Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Government, revolutions still more striking than any one of us
have yet witnessed. Beneath all these methods and appliances of
administrations and controls among men, I believe there is under
our very feet a heaving, unsteady ocean of aroused questioning in
which many modes now practiced will sink to rise no more, and out
of which other adaptations will emerge that will render far more
perfect the reflection of the will of the people; that will
perhaps represent minorities as well as majorities; that will
disarm corruptions by dispensing with party organizations. It is
the very witching hour of change.
And, sir, I do not dread change. Why should we? Is not change the
primal condition on which all life is permitted to exist? Change
is the very essence of all things pure, the sign and token of the
divinity that is within us, and conservatism _per se_ is
infidelity against the ordination of God. When, therefore, we see
such change in all things that are around us, in fashions and
customs and laws and recognitions and intellectualities, even to
the supremest generalizations of science, in all things save the
elemental principles of our being and by consequence of our
rights, why shall we say that these forms into which we have cast
administration and government, shall not obey the great law of
development and take upon themselves ameliorations better suited
to the changing society of mankind, to the wants of a more
truthful representation, to the participation by all in the
Government that is over all. Mr. President, I am of those who
believe that they will. When I look around on the incongruities
and corruptions that surround our present system, when I see what
politics and government and administration actually are, if I
believed there was to be no progress in that direction I should
be bereft of all hope and desolate of faith. On the contrary,
methinks I can see in the adown vista of the future the golden
apples hanging on the tree of promise. It seems to me that the
light of the morning is already streaming in upon us that shall
illuminate further advancements in the science of government. And
why should not even Republican government take to itself other
modes of administration without infraction of its fundamental
liberties? Why should not large reductions transpire in those
opportunities that invite the most sinister combination for
offices and spoils? Is there any reason why the emoluments of
place should more than repay the labor it calls for? Is there any
reason why large abolitions of executive patronage may not
transpire; why Government may not generate through examining
commissioners, best agencies of its own for the functional work
it is called to perform, leaving appeals to the community to pass
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