History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I

by Unknown

AN ACT CONCERNING THE RIGHTS AND LIABILITIES OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.

The Act of 1860[161] was offered by Andrew J. Colvin in the Senate as a substitute for a bill from the Assembly, which was simply an amendment of the law of 1848. Senators Hammond, Ramsey, and Colvin constituted the Judiciary Committee, to whom the bill was referred. Mr. Colvin objected to it for want of breadth in giving to married women the rights to which he thought them entitled, and urged that a much more liberal measure was demanded by the spirit of the times. In one of Miss Anthony's interviews with Mr. Colvin, she handed him a very radical bill just introduced in the Massachusetts Legislature, which after due examination and the addition of two or three more liberal clauses, was accepted by the Committee, reported to the Senate by Mr. Colvin, and adopted by that body February 28, 1860[162]. The bill was concurred in by the Assembly, and signed by the Governor, Edwin D. Morgan. It is quite remarkable that the bill in its transit did not receive a single alteration, modification, or amendment from the time it left Mr. Colvin's hands until it took its place on the statute-book. The women of the State who labored so persistently for this measure, felt that the victory at last was due in no small degree to the deep interest and patient skill of Andrew J. Colvin. Hon. Anson Bingham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who did good service in the Assembly at this time, should be gratefully remembered by the women of New York. Mr. Bingham acted in concert with Mr. Colvin, both earnestly putting their shoulders to the wheel, one in the Assembly and one in the Senate, and with the women pulling all the wires they could outside, together they pushed the grand measure through.

Judge Bingham served our cause also by articles on all phases of the question over the signature of "Senex," published in many journals throughout the State. And this, too, at an early day, when every word in favor of woman's rights was of immense value in breaking down the prejudice of the ages.

In addition to this, another act of great benefit to a large number of housekeepers, called the "Boarding House Law," was secured by the same members. Miss Emily Howland, Mrs. Margaret Murray, Mrs. Manning, and Mrs. Griffith Satterlee spent some weeks in Albany using their influence in favor of this measure.

In February, 1860, Emily Howland arranged a course of lectures on Woman's Rights, to be given in Cooper Institute, New York. Henry Ward Beecher delivered his first lecture on the question in this course, receiving his fee of $100 in advance, as it was said he considered no engagement of that sort imperative without previous payment. Mr. Beecher's speech was published in full in The New York Independent, of which he was then editor-in-chief. The State Committee purchased a large number, which Lydia Mott, of Albany, laid on the desk of every member of both Houses. At the time we felt the speech worth to our cause all it cost.

TENTH NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK, MAY 10-11, 1860.

A large audience assembled in Cooper Institute at 10½ o'clock, Thursday morning. Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to order, and submitted a list of officers,[163] nominated at a preliminary meeting, which was adopted without dissent.

The President, Martha C. Wright, of Auburn, on taking the Chair, addressed the Convention as follows:

I have only to thank you for the honor you have conferred by electing me to preside over the deliberations of this Convention. I shall leave it to others to speak of the purposes of this great movement and of the successes which have already been achieved.

There are those in our movement who ask, "What is the use of these Conventions? What is the use of this constant iteration of the same things?" When we see what has been already achieved, we learn the use of this "foolishness of preaching:" and after all that we demand has been granted, as it will be soon, The New York Observer will piously fold its hands and roll up its eyes, and say, "This beneficent movement we have always advocated," and the pulpits will say "Amen!" (Laughter and applause). Then will come forward women who have gained courage from the efforts and sacrifices of others, and the great world will say, "Here come the women who are going to do something, and not talk."

There are those, too, who find fault with the freedom of our platform, who stand aloof and criticise, fearful of being involved in something that they can not fully endorse. Forgetting that, as Macaulay says, "Liberty alone can cure the evils of liberty," they fear to trust on the platform all who have a word to say. But we have invited all to come forward and speak, and not to stand aside and afterward criticise what has been said. We trust that those present who have an opinion, who have a word to say, whether they have ever spoken before or not, will speak now. If they disapprove of our resolutions, if they disapprove of anything that is said on this platform, let them oppose if they can not unite with us. (Applause.)

Susan B. Anthony was then introduced, and read the following report:

For our encouragement in laboring for the elevation of woman, it is well ever and anon to review the advancing steps. Each year we hail with pleasure new accessions to our faith. Strong words of cheer have come to us on every breeze. Brave men and true, from the higher walks of literature and art, from the bar, the bench, the pulpit, and legislative halls, are ready now to help woman wherever she claims to stand. The Press, too, has changed its tone. Instead of ridicule, we now have grave debate. And still more substantial praises of gold and silver have come to us. A gift of $5,000 from unknown hands; a rich legacy from the coffers of a Boston merchant prince—the late Charles F. Hovey; and, but a few days ago, $400,000 from Mr. Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, to found a college for girls, equal in all respects to Yale and Harvard.

