Mary Clemmer, the gifted correspondent of the New York _Independent_, learning that Senator Wadleigh was about to report adversely upon the sixteenth amendment, wrote the following private letter, which, as a record of her own sentiments on the question, she gave to Miss Anthony for publication in this history: Hon. BAINBRIDGE WADLEIGH--_Dear Sir_: The more I think of it the more I regret that, as chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, you regard with less favor the enfranchisement of women than did your distinguished predecessor, Senator Morton. At this moment, when your committee is discussing that subject, I sigh for the large outlook, the just mind, the unselfish decision of that great legislator. You were his friend, you respected his intellect, you believed in his integrity, you sit in his seat. You are to prepare the report that he would prepare were he still upon the earth. May I ask you to bring to that labor as fair a spirit, as unprejudiced an outlook, as just a decision as he would have done? I ask this not as a partisan of woman's rights, but as a lover of the human race. In this faint dawn of woman's day, I discern not woman's development of freedom merely, but the promise of that higher, finer, purer civilization which is to redeem the world, the lack of which makes men tyrants and women slaves. You cannot be unconscious of the fact that a new race of women is born into the world, who, while they lack no womanly attribute, are the peers of any man in intellect and aspiration. It will be impossible long to deny to such women that equality before the law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happens to be a man; denied to the highest creature that asks it, if she happens to be a woman. On what authority, save that of the gross regality of physical strength, do you deny to a thoughtful, educated, tax-paying person the common rights of citizenship because she is a woman? I am a property-owner, the head of a household. By what right do you assume to define and curtail for me my prerogatives as a citizen, while as a tax-payer you make not the slightest distinction between me and a man? Leave to my own perception what is proper for me as a lady, to my own discretion what is wise for me as a woman, to my own conscience what is my duty to my race and to my God. Leave to unerring nature to protect the subtle boundaries which define the distinctive life and action of the sexes, while you as a legislator do everything in your power to secure to every creature of God an equal chance to make the best and most of himself.