Mrs. Stanton presented the same address before the House Judiciary Committee, February 11, with the result that for the first time in history a majority House report in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment was submitted. It was presented by Lucien B. Caswell (Wis.) and said in conclusion: "The disfranchisement of twelve millions of people, who are citizens of the United States, should command from us an immediate action. Since the women of this country are unjustly deprived of a right so essential to complete citizenship in a republic as the elective franchise, common justice requires that we should submit the proposition for a change in the fundamental law to the State Legislatures, where the correction can be made."[77] The fiftieth birthday of Susan B. Anthony had been celebrated in New York City in 1870 by a large number of prominent men and women, the first instance of the kind on record. It had been decided by her friends that her seventieth birthday should receive a similar recognition, but that it should be more national in character. The arrangements were made by Mrs. May Wright Sewall and Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, and on the evening of February 15 a distinguished company of two hundred sat around the banquet tables in the great dining-room of the Riggs House. Miss Anthony occupied the place of honor, on her right Senator Blair and Mrs. Stanton, on her left Robert Purvis, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker and Mrs. Sewall, who presided. In addition to the after-dinner speeches of these distinguished guests there were clever and sparkling responses to toasts by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, Miss Phoebe W. Couzins, the Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley, Representative J. A. Pickler (S. D.), Mrs. Colby, Mrs. Stanton's two daughters--Mrs. Harriot Blatch and Mrs. Margaret Lawrence--Mrs. Laura Ormiston Chant of England, and others. Mrs. Stanton began her address by saying: "If there is one part of my life which gives me more intense satisfaction than another, it is my friendship of more than forty years' standing with Susan B. Anthony." The key-note to Miss Anthony's touching response was struck in the opening sentence: "The thing I most hope for is that, should I stay on this planet twenty years longer, I still may be worthy of the wonderful respect you have manifested for me to-night." Among the more than two hundred letters, poems and telegrams received were those of George William Curtis, William Lloyd Garrison, John G. Whittier, George F. Hoar, Lucy Stone, Frances E. Willard, Speaker Thomas B. Reed, Mrs. John A. Logan, Thomas W. Palmer, the Rev. Olympia Brown, Harriet Hosmer, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Alice Williams Brotherton, Charles Nordhoff, Frank G. Carpenter, U. S. Senator Henry L. Dawes, Neal Dow, Laura M. Johns, T. V. Powderly and Leonora M. Barry. Most of the prominent newspapers in the country contained editorial congratulations, and the _Woman's Tribune_ issued a special birthday edition.