We had in New York a legislative act passed at the last session, securing to married women their rights to their earnings and their children. Other States have taken onward steps. And, from what is being done on all sides, we have reason to believe that, as the Northern States shall one by one remodel their Constitutions, the right of suffrage will be granted to women. Six years hence New York proposes to revise her Constitution. These should be years of effort with all those who believe that it is the right and the duty of every citizen of a State to have a voice in the laws that govern them.

Woman is being so educated that she will feel herself capable of assuming grave responsibilities as lawgiver and administrator. She is crowding into higher avocations and new branches of industry. She already occupies the highest places in literature and art. The more liberal lyceums are open to her, and she is herself the subject of the most popular lectures now before the public. The young women of our academies and high schools are asserting their right to the discipline of declamation and discussion, and the departments of science and mathematics. Pewholders, of the most orthodox sects, are taking their right to a voice in the government of the church, and in the face of priests, crying "let your women keep silence in the churches," yes, at the very horns of the altar, calmly, deliberately, and persistently casting their votes in the choice of church officers and pastors.[164] Mass-meetings to sympathize with the "strikers" of Massachusetts are being called in this metropolis by women. Women are ordained ministers, and licensed physicians. Elizabeth Blackwell has founded a hospital in this city, where she proposes a thorough medical education, both theoretical and practical, for young women. And this Institute in which we are now assembled, with its school of design, its library and reading-room, where the arts and sciences are freely taught to women, and this hall, so cheerfully granted to our Convention, shows the magnanimity of its founder, Peter Cooper. All these are the results of our twenty years of agitation. And it matters not to us, though the men and the women who echo back our thought do fail to recognize the source of power, and while they rejoice in each onward step achieved in the face of ridicule and persecution, ostracise those who have done the work. Who of our literary women has yet ventured one word of praise or recognition of the heroic enunciators of the great idea of woman's equality—of Mary Woolstonecraft, Frances Wright, Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton? It matters not to those who live for the race, and not for self alone, who has the praise, so that justice be done to woman in Church, in State, and at the fireside—an equal everywhere with man—they will not complain, though even The New York Observer itself does claim to have done for them the work.

During the past six years this State has been thoroughly canvassed, and every county that has been visited by our lecturers and tracts has rolled up petitions by the hundreds and thousands asking for woman's right to vote and hold office—her right to her person, her wages, her children, and her home. Again and again have we held Conventions at the capital, and addressed our Legislature, demanding the exercise of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. During the past year, we have had six women[165] lecturing in New York for several months each. Conventions have been held in forty counties, one or more lectures delivered in one hundred and fifty towns and villages, our petitions circulated, and our tracts and documents sold and gratuitously distributed throughout the entire length and breadth of the State.

A State Convention was held at Albany early in February. Large numbers of the members of the Legislature listened respectfully and attentively to the discussions of its several sessions, and expressed themselves converts to the claims for woman. The bills for woman's right to her property, her earnings, and the guardianship of her children passed both branches of the Legislature with scarce a dissenting voice, and received the prompt signature of the Governor.

Our Legislature passed yet another bill that brings great relief to a large class of women. It was called the Boarding-House Bill. It provides that the keepers of private boarding-houses shall have the right of lien on the property of boarders, precisely the same as do hotel-keepers. We closed our work by a joint hearing before the Committees of the Judiciary at the Capitol on the 19th of March. Elizabeth Cady Stanton addressed them. The Assembly Chamber was densely packed, and she was listened to with marked attention and respect. The Judiciary Committees of neither House reported on our petition for the right of suffrage, though the Chairman, with a large minority of the House Committee and a majority of the Senate Committee, favored the claim. The Hon. A. J. Colvin, of the Senate Committee, in a letter to me, says:

"The subject was presented at so late a day as to preclude action. While a majority of the Senate Committee I think were favorable, a majority of the House Committee, so far as I could learn, were opposed. So many progressive measures had passed both Houses that I felt apprehensive we might perhaps be running too great a risk by urging this question of justice and reform at this session. I did not therefore press it. Should I remain in the Senate, I may take occasion at an early day in the next session to bring up the subject and present my views at length. The more reflection I give, the more my mind becomes convinced that in a Republican Government, we have no right to deny to woman the privileges she claims. Besides, the moral element which those privileges would bring into existence would, in my judgment, have a powerful influence in perpetuating our form of government. It may be deemed best, at the next session, to urge an early Constitutional Convention. In case one should be called, your friends should be prepared to meet the emergency. Is the public mind sufficiently enlightened to accept a constitution recognizing the right of women to vote and hold office? You should consider this."

