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To the Honorable President and Members of the Constitutional Convention
of Utah.

Gentlemen: -

Your Memorialists respectfully represent to your Honorable Body
that the women of Davis County desire to unite with their sisters from
other parts of the Territory in asking you to provide in the Constitution
of the State of Utah for eqaul suffrage to men and women.

We believe that the present disfranchised condition of women is
a reproach to the government of this free land. It is a relic of the
dark ages when, through superstition and bigotry, women were regarded as
chattels and political nonentities. It is not in keeping with the
higher civilization of the 19th Century.

The right to live in a free government and to contribute to its
stability and prosperity should carry with it the right to participate
in the affairs of the government. Experience has shown that women can
perform these sacred duties with the same intelligence and integrity as
men. For seventeen years we exercised the rights of electors in Utah
and during that time no change was ever made that any woman had abused
the precious privileges conferred upon her. This is the first opportunity
that Utah has had to restore the franchise. Surely you will not
hesitate to vindicate us now, and prove to the world that Utah men are
neither ashamed nor afraid of Utah women.

When our patriot fathers enunciated the grandest declaration of
human rights that the world has even seen, they placed the fudamental
principles of universal equality, and the right of representation in
governmental affairs, at the very foundation of our temple of Liberty.
The declaration that governments derive their just powers from the con-
sent of the governed, and that taxtation without representation is tyran-
ny, will go thundering down the ages as immortal axioms. It is for you
to give them full force in the organic law of our new State. That you
will do so, and thereby vindicate the cause of woman, is the fervent
hope and earnest prayer of your Memorialists and their consituents.