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Mrs. Eddy's Example.

315

only, and in no respect mandatory, she adds thereto, referring to the legatees, "But neither of them is under any legal responsibility to any one or to any court to do so." Each of the legatees is therefore the sole judge of whether she will follow, or how far or in what way she will follow, the suggestion of the testatrix in the disposition of the estate absolutely bequeathed to her. It is a matter in which she is to be guided only by her judgment and conscience, and no trust is imposed upon the property she receives.

As no trust is created, it would be superfluous to consider whether, if the request of the testatrix were treated as a command, one would then be indicated capable of enforcement according to the rules of law. Bill dismissed.

[Signed:]

WALBRIDGE ABNER FIELD,

WILLIAM ALLEN,
WALDO COBURN,

MARCUS MORTON, Chief-Justice,
CHARLES DEVENS,

CHARLES ALLEN,

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Jr.

From these decisions our daughters should learn the importance of having some knowledge of law. Had not Mrs. Eddy learned from experience in her father's case that property could not be left in trust to any societies except those called religious and charitable, and made her bequest absolutely to persons, the gift of $56,000 would have been lost to the woman suffrage movement. As it was, nearly $10,000 was swallowed up in litigation to secure what the donees did finally obtain. Considering that Mrs. Eddy is the only woman who has ever had both the desire. and the power to make a large bequest to this cause, its friends. have great reason to rejoice in her wisdom as well as her generosity.

*

Civilization would have been immeasurably farther advanced than it now is, had the many rich women, who have left large bequests to churches, and colleges for boys, concentrated their wealth and influence on the education, elevation and enfranchisement of their own sex. We trust that Mrs. Eddy's example may not be lost on the coming generation of women.—[EDITORS.

We deeply regret that we have been unable to procure a good photograph of our generous benefactor, as it was our intention to make her engraving the frontispiece of this volume, and thus give the honored place to her through whose liberality we have been enabled at last to complete this work. We are happy to state that Mrs. Eddy's will was not contested by any of the descendents of the noble Francis Jackson, but by Jerome Bacon, a millionaire, the widower of her eldest daughter who survived the mother but one week. When the suit was entered the daughters of Mrs. Eddy, Sarah and Amy, her only surviving children, in a letter to the executor of the estate, Hon. C. R. Ransom, said: "We hereby consent and agree that, in case this suit now pending in the court shall be decided against the claims of Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony, we will give to them the net amount of any sum that as heirs may be awarded to us, in accordance with our mother's will."

CHAPTER XXXII.

CONNECTICUT.

Prudence Crandall-Eloquent Reformers-Petitions for Suffrage-The Committee's Report-Frances Ellen Burr-Isabella Beecher Hooker's Reminiscences—Anna Dickinson in the Republican Campaign-State Society Formed, October 28, 29, 1869-Enthusiastic Convention in Hartford-Governor Marshall Jewell-He Recommends More Liberal Laws for Women-Society Formed in New Haven, 1871-Governor Hubbard's Inaugural, 1877-Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican-Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Chaplain, 1870—John Hooker, esq., Champions the Suffrage Movement.

WHILE Connecticut has always been celebrated for its puritanical theology, political conservatism and rigid social customs, it was nevertheless the scene of some of the most hotly contested of the anti-slavery battles. While its leading clergymen and statesmen stoutly maintained the letter of the old creeds and constitutions, the Burleighs, the Mays, and the Crandalls. strove to illustrate the true spirit of religion and republicanism in their daily lives by "remembering those that were in bonds as bound with them."

The example of one glorious woman like Prudence Crandall,* who suffered shameful persecutions in establishing a school, for colored girls at Canterbury, in 1833, should have been sufficient to rouse every woman in Connecticut to some thought on the basic principles of the government and religion of the country. Yet we have no record of any woman in that State publicly sustaining her in that grand enterprise, though no doubt her heroism gave fresh inspiration to the sermons of Samuel J. May, then preaching in the village of Brooklyn, and the speeches and poems of the two eloquent reformers, Charles C. and William H. Burleigh. The words and deeds of these and other great souls, though seeming to slumber for many years, gave birth at last to new demands for another class of outraged citizens. Thus liberty is ever born of the hateful spirit of persecution. One question of reform settled forever by the civil war, the initiative for the next was soon

* The life of William Lloyd Garrison, Vol. I.: The Century Company, New York.

