Year: 1878

In an article reprinted on our first page, the Rev. Austin Phelphs, D. D. argues the proba- ble failure of woman suffrages IL an argument thal we very much like to see presented in tangible form, for there is ne.doubt that the abuse of the suffrage by ignorant men has de- tered many conservative minds from giving the very different question of woman suffrage fair consideration. While there is considerable excellent rhetoric in this article we must ex : capt to the logic Dr. Phelps not not only as- sifnes false premises, he even argues incorrectly from the premises he assumes. His first proposition is as follows:

 Liberty, such as is involved in the gift of Suffrage, isimpcssible, on any large scale, to a race or nation or tribe or class, which has not power to take the right if it is right, and to hold it against all aggressors. This IS the se- cret, back of all other causes, of the failure ef Negro Suffrage at the South. Excess of num- bers, by few thousands or tens of thousands, is of no account where the cultured brain, the heirloom of centuries, is all on the side of the minority. The majority, ,iu receiving the ballot, received an elephant. They did not know what to do with it, and in the first real conflict

 

 arms.

 Here are tive grounds of disqualification confused into one: 1st, that nation, tribe or class aspiring to the suffrage must have suf- icient physical force to take and maintain their right to the ballot; 2d, that it must also have sufficient intellectual force te. make it's physical force effective. The failare of ne gro suffrage is attributable entirely to the lat ter cause, and net to the former. The failure of woman suffrage, should itprove unsuccessful, would be owing entirely to the former. The Doctors confusion of these entirely different grounds of disqualification appears till more plainly in the following proposition:

 Where now is the parallel between Negro Suffrage at the South, and the proposed Suf- frage of Woman? In respect to intelligence and culture, and their perogatives, it does not exist at all. Whether it exist in respect to the instinct and capacity of government, may be an open question. But the parallel IS clear in this, which is the ultimate fact in both cas- es, that the ballot is given, or supposed to be given, not to exceptional classes, few in num- Der, but to the half of the population, which has no physical power to defend it. They can neither take it by force nor defend it.

 The failure of the negro is not attributable to any lack of physical force of which he has plenty, but entirely to his moral and intellect ual inferiority. It proves merely that cer- tain stage of moral and intellectual advance ment is necessary to make the ballot anything but curse to man or.woman. It throws no light whatever on the entirely different ques tion raised by the advocates of woman sui frage: whether the ballot can be safely given to that half of our adult citizens which has and to maintain it's right to it. In maintaining the affirmative of hislatter proposition we call attention in the first place, to one of the fun damental distinctions between civilization and barbarsm. The former boasts that it recog- nizes rights which are unsupported by physi- cal force. The latter confesses, with Dr. Phelps, that might makes right. No doubt the enforcement of right may be difficult in occasional instances where race is arrayed against race, class against class, as has unfor- tunately been the case in the South. The trouble in the case of nesre suffrage, however, was that there was an attempt to enforce wrong, not to enforce right. The negro was not sufficiently advanced to be entitled to the suffrage. Selfish politicians made tool of him, and plunged whole states into anarchy from which they could only escape by throw ing negro suffrage into temporary abeyance. Is there any danger that any such misgovern- ment could arise from conceding woman's right of suffrage? So far from there being any probability of such a result we believe that the measure would enure decidedly to the advantage of that true conservatism which seeks to reform while it extends the suffrage. Woman belongs to no special race, class, or caste. She is the undivided, indivisible half of every race, class, and caste.