The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 09 by Robert Green Ingersoll

Author:Robert Green Ingersoll [Ingersoll, Robert Green]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-02-08T13:00:00+00:00

SUFFRAGE ADDRESS.

* This address was delivered at a Suffrage Meeting in

Washington, D. C., January 24,1880

1880.

LADIES and Gentlemen: I believe the people to be the only rightful source of political power, and that any community, no matter where, in which any citizen is not allowed to have his voice in the making of the laws he must obey, that community is a tyranny. It is a matter of astonishment to me that a meeting like this is necessary in the Capital of the United States. If the citizens of the District of Columbia are not permitted to vote, if they are not allowed to govern themselves, and if there is no sound reason why they are not allowed to govern themselves, then the American idea of government is a failure. I do not believe that only the rich should vote, or that only the whites should vote, or that only the blacks should vote. I do not believe that right depends upon wealth, upon education, or upon color. It depends absolutely upon humanity. I have the right to vote because I am a man, because I am an American citizen, and that right I should and am willing to share equally with every human being. There has been a great deal said in this country of late in regard to giving the right of suffrage to women. So far as I am concerned I am willing that every woman in the nation who desires that privilege and honor shall vote. If any woman wants to vote I am too much of a gentleman to say she shall not. She gets her right, if she has it, from precisely the same source that I get mine, and there are many questions upon which I would deem it desirable that women should vote, especially upon the question of peace or war. If a woman has a child to be offered upon the altar of that Moloch, a husband liable to be drafted, and who loves a heart that can be entered by the iron arrow of death, she surely has as much right to vote for peace as some thrice-besotted sot who reels to the ballot-box and deposits a vote for war. I believe, and always have, that there is only one objection to a woman voting, and that is, the men are not sufficiently civilized for her to associate with them, and for several years I have been doing what little I can to civilize them. The only question before this meeting, as I understand it, is, Shall the people of this District manage their own affairs—whether they shall vote their own taxes and select their own officers who are to execute the laws they make? and for one, I say there is no human being with ingenuity enough to frame an argument against this question. It is all very well to say that Congress will do this, but Congress has a great deal to do besides. There is enough before that

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