Mr. WADE. Mr. President, I did not in tend to say a word upon this subject, because on the 1st day of the last session of Congress I introduced the original bill now before the Senate, to which the committee have proposed several amendments, and that action on my part I supposed demonstrated sufficiently to all who might read the bill what were my views and sentiments upon the question of suffrage; and, sir, they are of no sudden growth. I have always been of the opinion that in a republican Government the right of voting ought to be limited only by the years of discretion. I have always believed that when a person arrived at the age when by the laws of the country he was remitted to the rights of citizens, when the laws fixed the age of majority when the person was supposed i.competent to manage his own affairs, then he ought to be suffered to participate in the Government under which he lives or I do believe that any such rule is unsafe. I imagine that safety is entirely on the other side, for just in proportion as you limit the franchise, you create in the same degree an aristocracy, an irresponsible Government; and gentlemen must be a little tinctured with a fear of republican sentiment when they fear the extension of the right of suffrage. if I believed, as some gentlemen do, that to participate in Government required intellect, of the highest character, the greatest perspicacity of mind, the greatest discipline derived from education and experience, I should be convinced that a RFG could not live. It is because I believe that all that is essential in government for the welfare of the community is plain, simple, level with the weakest intellects, that I am satisfied this Government ought to stand and will stand for ever. Who is it that ought to be protected by these republican Governments? Certainly it is the weak and ignorant, who have no other manner of defending their rights except through the ballot box. The argument for aristocracies and monarchies has ever been that the masses of the people do not know enough to take care of the;concerns of Government. If they do not, the human race is in a miserable condition. If, indeed, the great masses of mankind, who are permitted to transact their own business, are incompetent to participate in government, then farewell to the oil. system of government; it cannot stand a day; it is a wrong foundation. Our principles of government are radically wrong if gentlemen's fears on this subject are well grounded. Thank God, I know they are not. I know that all the defects and evils of our Government have not come from the ignorant masses; but the frauds and the devices of the higher intellects and the more cultivated minds have brought upon our government all those scars by which it has been disfigured. Why, sir, look at the administration of the southern governments in the seceded States, where their public men were advocates of the doctrine that suffrage should be restricted and generally that republican Governments were wrong. I had a great deal of private conversation with the gentlemen who were formerly in these Halls representing those governments, and I hardly ever conversed with a single man of them from that part of the country who believed that a republican Government could or ought to stand. Some of them used to say, “How can the mechanic, how can the laboring man understandingly participate in these high and complicated affairs of Government?” Those men at heart were aristocrats or monarchists; they did not believe in your republican Government. I, on the other hand, believe that the safety of our Government depends on unlimited franchise, or rather, I should say, on franchise limited only by that discretion which fits a man to manage his own concerns. Let a man arrive at the years of majority, when the Government and the experience of the world say that he has attained to such age and such discretion that it is safe to intrust him with his own affairs, and then if he cannot be permitted to participate in the Government, I say again farewell to republican government; it cannot stand. It was for these reasons that when I introduced the original bill I put it upon the most liberal principle of franchise except as to females. The question of female suffrage had not then been much agitated, and I knew the community had not thought sufficiently upon it to be ready to introduce it as an element in our political system. While I am aware of that fact, I think it will puzzle any gentleman to draw a line of .between the right of the male and the female on this subject. Both are liable to all the laws you pass; their property, their persons, and their lives are affected by the laws. Why, then, should not the females have a right to participate in their construction as well as the male part of the community? There is no argument that I can conceive or that I have yet heard that makes any discrimination between the 2 on the question of right. Why should there be any restriction? Is it because gentlemen apprehend that the female portion of the community are not as virtuous, that they are not as well calculated to consider what laws and principles of the government will conduce to their welfare as men are? The great mass of our educated females understand all these great concerns of Government infinitely better than that great mass of ignorant population from other countries which you admit to the polls without hesitation. But, sir, the right of suffrage in my judgment has bearings altogether beyond any rights of persons or property that are to be vindicated by it. I lay it down that in any free community, if any particular class of that community are excluded from this right they cannot maintain their dignity; it is a brand of Cain upon, their foreheads that will sink them into contempt, even in their own estimation. My judgmentis that if this right was accorded to females you would find that they would be clevated in their minds and in their intellects. The best discipline you can offer them would be to permit and to require them