Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete by Marietta Holley (the reader ebook .txt) 📖

objection comes not so much from the Constitution of the Church as from the “constitution of the men,” who challenge these women.

Now, sir, another parallel. You take the United States Government just after the war, when the colored people of the South, the freedmen of our land, unable to take care of themselves, their friends, that had fought the battles of the war, in Congress determined that they should be protected, if no longer by bayonets and cannon, that they should be protected by placing the ballot in their hands, and the ballot was placed in the hands of the freedman of the South by the action of the National Congress, Congress submitting a constitutional amendment to the legislatures of the States; and when enough of them had voted in favor of it, and the President had signed the bill, it became an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, granting to the people of the South, who had been disfranchised, the right of suffrage.

Now, what does the right of suffrage do? It carries with it the right to hold office. Where women have the privileges of voting on the school question, they are granted the privilege of being school directors, holding the office of superintendents, and the restriction on them stops at that point under statute law. If you go a little further you will find that when the freedmen were enfranchised, and they sent men of their own color to the House of Representatives, did that body say “stop!” “we protest, you cannot come in because of illegality”? No. They were admitted on the face of their credentials because they had first been granted the right of suffrage. When men of their color went to the United States Senate and submitted their credentials, they were not protested against, but they were admitted as members of the United States Senate on the face of their credentials. And why? Because the right of suffrage granted to the freedmen of the South under a constitutional amendment of the nation, carried with it the right of the men whom we fought to free, and did free, in an awful war, to hold office in the nation. Now, sir, you must interpret the law somewhat by the spirit of the times in which you live. That is a mistaken notion to say that you must always go to the men that made the law to get the interpretation of it. If that were true, would it not always be wise for legislators to give their affidavits and place on file their interpretation of the law they had confirmed, and placed on the statute books? There are legal gentlemen in this body who will tell you that it goes for very little when you come to interpret law. And yet you will find this to be true, that a law must be interpreted somewhat by the spirit of the time in which you live. Why, twenty years ago, when the General Conference handed the question of lay delegation down to the Annual Conferences, and the members of our Church, there was not a woman practising law in the Supreme Court of the United States. Go back through the history of jurisprudence of this country and in England, and you will find that it had never been known that a woman practised law in the Supreme Court of this country or England. But to-day women have been admitted to practise law in the Supreme Court of the United States. No amendment to the Constitution of the United States had to be adopted in order to secure this privilege for them. But this is true, that the judges of the Supreme Court, by a more liberal interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, said, “Women may be officers of the Supreme Court, and may practise law there.” The same kind of a spirit, in interpreting the Discipline and the Restrictive Rules of the Discipline of the Church, will place these women delegates in this body where they have been sent. The same thing is true of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania and in the Courts of Philadelphia. There is no way out, as my judgment sees, and as my conscience tells me, since before the government of God man and woman are equally responsible. There is no way out of this dilemma for this General Conference, but to say that these women delegates shall sit in this body, where they have been sent, and where their names have been called.

Why, take the missionary operations. The Woman's Missionary Society is to-day raising more money and doing more missionary work than the Parent Missionary Society did fifty years ago. And yet men legislate concerning the missionary operations of women, and give them no voice directly in this body.

We bring up the temperance question here against license and in favor of Prohibition, and we pass our resolutions after we have given our discussions, and yet the Methodist Church has the honor of having in the ranks of her membership—(Time called.)

ADDRESS OF REV. DR. JAMES M. BUCKLEY.

Mr. President, while the last speaker was on the floor, a modification of a passage of Scripture occurred to me, “The enemy cometh in like a flood, but I will lift up a standard against him.” It is somewhat peculiar that he should begin by making a statement about one of the most honored names in American Methodism, a statement that has been published in the papers, and that nine tenths of this body knew as well as he did. It must have been intended as a part of his argument, and I regard it as of as much force as anything he said after it. But in point of fact the question does not turn upon the person, but upon the principle. I have received an anonymous letter containing the following among other things, “Beware how you attack the holy cause of woman. Do you not know that obstacles to progress are rem-o-o-v-e-d out of the way?” The signature of that letter is ingenious. I cannot tell whether it was a man or a woman, for it reads as follows, “A Lover of your Soul and of Woman.” Now, Mr. President, the only candlestick that ought to be removed out of its place is the candlestick that contains a candle that does not burn the pure oil of truth. And I believe, sir, that with the best of intentions the three speakers who have appeared have given us three chapters in different styles of a work of fiction, and it is my duty to undertake to show where they have slipped. The Apocrypha says, “An eloquent man is known far and near; but a man of understanding discerneth where he slippeth.” I have no claim to eloquence; never pretended to have any; but I have a claim to some knowledge of Methodist history, to some ability to state my sentiments, and to be without any fear of the results, either present or prospective.

Now, Mr. President, you notice from my friends that if they cannot command the judgment of the Conference they propose to say the women are in, and defy us to put them out. I am sorry that my friend did not take in the full significance of that. And they say that everybody who has a certificate in form is in until he is put out. Why, they do not discriminate between ordinary contested cases and a case where the constitutional point is involved. If these women have a right here, they have had it from the beginning by the Constitution. It is not a contested case as to whether John Smith was voted for by the people who ought to vote for him, or in the right place. Now, they talk of bringing up documents here. I wrote to the Hon. George F. Edmunds, the most distinguished member of the United States Senate, and simply put this question, If a certificate of election in the Senate shows anything that would prove the person unworthy of a seat, would he be seated pending an investigation or not? He did not know what it referred to,