The entire expense of the New York State work during the past year is nearly four thousand dollars. The present year we propose to expend our funds and efforts mostly in Ohio, to obtain, if possible, for the women of that State, the liberal laws we have secured for ourselves. Ohio, too, is soon to revise her Constitution, and we trust she will not be far behind New York in recognizing the full equality of woman. We who have grasped the idea of woman's destiny, her power and influence, the trinity of her existence as woman, wife, and mother, can most earnestly work for her elevation to that high position that it is the will of God she should ever fill. Though we have not yet realized the fullness of our hopes, let us rest in the belief that in all these years of struggle, no earnest thought, or word, or prayer has been breathed in vain. The influence has gone forth, the great ocean has been moved, and those who watch, e'en now may see the mighty waves of truth slowly swelling on the shores of time.

"One accent of the Holy Ghost,
A heedless word hath never lost."

Ernestine L. Rose being introduced, said: Frances Wright was the first woman in this country who spoke on the equality of the sexes. She had indeed a hard task before her. The elements were entirely unprepared. She had to break up the time-hardened soil of conservatism, and her reward was sure—the same reward that is always bestowed upon those who are in the vanguard of any great movement. She was subjected to public odium, slander, and persecution. But these were not the only things that she received. Oh, she had her reward!—that reward of which no enemies could deprive her, which no slanders could make less precious—the eternal reward of knowing that she had done her duty; the reward springing from the consciousness of right, of endeavoring to benefit unborn generations. How delightful to see the molding of the minds around you, the infusing of your thoughts and aspirations into others, until one by one they stand by your side, without knowing how they came there! That reward she had. It has been her glory, it is the glory of her memory; and the time will come when society will have outgrown its old prejudices, and stepped with one foot, at least, upon the elevated platform on which she took her position. But owing to the fact that the elements were unprepared, she naturally could not succeed to any great extent.

After her, in 1837, the subject of woman's rights was again taken hold of—aye, taken hold of by woman; and the soil having been already somewhat prepared, she began to sow the seeds for the future growth, the fruits of which we now begin to enjoy. Petitions were circulated and sent to our Legislature, and who can tell the hardships that then met those who undertook that great work! I went from house to house with a petition for signatures simply asking our Legislature to allow married women to hold real estate in their own name. What did I meet with? Why, the very name exposed one to ridicule, if not to worse treatment. The women said: "We have rights enough; we want no more"; and the men, as a matter of course, echoed it, and said: "You have rights' enough; nay, you have too many already." (Laughter). But by perseverance in sending petitions to the Legislature, and, at the same time, enlightening the public mind on the subject, we at last accomplished our purpose. We had to adopt the method which physicians sometimes use, when they are called to a patient who is so hopelessly sick that he is unconscious of his pain and suffering. We had to describe to women their own position, to explain to them the burdens that rested so heavily upon them, and through these means, as a wholesome irritant, we roused public opinion on the subject, and through public opinion, we acted upon the Legislature, and in 1848-49, they gave us the great boon for which we asked, by enacting that a woman who possessed property previous to marriage, or obtained it after marriage, should be allowed to hold it in her own name. Thus far, thus good; but it was only a beginning, and we went on. In 1848 we had the first Woman's Rights Convention, and then some of our papers thought it only a very small affair, called together by a few "strong-minded women," and would pass away like a nine-days' wonder. They little knew woman! They little knew that if woman takes anything earnestly in her hands, she will not lay it aside unaccomplished. (Applause). We have continued our Conventions ever since. A few years ago, when we sent a petition to our Legislature, we obtained, with but very little effort, upward of thirteen thousand signatures. What a contrast between this number and the five signatures attached to the first petition, in 1837! Since then, we might have had hundreds of thousands of signatures, but it is no longer necessary. Public opinion is too well known to require a long array of names.