to participate in these great concerns of Government, so that their rights and the rights of their children should depend in a manner upon the way in which the Wy un.derstand these great things. would be the effect upon their minds? Would it not be, I ask you, sir, to lead them from that miserable amusement of reading frivolous books and novels and romances that consume 2/3rds of their time now, from which they learn nothing, and draw their at tention to matters of more moment, more substance, better calculated to well discipline the mind?. In my judgment it would. I believe it would tend to educate them as well as the male part of the population. Take the negroes, who, it is said are ignorant, the moment you confer the franchise on them it will lead them to struggle to get an understanding of the affairs of Government so as to be able to participate intelligently in them. They will then understand that they are made responsible for the Government under which they live. In my judgment, this is the reason why the fact exists, which is acknowledged everywhere, that the great mass of our population rise immensely higher in intellect and every quality that should adorn human nature above the peasantry and working classes of the Old World. Why is this? I think much of it results from the fact that the people of this country are compelled to serve upon juries, to participate in the government of their own localities in various capacities, and finally to take part in all the great concerns of Government. That elevates a man and makes him feel his own consequence in the community in which he lives. It is for these reasons as much as any other that I wish to see the franchise extended to every person of mature age and discretion who has committed no crime. I know very well that prejudices against female voting have delegitimately to us from the Old World; yea, more than anything else, from that common law which we lawyers have all studied as the 1st element in jurisprudence. That system of law really sank the female to total contempt and insignificance, almost annihilated her from the face of the earth. It made her responsible for nothing. So far was she removed from participating in anything or being responsible for anything, that if she even.committed a crime in the presence of her husband she was not by that old law answerable for it. He was her guardian; he had the right to correct her as the master did his slave in the South. such was the chivalry of that old common law from which we derive our judicial education. A vast remnant of that old prejudice is still lurking in the minds of our community. It is a mere figment of proscription and nothing else, descended down to us, and we have not overcome it. It is not founded in reason; it is not founded in common sense; and it is being done away with very fast, too. I. that those women who have taken these things into consideration, with minds as enlightened and as intelligent as our own, have done immense good to their sex by agitatin these great subjects against all the ridicule an all the contempt that has been wielded against them from the time they commenced the agitation. I know that in my own State we had a few years ago a great many laws on our stat ute book depriving females of a great many rights without the least reason upon earth. Perhaps it was because the question was not agitated and because it did not particularly concern the males that they not turn their attention to it; but when agitated in the women's rights conventions that have been so abused and ridiculed throughout the country, man could no longer shut his eyes to the glaring defects that existed in our system, and our Legislature has corrected many of those abuses and placed the rights of the female upon infinitely higher grounds than they occupied there 30 years ago; and I believe this remark is as applicable to many other States as it is to Ohio. I tell you the agitation of these subjects has been salutary and good; and our male population would no more go back to divest women of the rights they have acquired than they would go back now to slavery “self in the advance we have lately made. What do I infer, then, from all this? Seeing that their rights rest upon the same foundation and are only kept down by proscription and prejudice, I oI know that the time will come not today, but the time is approaching when every female in the country will be made responsible for the just government of our country as much as the male; her right to participate in the Government will be just as unquestioned as that of the male. I know that my opinions on this subject are a little in advance of the t mass, probably, of the community in which I live; but I am advancing a principle. I shall give a vote on this amendment that will be deemed an unpopular vote, but I am not frightened by that. I have been accus toned to give such votes all my life almost, but I believe they have been given in the cause of human liberty and right and in the way of the advancing intelligence of our age; and when ever the landmark has been set up the community have marched up to it. I think I am advocating now the same kind of a principle, and I have no doubt that sooner or later it will become a fixed fact, and the community will think it just as absurd to exclude females from the ballot box as males. I do not believe that it will have any unfavorable effect upon the female character if women are permitted to come up to the polls and vote. I believe it would exercise a most humane and civilizing influence upon the roughness and rudeness with which men meet on those occasions if the polished ladies of the land would come up to the ballot box clothed with these rights and participate in the exercise of the franchise. It has not been found that association with ladies is apt to make men rude and uncivilized; and I do not think the reflex of it presents that lady like character which we all prize so highly. I do not think it has that effect. On the other hand, in my judgment, if it was popular today