Minority Report.

317 taken. In The Revolution of January 16, 1868, we find the following well-considered report on woman's enfranchisement, presented by a minority of the Committee on Constitutional Amendments to the legislature of Connecticut at its session of 1867:

The undersigned members of the committee believe that the prayer of the petitioners ought to be granted. It would be much easier for us to reject the petition and silently to acquiesce in the opinions of the majority upon the subject to which it relates, but our attention was challenged and an investigation invited by the bold axioms upon which the cause of suffrage for woman was claimed to rest, and the more we have examined the subject the more convinced we have become that the logic of our institutions requires a concession of that right. It is claimed by some that the right to vote is not a natural right, but that it is a privilege which some have acquired, and which may be granted to others at the option of the fortunate holders. But they fail to inform us how the possessors first acquired the privilege, and especially how they acquired the rightful power to withhold that privilege from others, according to caprice or notions of expediency. We hold this doctrine to be pernicious in tendency, and hostile to the spirit of a republican government; and we believe that it can only be justified by the same arguments that are used to justify slavery or monarchy-for it is an obvious deduction of logic that if one thousand persons have a right to govern another thousand without their consent, one man has a right to govern all.

Mr. Lincoln tersely said, "If slavery is not wrong nothing is wrong." So it seems to us that if the right to vote is not a natural right, there is no such thing as a natural right in human relations. The right to freedom and the right to a ballot both spring from the same source. The right to vote is only the right to a legitimate use of freedom. It is plain that if a man is not free to govern himself, and to have a voice in the taxation of his own property, he is not really free in any enlightened sense. Even Edward I. of England said, “It is a most equitable rule that what concerns all should be approved by all.' This must rightfully apply to women the same as to men. And Locke, in his essay on civil government, said, "Nothing is more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal, one with another, without subordination or subjection." Talleyrand said, as an argument for monarchy, The moment we reject an absolutely universal suffrage, we admit the principle of aristocracy." The founders of this nation asserted with great emphasis and every variety of repetition, the essential equality of human rights as a self-evident truth. The war of the Revolution was justified by the maxim, "Taxation without representation is tyranny"; and all republics vindicate their existence by the claim that Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed." Yet woman, in Connecticut, is governed without her consent, and taxed without representation.

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Lord Camden, one of England's ablest jurists, long ago declared, "My position is this-taxation and representation are inseparable. The position is founded in a law of nature-nay more, it is itself an eternal law of nature." Our forefathers held to this principle, and fought seven years to establish it. They maintained their favorite theory of government against immense odds, and transmitted to their posterity the great work of putting it logically into practice. It is acknowledged by this legislature that "taxation without representation is tyranny," and that "governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed." If these phrases are anything more than the meaningless utterances of demagogues, anything more than the hypocritical apologies of rebellious colonies in a strait-then we submit that a prima facie case for woman's right to vote has already been made out. To declare that a voice in the government is the right of all, and then give it to less than half, and that to the frac

tion to which the theorist himself happens to belong, is to renounce even the appearance of principle.

It is plain to your committee that neither the State nor the nation can have peace on this suffrage question until some fair standard shall be adopted which is not based on religion, or color, or sex, or any accident of birth—a test which shall be applicable to every adult human being. In a republic the ballot belongs to every intelligent adult person who is innocent of crime. There is an obvious and sufficient reason for excluding minors, state-prison convicts, imbeciles and insane persons, but does the public safety require that we shall place the women of Connecticut with infants, criminals, idiots and lunatics? Do they deserve the classification? It seems to your committee that to enfranchise woman-or rather to cease to deprive her of the ballot, which is of right hers, would be reciprocally beneficial. We believe that it would elevate the character of our office-holders; that it would purify our politics; that it would render our laws more equitable; that it would give to woman a protection against half the perils which now beset her; that it would put into her hands a key that would unlock the door of every respectable occupation and profession; that it would insure a reconstruction of our statute laws on a basis of justice, so that a woman should have a right to her own children, and a right to receive and enjoy the proceeds of her own labor. John Neal estimates that the ballot is worth fifty cents a day to every American laborer, enabling each man to command that much higher wages. Does not gentlemanly courtesy, as well as equal justice, require that that weapon of defense shall be given to those thousands of working women among us who are going down to prostitution through three or four half-paid, over-crowded occupations?

