It has been publicly said by Suffragists from the first, that the tenets of the Church of Rome, in which Canon law had its origin, were inimical to woman suffrage; and they have further said that those who canonize women and worship the Virgin Mother, should naturally have been friendly to the Suffrage idea. I suppose no one will deny that the spirit of the Roman body is that of a state church. I have no more to say in criticism of it as a Christian denomination than I have of others; but that organization which has held temporal and spiritual power to be co-ordinate and interdependent in government, presents a political phase that has direct bearing on my theme, and I make my few comments as a historian. The Church that inculcates Mariolatry would have far more ignorant women to add to our body of voters than any other. It has done less for woman's education and general advancement than any other, but its claims are not therefore modest. The school elections in Staten Island last year gave an object- lesson in regard to its intention to use the suffrage. In Connecticut, the school election presented another evidence of the intense interest felt by the Catholic clergy in public-school matters. In California, in the late canvass for woman suffrage, that Church assisted largely in carrying on the work to secure the amendment. While many of its individual members are among the noblest friends that civil and religious freedom have in our country, this church, by its traditions, and by its latest pronunciamentos, shows itself as a force that, for its own selfish reasons, may be reckoned on the side of woman suffrage in its conflict with woman's progress. CHAPTER X. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND SEX. The ninth count of the Suffrage Declaration says: "He has created a false sentiment by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude woman from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little account in men." And the list of grievances is summed up as follows: "Because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."