throat the contents of a tea-pot, which she heroically spewed back in his face; while the figure of Justice, in the distance, wept over this prostrate Liberty. Now, gentlemen, we might well adopt a similar representation. Here is Miss Smith of Glastonbury, Conn., whose cows have been sold every year by the government, contending for the same principle as our forefathers—that of resistance to taxation without representation. We might have a picture of a cow, with an American tax-collector at the horns, a foreign-born assessor at the heels, forcibly selling the birthright of an American citizen, while Julia and Abby Smith, in the background, with veiled faces, weep over the degeneracy of Republican leadership.
But there are those in authority in the government who do not believe in this decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. The attorney-general, in his instructions to the United States marshals and their deputies or assistants in the Southern States, when speaking of the countenance and support of all good citizens of the United States in the respective districts of the marshals, remarks:
It is not necessary to say that it is upon such countenance and support that the United States mainly rely in their endeavor to enforce the right to vote which they have given or have secured.
You notice the phraseology. Again, he says:
The laws of the United States are supreme, and so, consequently, is the action of officials of the United States in enforcing them.
Secretary Sherman said in his speech at Steubenville, July 6:
The negroes are free and are citizens and voters. That, at least, is a part of the constitution and cannot be changed.
And President Hayes in his two last messages, as Mrs. Blake recited to you, has declared that—
United States citizenship shall mean one and the same thing and carry with it all over our wide territory unchallenged security and respect.
And that is what we ask for women.
In conclusion, gentlemen, I say to you that a sense of justice is the sovereign power of the human mind, the most unyielding of any; it rewards with a higher sanction, it punishes with a deeper agony than any earthly tribunal. It never slumbers, never dies. It constantly utters and demands justice by the eternal rule of right, truth and equity. And on these eternal foundation-stones we stand. Crowning the dome of this great building there stands the majestic figure of a woman representing Liberty. It was no idealistic thought or accident of vision which gave us Liberty prefigured by a woman. It is the great soul of the universe pointing the final revelation yet to come to humanity, the prophecy of the ages—the last to be first.[1]
When the proposition to print these speeches came before the House a prolonged debate against it showed the readiness of the opposition to avail themselves of every legal technicality to deprive
- ↑ Speeches were also made by Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Spencer and Miss Anthony.
