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Show WOMEN'S POLITICAL PRIVILEGES Dolph Pictures Washington Territory Terri-tory as a State Founded on Principles of Equality. Washington, April 2. In the course of his speech in the Senate yesterday on the bill to admit Washington Territory into the Union, Mr. Dolph, speaking of woman suffrage, said: "Mr. President, there is another matter which I consider pertinent to this discussion, and of too much importance to be left entirely unnoticed un-noticed on this occasion. It is something new in our political history. It is full of hope for the women of this country and of the world, and full of promise for the j future of republican institutions. I refer to the fact that in Washington Territory ! the right of suffrage has been j EXTENDED TO WOMEN OF PROPER AGE. I do not believe the proposition, so often asserted, that suffrage is a political privilege privi-lege only, but a natural right. It is regulated reg-ulated by the Constitution and the laws of the State, I grant, but it needs no argument, ar-gument, it appears to me, to show that the Constitution and the laws adopted and enacted by a fragment of the whole body of the people, but binding alike on all, is a usurpation of the powers of government. gov-ernment. Government is but organized society, whatever its form. It has its originjn the necessities of mankind, and it is indispensable for the maintenance of civilized government that it should represent rep-resent the supreme power of . the State and be capable of subjecting the will of its individual citizens to its order. Such government can only derive its just powers pow-ers from the consent of the governed, and can be established only under the fundamental funda-mental law which is self-imposed. EVERY CITIZEN OF SUITABLE AGE And discretion who is to be subject to such government, has, in my judgment, a natural right to participate in its formation. for-mation. The lamented Lincoln immortalized immortal-ized the expression that ours is 'a government govern-ment of the people, by the people and for the people' and yet it is far from that. There can be no government by the people peo-ple where one half of them are allowed no voice in its organization and control. I regard the struggle going on in this country and elsewhere for the enfranchisement enfran-chisement of women, as but a continuation continu-ation of the great struggle for human liberty which, from the earliest dawn of authentic historv. nnnvnlspri nat.inna. rent kingdoms and drenched battle fields with human blood. I look upon the actions which have been achieved in the cause of women's enfranchisement in washing-ton washing-ton TERRITORY And elsewhere, as the crowning victory of all which has been won in the long-continued, long-continued, still continuing contest between be-tween liberty and oppression, and as destined to exert a greater influence upon the human race than any achieved upon the battle-field in ancient or modern times. Should this bill be passed we shall witness the spectacle of a State government founded in accordance with the principles of equality, and have a State at last with a truly Kepublican form of government." |