45th Congress, 
 2d Session. 
 
 SENATE, 
 
 ( Eepoet 
 \ No. 523. 
 
 IN THE SENATE OF TEE UNITED STATES. 
 
 June 14, 1878. — Ordered to be printed, 
 
 Mr. Wadleigh, from the Committee on Privileges and Elections, sub- 
 mitted tlie following 
 
 EEPOET: 
 
 [To accompany bill S. Ees. I2."| 
 
 The Committee on Privileges and Elections^ to tcliom was referred the reso- 
 lution {S. Res. 12) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United 
 States, and certain petitions for and remonstrances against the same, malce 
 the following report : 
 
 This proposed amendment forbids the United States or any State to 
 deny or abridge the right to vote on account of sex. 
 
 If adopted, it will make several millions of female voters, totally in- 
 experienced in political affairs, quite generally dependent upon the other 
 sex, all incapable of performing military duty and without the power to 
 enforce the laws which their numerical strength may enable them to 
 make, and comparatively very few of whom wish to assume the irksome 
 and responsible political duties which this measure thrusts upon them. 
 
 An experiment so novel, a change so great, should only be made slowly 
 and in response to a general public demand, of the existence of which 
 there is no evidence before your committee. 
 
 Petitions from various parts of the country, containing by estimate 
 about 30,000 names, have been presented to Congress asking for this leg- 
 islation. 
 
 They were procured through the efforts of woman-suffrage societies, 
 thoroughly organized, with active and zealous managers. The ease 
 with which signatures may be procured to any petition is well known. 
 The small number of petitioners, when compared with that of the intelli- 
 gent women in the country, is striking evidence that there exists among 
 them no general desire to take up the heavy burden of governing, which 
 so many men seek to evade. 
 
 It would be unjust, unwise, and impolitic to impose that burden on 
 the great mass of women' throughout the country who do not wish for 
 it, to gratify the comparatively few who do. 
 
 It has been stronglj- urged that without the right of suffrage women 
 are and will be subjected to great oppression and injustice. 
 
 But every one who has examined the subject at all knows that with- 
 out female suffrage legislation for years has improved and is still improv- 
 ing the condition of woman. The disabilities imposed upon her by the 
 common law have, one by one, been swept away until in most of the 
 States she has the full right to her property and all, or nearly all the 
 rights which can be granted without impairing or destroying the mar- 
 riage relation. These changes have been wrought by the spirit of the 
 
2 
 
 FEMALE SUFFRAGE. 
 
 age, and are not, generally at least, tbe result of any agitation by 
 women in their own behalf. 
 
 If or can women justly complain of any partiality in the administration 
 of justice. They have the sympathy of judges and particularly of juries 
 to an extent which would warrant loud complaint on the part of their 
 adversaries of the sterner sex. Their appeals to legislatures against 
 injustice are never unheeded, and there is no doubt that when any con- 
 siderable part of the women of any State really wish for the right to 
 vote it will be granted without the intervention of Congress. 
 
 Any State may grant the right of suffrage to women. Some of them 
 have done so to a limited extent, and perhaps with good results. It is 
 evident that in some States public opinion is much more strongly in 
 favor of it than it is in others. Your committee regard it as un\^ise and 
 inexpedient to enable three-fourths in number of the States, through an 
 amendment to the 'National Constitution, to force woman suffrage upon 
 the other fourth in which the public opinion of both sexes may be 
 strongly adverse to such a change. 
 
 For these reasons, your committee report back said resolution with a 
 recommendation that it be indefinitely postponed.