Freedom! Equality!! Justice!!! These Three; but the Greatest of These Is Justice / A Speech on the Impending Revolution, Delivered in Music Hall, Boston, Thursday, Feb. 1, 1872, and the Academy of Music, New York, Feb. 20, 1872

Transcriber’s Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Freedom! Equality!! Justice!!!
These three; but the greatest of these is Justice.
VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.
NEW YORK:
WOODHULL, CLAFLIN & CO., PUBLISHERS,
No. 44 Broad Street.
1872.
Standing upon the apex of the nineteenth century, we look backward through the historic era, and in the distant, dim past catch sight of the feeble outreachings of the roots of humanity, which during thousands of years have evolved into the magnificent civilization by which we are surrounded. Mighty nations have risen and fallen; empires have gathered and wasted; races and peoples have evolved and decayed; but the mystic ebb and flow of the Gigantic Spirit concealed within the universe has continued upon its course, ever increasing in strength and in variety of sequence.
It is true that the results which have flown from this progressive course have very materially changed. Early in its history every achievement was considered great or small, as its conquests by military prowess were great or small. But who in this era would think of placing a Sesostris, or a Semiramis, or even an Alexander, or Cæsar, in comparison as conquerors, with the steamship, the locomotive engine, the electric telegraph, and last and greatest, collecting the efforts of all men, and spreading them world-wide—the printing-press. Where kings and emperors once used the sword to hew their way into the centers of barbarism, the people now make use of their subtle powers of intellect to pierce the heart of ignorance. The conquerors of the present, armed with these keen weapons, are so intertwining the material interests of humanity that, where exclusion was once the rule among nations, intercommunication has made it the exception. Every year some new tie has been added to those which already bound the nations together, until even the continents clasp hands across the oceans, and salute each other in fraternal unity, and the islands stand anxiously waiting for their deliverance.