Persons to which such share is denied, are essentially
slaves, because they hold their rights, if they can be said to have any,
subject to the will of those who hold the political power. For this
reason it has been found necessary to give the ballot to the emancipated
slaves. Until this was done their emancipation was far from complete.
Without a share in the political powers of the state, no class of
citizens has any security for its rights, and the history of nations to
which I briefly alluded, shows that women constitute no exception to the
universality of this rule.
Great errors, I think, exist in the minds of both the advocates and the
opponents of this measure in their anticipation of the immediate
effects to be produced by its adoption. On the one hand it is supposed
by some that the character of women would be radically changed--that
they would be unsexed, as it were, by clothing them with political
rights, and that instead of modest, amiable and graceful beings, we
should have bold, noisy and disgusting political demagogues, or
something worse, if anything worse can be imagined. I think those who
entertain such opinions are in error. The innate character of women is
the result of God's laws, not of man's, nor can the laws of man affect
that character beyond a very slight degree.
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