ABSTRACT
The enfranchisement of women, their admission in law and in fact, to equality in all rights political, civil, and social, with the male citizens of the community, is not a new question to thinkers, nor to anyone by whom the principles of free and popular government are felt as well as acknowledged. Many persons think they have sufficiently justified the restrictions on women's field of action, when they have said that the pursuits from which women are excluded are unfeminine, and that the proper sphere of women is not politics or publicity, but private and domestic life. Civilization, has while altering, and to some extent ameliorating the condition of women, produced a most serious evil by this very change. There is a prevalent belief that, though the present position of women may be a hindrance to the intellectual development of men, their moral influence is always good.
