Mr. President, if we are to venture upon this wide sea of universal suffrage, I object to manhood suffrage. I do not know anything specially about manhood which dedicates it to this purpose more than exists about womanhood. Womanhood to me is rather the more exalted of the two. It is purer; it is higher; it is holier; and it is not purchasable at the same price that the other is, in my judgment. If you want to widen the franchise so as to purify your ballot-box, throw the virtue of the country into it; throw the temperance of the country into it; throw the purity of the country into it; throw the angel element, if I may so express myself, into it. [Laughter]. Let there be as little diabolism as possible, but as much of the divinity as you can get. Therefore, Mr. President, I put this as a serious question for the consideration of this body. In the presence of the tendencies of the age and in recognition of this movement, which my honorable friend from Massachusetts is always talking about, and of which he seems to have had premonition long before it came to any of the rest of us--I say in the face of this movement and in recognition of it, I earnestly beg all patriots here to think of this proposition. It is inevitable. How are you to resist when it is made the demand of fifteen million American females for this right, which can be granted and which can be as safely exercised in their hands as it can in the hands of negroes? And I would ask gentlemen while they are bestowing this ballot which has such merit in it, which has such a healing efficacy for all ills, which educates people, and which elevates them above the common level of mankind, and which, above all, protects them, how they will go home and look in the face their sewing women, their laboring women, their single women, their taxed women, their overburdened women, their women who toil till midnight for the barest subsistence, and say to them, "We have it not for you; we could give it to the negro, but we could not give it to you."