It seems to me quite as evident that what is now called universal manhood suffrage does not rest upon any belief by the state that this is "the first right of a citizen," because no one doubts that if the time came when a majority deemed that the preservation of the state depended upon disfranchising a number of voters, they would be disfranchised although they remained citizens. The Suffrage leaders have, in theory at least, also abandoned the claim to suffrage on the ground of their universal right as citizens. A proof of this is seen in the fact that at various times they have suggested the extension of suffrage under qualification. Among the latest that I have noticed, is an address of Mrs. Stanton's to a Suffrage Convention, held in 1894, in which she proposed the following: "Resolved, that the women of New York petition the Legislature of the State to extend the suffrage to women on an educational qualification." She must therefore believe that the Legislature has the _legal_ right to qualify it for men; and to withhold it from women is but an extension of the right to qualify suffrage, because it only says: "We do not consider woman citizens qualified to be voters." Writing a year ago, Mrs. Stanton said: "It is the duty of the educated women of this Republic to protest against the extension of the suffrage to another man until they themselves are enfranchised!" Thus it would appear that Mrs. Stanton does not believe in universal suffrage. A Suffrage speaker in New York not long ago said naively: "We [the women, when enfranchised] will vote to withhold the suffrage from the ignorant." She did not explain what would happen if the ignorant voted not to have the suffrage withheld; nor did she appear to realize that she was practically admitting that the present voters have the right to withhold the suffrage from those whom _they_ consider unfitted for it. But it is not true that American women did not, and do not, "consent to be governed." They have always consented loyally and joyfully. From the time of the Boston Tea Party down to the Civil War, and in such times of peace and prosperity as were indicated by the Columbian Exposition, when the Government formally asked the assistance of its woman citizens, they showed their consent by their deeds, and only the suffrage faction treated the invitation to share in the Exposition after the immemorial fashion of a discontented element. And the Suffragists themselves consent to be governed every time they accept the protection of the law or invoke it against a debtor; for they thereby acknowledge its proper application to themselves if the case were reversed.