It may be said, however, that there is a class of young ladies who do not choose to marry, and who select professions or avocations and follow them for a livelihood.  This is true, but this class, compared with the number who unite in matrimony with the husbands of their choice, is comparatively very small, and it is the duty of society to encourage the increase of marriages rather than of celibacy.  If the larger number of females select pursuits or professions which require them to decline marriage, society to that extent is deprived of the advantage resulting from the increase of population by marriage.

It is said by those who have examined the question closely that the largest number of divorces is now found in the communities where the advocates of female suffrage are most numerous, and where the individuality of woman as related to her husband, which such a doctrine inculcates, is increased to the greatest extent.

If this be true, it is a strong plea in the interests of the family and of society against granting the petition of the advocates of woman suffrage.

After all, this is a local question, which properly belongs to the different States of the Union, each acting for itself, and to the Territories of the Union, when not acting in conflict with the laws of the United States.

The fact that a State adopts the rule of female suffrage neither increases nor diminishes its power in the Union, as the number of Representatives in Congress to which each State is entitled and the number of members in the electoral college appointed by each is determined by its aggregate population and not by the proportion of its voting population, so long as no race or class as defined by the Constitution is excluded from the exercise of the right of suffrage.

Now, Mr. President, I shall make no apology for adding to what I have said some extracts from an able and well-written volume, entitled “Letters from the Chimney Corner,” written by a highly cultivated lady of Chicago.  This gifted lady has discussed the question with so much clearness and force that I can make no mistake by substituting some of the thoughts taken from her book for anything I might add on this question.  While discussing the relations of the sexes, and showing that neither sex is of itself a whole, a unit, and that each requires to be supplemented by the other before its true structural integrity can be achieved, she adds: 

Now, everywhere throughout nature, to the male and female ideal, certain distinct powers and properties belong.  The lines of demarkation are not always clear, not always straight lines:  they are frequently wavering, shadowy, and difficult to follow, yet on the whole whatever physical strength, personal aggressiveness, the intellectual scope and vigor which manage vast material enterprises are emphasized, there the masculine ideal is present.  On the other hand, wherever refinement, tenderness, delicacy, sprightliness, spiritual