Are women governed? Most certainly; they pay taxes,--they are held amenable to laws; they are tried for crimes; they are fined, imprisoned, hung. The government wields strong power over them. Have they consented to this power of the government? Have they a recognized right to the ballot? Has their consent bean asked through their votes? Have they had a voice in saying what taxes shall be levied on their property,--what penalties they shall pay for crimes? _No._ They are ruled without their consent. The first principles of government are founded on the natural rights of individuals; in order to _secure_ the exercise of these natural, individual rights our government professed to be founded. Governments never created a single right; rights did not come new-born into the world with our revolutionary fathers. They were men of middle age when they severed their connexion with Great Britain, but that severance did not endow them with a single new right. It was at that time they first entered into the _exercise_ of their natural, individual rights. Neither our Declaration, nor our Constitution created a single right; they merely recognized certain rights as in existence. They recognized those rights as human rights,--as inalienable rights,--as rights existing by virtue of common humanity. Natural rights never change, but the power to perceive these natural rights does change, and various nations have had their own standard. Three names, said to be the sweetest the world ever knew, are mother, home, and heaven. There is one still sweeter--one for which men have given up mother and home, and for which they have almost sacrificed the hope of heaven; that word is LIBERTY.