapacitate the women
for domestic duties, why not upon
the same principle close all the ave-
nues of commercial employments, in
which thousands OF women are occu-
pied. If woman so desired, the public
offices to be held by them would be
comparatively few, contrasted with
the commercial.
That a woman would become con-
taminated by the supposed vile con-
tagion that infests the polls, when she
is exercising her franchise, is a most
silly conclusion. On the contrary her
presence there, going to and from the
polls, would have the natural and in
evitlable tendency of elevating the
moral tone, for man, as q rule, has
the highest respect for ladies. There
might be a few anti-suffra gists here
and there that would occasionally be
come indecent, but 1 contend that the
utmost order and decorunl would pre-
vail throughout the state, under wo-
man suffrage. If a. woman is insulted
in exercising the highest. prerogative
of sovereignty, make an examule Of
the wretch, so indecent, by severe
punishment.
Talk about woman's incompetency
to the exercise of this exalted privil-
egei Who has brought about this
wretched dilemma through which the
country is tottering? Men. Why, if
the women couldn't step in to the ex-
c.usion of men, and assume the re-
sponsfbility of government nlanipula-
ton with more salutary results. she
would certainly fall from her exalted
estate, and lose the high estimation Of
man
AS to the right and expediency Of