to the Constitution they carried to the black man of Connecticut the boon of the ballot as well as the burden of taxation, whereas they carried to the black woman of Connecticut the burden of taxation, but no ballot by which to protect her property.  I know a colored woman in New Haven, Conn., worth $50,000, and she never paid a penny of taxation until the ratification of the fifteenth amendment.  From that day on she is compelled to pay a heavy tax on that amount of property.

    Mrs. SPENCER.  Is it because she is a citizen?  Please explain.

    Miss ANTHONY.  Because she is black.

    Mrs. SPENCER.  Is it because the fourteenth and fifteenth
    amendments made women citizens?

    Miss ANTHONY.  Certainly; because it declared the black people
    citizens.

    Gentlemen, you have before you various propositions of amendment
    to the Federal Constitution.  One is for the election of President
    by the vote of the people direct.  Of course women are not people.

    Senator EDMUNDS.  Angels.

    Miss ANTHONY.  Yes; angels up in heaven or else devils down there.

    Senator EDMUNDS.  I have never known any of that kind.

Miss ANTHONY.  I wish you, gentlemen, would look down there and see the myriads that are there.  We want to help them and lift them up.  That is exactly the trouble with you, gentlemen; you are forever looking at your own wives, your own mothers, your own sisters, and your own daughters, and they are well cared for and protected; but only look down to the struggling masses of women who have no one to protect them, neither husband, father, brother, son, with no mortal in all the land to protect them.  If you would look down there the question would be solved; but the difficulty is that you think only of those who are doing well.  We are not speaking for ourselves, but for those who can not speak for themselves.  We are speaking for the doomed as much as you, Senator EDMUNDS, used to speak for the doomed on the plantations of the South.

Amendments have been proposed to put God in the Constitution and to keep God out of the Constitution.  All sorts of propositions to amend the Constitution have been made; but I ask that you allow no other amendment to be called the sixteenth but that which shall put into the hands of one-half of the entire people of the nation the right to express their opinions as to how the Constitution shall be amended henceforth.  Women have the right to say whether we shall have God in the Constitution as well as men.  Women have a right to say whether we shall have a national law or an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the importation or manufacture of alcoholic liquors.  We have a right to have our opinions counted on every possible question concerning the public welfare.

You ask us why we do not get this right to vote first in the school districts, and on