If these rights are fundamental, if they belong to all human beings as such, if they are God-given rights, then all persons having these God-given rights have a right to use the means for their preservation; the means is government: "To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." I ask you whether the women of this country have ever given their consent to this Government? Have they the means of giving their consent to it? The colored men had not given their consent to it. Why? Because they had not the right to vote. There is but one way that the consent to government can be given, and that is by a right to a voice in that government, and that is the right to vote. I know it was argued in times past in regard to the South that the master gave the consent on the part of his slaves; that he represented them; that he had their good at heart, and that he gave their consent. We denied that. We know it was not true. Now, sir, to come down to the main question, I ask if the women of this country have given their consent to this Government? You say they are consenting. I say they are assenting to it, the majority of them; but they have no means of giving their consent to this Government within the theory of the Declaration of Independence; and they can not consent to it unless they have a voice, have a right to vote "yes" or to vote "no."
What was the old theory of the common law? It was that the father represented the interests of his daughter, the husband of his wife, and the son of his mother. They were deprived of all legal rights in a state of marriage, because it was said that they were taken care of by those who stood to them in these relations; but they never were taken care of. The husband never took care of the rights of his wife at common law; the father never took care of the rights of his daughter; the son never took care of the rights of his mother. The husband at common law was a tyrant and a despot. Why, sir, he absorbed the legal existence of his wife at common law; she could not make a contract except as his agent. Her legal existence was destroyed, and the very moment the marriage was consummated he became the absolute owner of all her personal property. What was the theory of it? The old theory of the common law, as given in elementary writers, was that if the wife was allowed to own property separate from her husband it would make a distinct interest; it would break up and destroy the harmony of the marriage relation; the marriage relation must be a unit; there must be but one interest; and therefore the legal existence of the wife must be merged into that of the husband. I believe a writer as late as Blackstone laid it down that it would not do to permit the wife to hold any property in severalty from her husband, because it would give to her an interest apart from his.
We have got over that. It took us one hundred and fifty years to get past that, and from year to year in this country, especially in the last twenty-five years, we have added to the rights of the wife in regard to property and in many other respects. We now give to her a legal status in this country that