Your committee are of the opinion that while a few intelligent women, such as appeared before the committee in advocacy of the pending measure, would defy all obstacles in the way of their casting the ballot, yet the great mass of the intelligent, refined and judicious, with the becoming modesty of their sex, would shrink from the rude contact of the crowd and, with the exceptions mentioned, leave the ignorant and vile the exclusive right to speak for the gentler sex in public affairs. [This opinion has been wholly disproved by the experience of States where women do vote. The "intelligent and judicious" have learned that there is more "rude contact" in going to the market, the theater, the train and the ferry-boat, than in a quiet booth where no man is permitted to come within a hundred feet. But women are not so "modest and refined" as to shrink from "rude contact" even, if it would give them the opportunity to control the conditions which surround and influence their husbands, their children, their homes and their community.] Your committee are of the opinion that the general policy of female suffrage should remain in abeyance, in so far as the general Government is concerned, until the States and communities directly chargeable under our system of government with the exercise and regulation of this privilege, shall put the seal of affirmation upon it; and there certainly can be no reason for an amendment of the Constitution to settle a question within the jurisdiction of the States, and which they should first settle for themselves. [Of course, according to this logic, after the States settle the question and put the seal of affirmation on it, then the general Government will take a hand!] This House Report (No. 1330) was not drastic enough to suit the Hon. Luke P. Poland (Vt.), so he made his own, in which he said: No government founded upon the principle that sovereignty resides in the people has ever allowed all the people to vote, or to directly participate in making or administering the laws. Suffrage has never been regarded as the natural right of all the people or of any particular class or portion of the people. Suffrage is representation, and it has been given in free governments to such class of persons as in their judgment [whose judgment?] would fairly and safely represent the rights and interests of the whole. The right has generally, if not universally, been conferred on men above twenty-one years of age, and often this has been restricted by requiring the ownership of property or the payment of taxes. [Which?]