On February 6, 1885, Thomas W. Palmer (Mich.) brought up in the Senate the joint resolution for a Sixteenth Amendment which had been favorably reported by the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage the previous winter, and in its support made a masterly argument which has not been surpassed in the fifteen years that have since elapsed, saying in part: This resolution involves the consideration of the broadest step in the progress of the struggle for human liberty that has ever been submitted to any ruler or to any legislative body. Its taking is pregnant with wide changes in the pathway of future civilization. Its obstruction will delay and cripple our advancement. The trinity of principles which Lord Chatham called the "Bible of the English Constitution," the Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, and the Bill of Rights, are towering landmarks in the history of our race, but they immediately concerned but few at the time of their erection. The Declaration of Independence by the colonists and its successful assertion, the establishment of the right of petition, the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the property qualification for suffrage in nearly all the States, the recognition of the right of women to earn, hold, enjoy and devise property, are proud and notable gains. The emancipation of 4,000,000 slaves and the subsequent extension of suffrage to the male adults among them were measures enlarging the possibilities of freedom, the full benefits of which have yet to be realized; but the political emancipation of 26,000,000 of our citizens, equal to us in most essential respects and superior to us in many, it seems to me would translate our nation, almost at a bound, to the broad plateau of universal equality and co-operation to which all these blood-stained and prayer-worn steps have surely led. Like life insurance and the man who carried the first umbrella, the inception of this movement was greeted with derision. Born of an apparently hopeless revolt against unjust discrimination, unequal statutes, and cruel constructions of courts, it has pressed on and over ridicule, malice, indifference and conservatism, until it stands in the gray dawn before the most powerful legislative body on earth and challenges final consideration.