The laws which degraded our wives have been everywhere repealed or modified, and our children may now be born of free women. Our sisters have been recognized as having brains as well as hearts, and as being capable of transacting their own business affairs. New avenues of self-support have been found and profitably entered upon, and the doors of our colleges have ceased to creak their dismay at the approach of women. Twelve States have extended limited suffrage through their Legislatures, and three Territories admit all citizens of suitable age to the ballot-box, while from no single locality in which it has been tried comes any word but that of satisfaction concerning the experiment. The spirit of inquiry attendant upon the agitation and discussion of this question has permeated every neighborhood in the land, and none can be so blind as to miss the universal development in self-respect, self-reliance, general intelligence and increased capacity among our women. They have lost none of the womanly graces, but by fitting themselves for counselors and mental companions have benefited man, more perhaps than themselves. In considering the objections to this extension of the suffrage we are fortunate in finding them grouped in the adverse report of the minority of your committee, and also in confidently assuming, from the acknowledged ability and evident earnestness of the distinguished Senators who prepared it, that all is contained therein in the way of argument or protest which is left to the opponents of this reform after thirty-seven years of discussion. I wish that every Senator would examine this report and note how many of its reasonings are self-refuting and how few even seem to warrant further antagonism. They cite the physical superiority of man, but offer no amendment to increase the voting power of a Sullivan or to disfranchise the halt, the lame, the blind or the sick. They regard the manly head of the family as its only proper representative, but would not exclude the adult bachelor sons. They urge disability to perform military service as fatal to full citizenship, but would hardly consent to resign their own rights because they have passed the age of conscription; or to question those of Quakers, who will not fight, or of professional men and civic officials, who, like mothers, are regarded as of more use to the State at home.