Another thing which you permit is reacting now to the detriment of our free institutions; if from prejudice or expediency you think you have a right to withhold the ballot from the women of this nation, you have but to go one step further and deprive any other class of a right they already have, should you think it expedient to do so. It is beginning to bear its fruit now in your elections. You are becoming demoralized; ballots are bought and sold; you have your blocks of five; and in some entire communities the men are deprived of the right of suffrage. It is simply a question of time how long you will be able to maintain the freedom you cherish for yourselves. If we women are citizens, if we are governed, if we are a part of the people, according to the plain declarations of the fundamental principles which underlie this nation, we are as much entitled to vote as you, and you can not make an argument against us that would not disfranchise yourselves. I feel this phase of the question more acutely than any other because I think from a fundamental standpoint the progress of the race is bound up in republican institutions. It is not a question of woman's rights, it is a question of human rights, of the success or failure of these institutions, and the more highly cultured a woman is the more deeply she feels this humiliation.... I do not think it weakness to say that women love, and that love predominates in their nature, because, my friends, love is the only immortal principle in the universe. Love is to endure forever. Faith will be swallowed up in knowledge after a while, and hope in fruition, but love abides forever. It is peculiarly an attribute of our feminine nature to love our offspring over everything else; for them we would peril our lives; and for the men of this nation, under our form of government, to say to us that we shall not have the power which will enable us through laws and legislation to decide the conditions which shall surround them, and throw the mother love around these children from the cradle to the grave, is an inhuman use of their authority....