It is said that woman is now represented by her husband, when she has one; but what is this representation worth when in Connecticut, two years ago, all of the married woman's personal property became absolutely her husband's, including even her bridal presents, to sell or give away, as he saw fit—a statute which still prevails in most of the States? What is that representation worth when even now, in this State, no married woman has the right to the use of her own property, and no woman, even a widow, is the natural guardian of her own children? Even in Connecticut, under man's representation, a widow whose husband dies without a will is regarded by law as an encumbrance on the estate which she, through years of drudgery, has helped to acquire. She can inherit none of the houses or land, but has merely the use of onethird, while the balance goes to his relatives-rich, perhaps, and persons whom she Does not this suggest reasons why woman should wish to represent

never saw.

herself?

It is said that women do not desire the ballot. This is by no means certain. It can be ascertained only by taking a vote. It is not proved by the fact that they have not yet generally clamored for the right, nor by the fact that some protest against it. In Persia, it is a law of society that virtuous women shall appear in public with their faces covered, and instead of murmuring at the restraint, they are universal in upholding it, and wonder at the immodesty and effrontery of English women who appear upon the streets unveiled. Custom hardens us to any kind of degradation. When woman was not admitted to the dinner-table as an equal with man, she undoubtedly thought the exclusion was perfectly proper, and quite in the nature of things, and the dinner-table became vile and obscene. When she was forbidden to enter the church, she approved the arrangement, and the church became a scene of hilarity and bacchanalian revel. When she was forbidden to take part in literature, she thought it was not her sphere, and disdained the alphabet, and the consequence was that literature became unspeakably impure, so that no man can now read in public some of the books that were written before woman brought chastity and refinement into letters. The Asiatics are probably not in favor of political liberty, or the American Indians in favor of civilization; but that does not prove that these would be bad for them, especially if thousands of the most enlightened did desire and demand the change. It is assumed that women are not in favor of this right; how can this be better ascertained than by submitting to them the question to vote upon-"yes" or "no."

Frances Ellen Burr.

319

If this legislature shall be averse to trusting woman to give her opinion even on the question of her own enfranchisement, we recommend that an amendment, striking the word "male" from the State constitution, be submitted to the qualified electors of the State. Can there be any possible danger in trusting those who have trusted us? They, not we, are the law-makers. An assembly is elected only because it would be inconvenient for all the citizens to vote upon every statute. But when any change in the fundamental law is seriously asked, it should be remitted to the people without hesitation, especially when that proposed change will render our logic consistent, and our institutions harmonious; when it will enforce the democratic doctrine that, in society, every human being has a right to do anything that does not interfere with the rights of others, and when it will establish equality in place of partiality, and vindicate the principle of All Rights for All. We therefore recommend the adoption of the following resolution: [Here follows a resolution submitting to the people an amendment of the constitution giving women the right to vote equally with men.]

The members of the committee who signed this early declaration in favor of the rights of women should be remembered with honor. They are Henry Ashley, William Steele and J. D. Gallup, jr. The resolution recommended received 93 votes in the House of Representatives, against III in opposition. So strong an expression in favor of it at that time is a noteworthy fact in the history of the cause.

The petitions that called out this able report were secured through the influence of Frances Ellen Burr, who may be said to have been the pioneer of woman suffrage in Connecticut. She had made several attempts, through conversations with influential friends, to organize a State society many years before. From the inauguration of the State association until the present time Miss Burr has been one of its most efficient members, and has done more to popularize the question of woman suffrage throughout the State than any other person. Her accomplishments as a writer and speaker, as a reporter and stenographer, as well as her connection with the Hartford Times (a journal that has a very large circulation in the State), edited by her brother, have qualified her for wide and efficient influence. Her niece, Mrs. Ella Burr McManus, edits a column in that paper, under the head of "Social Notes." She is also an advocate of suffrage for women, and makes telling points, from week to week, on this question. In issuing the first numbers of The Revolution, the earliest words of good cheer came from Frances Ellen Burr.*

The general rebellion among women against the old conditions of society and the popular opinions as to their nature and destiny, has been organized in each State in this Union by the

* She was soon followed by Mrs. Middlebrook and Mrs. Lucy R. Elms, with warm benedictions. The latter called some meetings in her neighborhood in the autumn of 1868, and entertained us most hospitably at her beautiful home.

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