thony represented the petitioners. The arguments were able, and well received. Members of the Committee and others sent up a number of questions which the ladies promptly answered, with a due sprinkling of wit, logic, and sarcasm, greatly to the entertainment of the audience, which did not disperse until after eleven o'clock.
Mr. Rickerson, from the Select Committee, to whom was referred "The Petition for the Right of Suffrage," stated that "after mature consideration the Committee unanimously report adversely to the prayer of the petitioners." Mr. Rickerson, from the same Committee to whom was referred the petition for the just and equal civil rights of woman, said: "The Committee have given the petition that examination which time and circumstances would allow, and report favorably thereon, as embraced in the bill," which they introduced.[1]The petitions of 1856 were referred to the Judiciary Committee, Samuel A. Foote, Chairman. Mr. Foote was at one time a member of the bar of New York, associating with some of the first families in the State — a son, a husband, a father — and yet in his maturer years he had so little respect for himself, his mother, wife, and daughters as to present in a dignified legislative assembly the following report on a grave question of human rights — a piece of buffoonery worthy only a mountebank in a circus:
LEGISLATIVE REPORT ON WOMEN'S RIGHTS.
The Register, Albany, March, 1856.
Mr. Foote, from the Judiciary Committee, made a report on Women's Rights that set the whole House in roars of laughter:
"The Committee is composed of married and single gentlemen. The bachelors on the Committee, with becoming diffidence, have left the subject pretty much to the married gentlemen. ._They have considered it with the aid of the light they have before them and the experience married life has given them. Thus aided, they are enabled to state that the ladies always have the best place and choicest titbit at the table. They have the best seat in the cars, carriages, and sleighs; the warmest place in the winter, and the coolest place in the summer. They have their choice on which side of the bed they will lie, front or back. A lady's dress costs three times as much as that of a gentleman; and, at the present time, with the prevailing fashion, one lady occupies three times as much space in the world as a gentleman.
"It has thus appeared to the married gentlemen of your Committee, being a majority (the bachelors being silent for the reason mentioned, and also probably for the further reason that they are still suitors for the favors of the gentler sex), that, if there is any inequality or oppression in the case, the
- ↑ If the intestate be a married man living, and having lived with his wife during marriage, or if the intestate be a married woman living or having lived with her husband during marriage, and shall die without lawful descendants, born or to be born of such marriage, or a prior marriage, the inheritance shall descend to the surviving husband or wife, as the case may be, during his or her natural life, whether the inheritance came to the intestate on the part of the mother or father or otherwise.
