All this outpouring, all this magnificent burst of eloquence, all this eclectic combination drawn from all the quarters of the earth, all the sublime talk about the ballot, was merely meant for the question of trousers and petticoats? "Tyranny to the male sex," says Mrs. Gage, and now she goes on, and this right to the point. The proposition here is to give to the male freedman a vote and to ignore the female freedwoman, to be tautological: "I know something of the freedwomen South. Maria--I do not know that she had any other name--when liberated from slavery at Beaufort went to work, and before the year was out she had laid up $1,000." That is a magnificent Maria, that is a practical Maria. She puts Sterne's Maria and all other Marias, except Ave Maria, in the shade. [Laughter]. "I never heard of any southern white making $1,000 in a year down there. Shall Maria pay a tax and have no voice?" Shall Maria pay a tax and have no voice where the principle is admitted, where the principle is thundered forth, where it is axiomatic, where none dare gainsay it, that taxation without representation is tyranny? "Shall Maria pay a tax and have no voice?" That is the question. That, Mr. President, is the question before the Senate. "Old Betty"--There is not so much of the classic, not so much of the euphonious, not so much of the _salva rosa_ about Betty as about Maria--"Old Betty, while under my charge, cleared more than that amount free from taxation, and I presume is worth $3,000 to-day." Think of Betty! "Is she to be taxed in South Carolina to support the aristocracy?" Betty lives in South Carolina, it seems. "Will you be just, or will you be partial to the end of time!" The marriage relation was alluded to by Mrs. Gage. And here is a most important part, to which I would direct the attention of my brother Senators as fundamental in two respects--fundamental in the testimony it furnishes of the character of those you now propose to invest with the right of suffrage, fundamental in its character as to the use which they will make of it as to one-half of the people who are in this bill presumed to be the objects of your especial care. The marriage relation was alluded to by Mrs. Gage. "When the positive order was sent to me to compel the marriage of the colored people living together, the women came to me with tears, and said, 'We don't want to be married in the church, because when we are married in the church our husbands treat us just as old massa used to, and whip us if they think we deserve it; but when we ain't married in the church they knows if they tyrannize over us we go and leff 'em.'"