for ladies to go to the polls, no man would regret their presence there, and the districts where their ballots were given would be harmonized, civilized, and rendered more gentlemanly, if I may so say, on the one side and on the other, and it would prevent the rude collisions that are apt to occur at these places, while it would reflect back no uncivilizing or unladylike influence upon the female part of the community. That is the way I judge it. Of course, as it has never been tried in this country, it is more or less of an experiment; but here in this District is the very place to try your experiment. I know that the same things were said about the abolition of slavery. I was here. Gentlemen know very well that there was a strong desire entertained by many gentlemen on this floor that emancipation, if it took place, should be very gradual, very conservative, a little at a time. I was the advocate of striking off the shackles at one blow, and I said that the moment yousettled on that the community would settle down upon this principle of righteousness, justice, and liberty, and be satisfied with it, but just as long as you kept it in a state of doubt and uncertainty, going only half way, just so long it would be an irritating element in our proceedings. It is just so now with this question. Do not understand that I expect that this amendment will be carried. I do not. I do not know that I would have agitated it now. although it is as clear to me as the sun at noonday that the time is approaching when females will be admitted to this franchise as much as males, because I can see no reason for the distinction. I agree, however, that there is not the same pressing necessity for allowing females as there is for allowing the colored people to vote; because the ladies of the land are not under the ban of a hostile race grinding them to powder. They are in high fellowship with those that do govern, who, to a great extent, act as their agents, their friends, promoting their interests in every vote they give, and therefore communities get along very well without conferring this right upon the female. But when you speak of it as a right and as a great educational power in the hands of females, and I am called on to vote on the subject, I will vote that which I think under all circumstances is right, just, and proper. I shrink not from the question because I am told by gentlemen that it is unpop ular. The question with me is, is it right? Show me that it is wrong, and then I will with hold my vote; but I have heard no argument that convinces me that the thing is not right. There has been something said about this right of voting, as to whether it is a natural or a conventional right. I do not know that there is much difference between a natural and a conventional right. Right has its hold upon the conscience in the inevitable fitness of things and whether it springs from nature or from any other cause right is right, and a conventional right is as sacred as a natural right. I cannot distinguish them; I know of no difference betweenthem. It certainly does not seem to me that it would be right now if a new community is about to set up a Government, for 1/3rd of them to seize upon that Government and say they will govern and the rest shall have nothing to do with it. It seems to me there is a wrong done to those who are shut out from any participation in the Government, and that it is a violation of their rights; and what odds does it make whether you call it a natural or conventional or artificial right? I contend that when youset "a Government you shall call every man who has arrived at the years of discretion, who has committed no crime, into your community and ask him to participate in setting up that Government; and if you shut him out without any reason, you do him a wrong, one of the greatest wrongs that you can inflict upon a man. If it is to be done to me or to my pos terity, I say to you take their lives but do not deprive them of the right of standing upon the same foothold, upon the same platform in their political rights with any other man in the community. I will compromise no such principle. I contend before God and man ever, always, that they shall stand upon the same platform in setting up their Governments and in continuing them after they are set up, and I will brand it as a wrong and an injustice in any man to deprive any, portion of the population, unless it be for crime or offense, from participating in the Government to the same extent that he j.himself. If they are ignorant, so much the greater necessity that they have this weapon in their hands to guard themselves against the strong. The weaker, the more ignorant, and the more liable they are to be imposed upon, the greater the necessity of having this great weapon of self defense in their hands. I know, very well that great prejudices have existed against colored people; but my word for it, the moment they are admitted to the ballot box, especially about the 2nd Tuesday of October in our State, you will find them as genteel a set of men as you know anywhere; as much consideration will be awarded to them; they will be men; they will be courted; their rights will be awarded to them; they will be made to feel, and it will go abroad that they are not the subjects of utter contempt that can be treated as men see fit to treat them; but they will rise in the scale of the community, and finally occupy a platform according to their merits, which they never can obtain, and you will never be able to make anything of any portion of the community, black or white, while you exclude them from the ballot box. These, sir, are the reasons why I introduce this bill, and to vindicate them I have spoken. I know I am not able to set forth anything new on this subject. Every American citizen has reflected upon it until his mind is made up, and the thing itself is so universally approved by our community that the only wonder is that when we propose to extend this franchise to all the people alike anybody is found in opposition to it.