by agitation. You raise your committee and allow the agitators to come before them, yea, more than that, you invite them to come; and what is the result? The Congress of the United States will for the next ten or perhaps twenty years be continually assailed for special and peculiar legislation in favor of the women of the land.
I do not understand that a woman in this country has any more right to a select committee than a man has. It would be just as rational and as proper in every legislative and parliamentary sense to have a select committee for the consideration of the rights of men as to have a committee for the consideration of the rights of women. I object, sir, to this disseverance between the sexes, and I object to the Senate of the United States giving its sanction in advance or in any way to this character of legislation. It is a false principle, and it will work evil, and only evil, in this country.
What jurisdiction do you expect to exercise in the Senate of the United States for the benefit of the women in respect of suffrage or in respect of separate estates? Where are the boundaries of your jurisdiction? You find them in the territories and in the District of Columbia. If you expect to proceed into the States you must have the Constitution of the United States amended so as to put our wives and our daughters upon the footing of those who are provided for in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. Your jurisdiction is limited to the territories and to the District of Columbia. Inasmuch as this measure, I understand, has been made a party measure by the decree of a caucus, I propose to make some little inquiry into the past legislation of the Congress of the United States under Republican rule in respect of the extension of the right of suffrage to certain classes of people in this country. I will take up first the territories.
Let us look for a moment at the result of woman suffrage in some of the territories. The territorial legislature of Utah has gone forward and conferred the right of suffrage upon women. The population in the last decade has reached from 64,000, I believe, to about 150,000. The territorial legislature of Utah conferred upon the females of that territory the right of suffrage, and how have they exercised that right? Sir, I am ashamed to say it, but it is known to the world that the power of Mormonism and polygamy in Utah territory is sustained by female suffrage. You cannot get rid of those laws. Ninety per cent. of the legislative power of Utah territory is Mormon and polygamous. If female suffrage is to be incorporated into the laws of our country with a view to the amelioration of our morals or our political sentiments, we stand aghast at the spectacle of what has been wrought by its exercise in the territory of Utah. There stands a power supporting the crime of polygamy through what they call a divine inspiration, or teaching from God, and all the power of the judges of the United States and of the Congress of the United States has been unavailing to break it down. Who have upheld it? Those who in the family circle represent one husband to fifteen women. A continual accumulation of the power of the church and of polygamy is going on, and when the Gentiles, as they are called, enter that territory with the view of breaking it up they are confronted by the women, who
