I can discover no ground consistent with the principle on which the franchise has been given to all men, upon which it can be denied to women.  The principal argument against such extension, so far as argument upon that side of the question has fallen under my observation, is based upon the position that women are represented in the government by men, and that their rights and interests are better protected through that indirect representation than they would be by giving them a direct voice in the government.

The teachings of history in regard to the condition of women under the care of these self-constituted protectors, to which I can only briefly allude, show the value of this argument as applied to past ages; and in demonstration of its value as applied to more recent times, even at the risk of being tedious, I will give some examples from my own professional experience.  I do this because nothing adds more to the efficacy of truth than the translation of the abstract into the concrete.  Withholding names, I will state the facts with fullness and accuracy.

An educated and refined woman, who had been many years before deserted by her drunken husband, was living in a small village of Western New York, securing, by great economy and intense labor in fine needle work, the means of living, and of supporting her two daughters at an academy, the object of her life being to give them such an education as would enable them to become teachers, and thus secure to them some degree of independence when she could no longer provide for them.  The daughters were good scholars, and favorites in the school, so long as the mother was able to maintain them there.  A young man, the nephew and clerk of a wealthy but miserly merchant, became acquainted with the daughters, and was specially attentive to the older one.  The uncle disapproved of the conduct of his nephew, and failing to control it by honorable means, resorted to the circulation of the vilest slanders against mother and daughters.  He was a man of wealth and influence.  They were almost unknown.  The mother had but recently come to the village, her object having been to secure to her daughters the educational advantages which the academy afforded.  Poverty, as well as perhaps an excusable if not laudable pride, compelled her to live in obscurity, and consequently the assault upon their characters fell upon her and her daughters with crushing force.  Her employment mainly ceased, her daughters were of necessity withdrawn from school, and all were deprived of the means, from their own exertions, of sustaining life.  Had they been in fact the harlots which the miserly scoundrel represented them to be, they would not have been so utterly powerless to resist his assault.  The mother in her despair naturally sought legal redress.  But how was it to be obtained?  By the law the wife’s rights were merged in those of the husband.  She had in law no individual existence, and consequently