The Female Suffragists

When a jurist as eminent as Judge Henry R. Selden testifies that he told Miss Anthony before election that she had a right to vote, and this after a careful examination of the question, the whole subject assumes new importance, and Mr. Selden at once becomes the central object of adoration by all the gentle believers in woman's right to the ballot. And when the same able lawyer advocates the cause of Miss Anthony in the United States Courts, there is abundant reason why other men, both lay and legal, should put themselves in an attitude, at least of willingness to change their convictions upon this topic, which now threatens to take on very enlarged proportions. The points made in the argument by Mr. Selden are that the defendant had a legal right to vote; that even if no such right existed, if she believed she had such right and voted in good faith, that she committed no offense; and lastly, he argued that she did vote in pursuance of such belief. The point that Miss Anthony had acted illegally only because she was a woman, was well put. Had her brother, under the same circumstances done the same thing, his act would have been not only innocent but laudable. The crime was, therefore, not in the act done, but in the sex of the person who did it. Women, remarked the Judge, have the same interest in the maintenance of good government as men. No greater absurdity, to use no harsher term, can be presented to the human mind than that of rewarding men and punishing women for the same act, without giving women any voice in the question of which shall be rewarded and which punished. How grateful to Judge Selden must all the suffragists be! He has struck the strongest and most promising blow in their behalf that has yet been given. Dred Scott was the pivot on which the Constitution turned before the war. Miss Anthony seems likely to occupy a similar position now.

[From Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, July, 1873.]