In what follows we shall take up the question seriously, and treat it candidly, without indulging in any sneers, jeers, or ridicule. A certain number of women have become, in some way or other, very thoroughly convinced that women are deeply wronged, deprived of their just rights by men, and especially in not being allowed political suffrage and eligibility. They claim to be in all things man's equal, and in many things his superior, and contend that society should make no distinction of sex in any of its civil and political arrangements. It will not, indeed, be easy for us to forget this distinction so long as we honor our mothers, and love our wives and daughters; but we will endeavor in this discussion to forget it--so far, at least, as to treat the question on its merits, and make no allowance for any real or supposed difference of intellect between men and women. We shall neither roughen nor soften our tones because our opponents are women, or men who encourage them. The women in question claim for women all the prerogatives of men; we shall, therefore, take the liberty to disregard their privileges as women. They may expect from us civility, not gallantry. {146} We say frankly in the outset that we are decidedly opposed to female suffrage and eligibility. The woman's rights women demand them both as a right, and complain that men, in refusing to concede them, withhold a natural right, and violate the equal rights on which the American republic professes to be based. We deny that women have a natural right to suffrage and eligibility; for neither is a natural right at all, for either men or women. Either is a trust from civil society, not a natural and indefeasible right; and civil society confers either on whom it judges trustworthy, and on such conditions as it deems it expedient to annex. As the trust has never been conferred by civil society with us on women, they are deprived of no right by not being enfranchised.