We have been often asked. "What is the use of Conventions? Why talk? Why not go to work?" Just as if the thought did not precede the act! Those who act without previously thinking, are not good for much. Thought is first required, then the expression of it, and that leads to action; and action based upon thought never needs to be reversed; it is lasting and profitable, and produces the desired effect. I know that there are many who take advantage of this movement, and then say: "You are doing nothing; only talking." Yes, doing nothing! We have only broken up the ground and sowed the seed; they are reaping the benefit, and yet they tell us we have done nothing! Mrs. Swisshelm, who has proclaimed herself to be "no woman's rights, woman," has accepted a position as inspector of logs and lumber. (Laughter). Well, I have no objection to her having that avocation, if she have a taste and capacity for it—far from it. But she has accepted still more, and I doubt not with a great deal more zest and satisfaction—the five hundred dollars salary; and I hope she will enjoy it. Then, having accepted both the office and the salary, she folds her arms, and says: "I am none of your strong-minded women; I don't go for woman's rights." Well, she is still welcome to it. I have not the slightest objection that those who proclaim themselves not strong-minded, should still reap the benefit of a strong mind (applause and laughter); it is for them we work. So there are some ladies who think a great deal can be done in the Legislature without petitions, without conventions, without lectures, without public claim, in fact, without anything, but a little lobbying. Well, if they have a, taste for it, they are welcome to engage in it; I have not the slightest objection. Yes, I have. I, as a woman, being conscious of the evil that is done by these lobby loafers in our Legislature and in the halls of Congress, object to it. (Loud cheers). I will wait five years longer to have a right given to me legitimately, from a sense of justice, rather than buy it in an underhand way by lobbying. Whatever my sentiments may be, good, bad, or indifferent, I express them, and they are known. Nevertheless, if any desire it, let them do that work. But what has induced them, what has enabled them, to do that work? The Woman's Rights movement, although they are afraid or ashamed even of the name "woman's rights."

You have been told, and much more might be said on the subject, that already the Woman's Rights platform has upon it lawyers, ministers, and statesmen—men who are among the highest in the nation. I need not mention Wm. Lloyd Garrison, or Wendell Phillips; but there are others, those even who are afraid of the name of reformer, who have stood upon our platform. Brady! Who would ever have expected it? Chapin! Beecher! Think of it for a moment! A minister advocating the rights of woman, even her right at the ballot-box! What has done it? Our agitation has purified the atmosphere, and enabled them to see the injustice that is done to woman.

Mrs. Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio, was the next speaker. She said: I wish to preface my remarks with this resolution:

Resolved, That woman's sphere can not be bounded. Its prescribed orbit is the largest place that in her highest development she can fill. The laws of mind are as immutable as are those of the planetary world, and the true woman most ever revolve around the great moral sun of light and truth.

As a general proposition, we say that capacity determines the true sphere of action, and indicates the kind of labor to be performed. I often hear women discussing this subject, much more in earnest than in jest, though they profess to be simply amusing themselves. One says: "If I were a man, I should be a mechanic"; another says: "I should be a merchant." One says: "I am sure I should be rich"; another, in the excess of her humor, thinks she should be distinguished. Why do women talk thus? Because one feels that she has mechanical genius; the power to construct, to perfect. Another understands the secrets of trade, and would like to incur the heavy responsibilities it involves. A third is conscious that she was born a financier; while a fourth has an intuitive perception of the elements of success.

Many women are beginning to judge for themselves the proper sphere of action, and are not only jesting about what they should do under other circumstances, but are already entering upon such paths as their taste and capacity indicate. Some will doubtless make mistakes, which experience will rectify, and others will perhaps persist in striving to do that which it will be very evident they have no ability to perform. This is the case with men who have had freedom in every sphere. Look at the American pulpit, for instance. Go through the country, and listen to those who claim to be the messengers of God, and if you do not say that many are destitute of capacity to fill the sphere they have chosen, we shall regard it as an act of obedience on your part to the command which says: "Judge not, lest ye be judged." (Laughter). Let adaptation be the rule for pulpit occupancy, and while it would eject some who are now no honor to the station, and no benefit to the people, it would open the place to many an Anna and Miriam and Deborah to fulfill the mission which God has clearly indicated by the talents He has bestowed.

The world says now, man is God's minister, and woman is not fit to call sinners to repentance; but let it say: "Those who have faith in the principles of eternal right, and have power to give it utterance; those who have the clearest perceptions of moral truth; those who understand the wants of the people, are the proper persons, whether they be men or women, to dispense to the needy multitude the bread of life." This would elevate the standard of pulpit qualifications, and bring into the field a far greater amount of talent to choose from, and thus would the intellectual and spiritual needs of the people be more fully answered. What is true of this profession will apply with equal force to others. Should I be told that the American bar needs no more talent, I would reply that it needs decency, and a well-founded self-respect. When you enter a court-room, and listen to a cross-examination of a delicate nature, one where woman is concerned, and she would rather die a hundred deaths, if she could, than to have the case dragged before the public, you will see it treated in the coarsest way, as if her holiest affections and her most sacred functions were fitting themes for brutish men to jeer at. And even in the most ordinary cases, gentlemen who would spurn the imputation of incivility in social life, will so browbeat and badger a witness, that the most disgusting bear-baiting would become by comparison a refined amusement. If the young aspirants for legal honors should meet among the advocates and judges sensible, dignified, and highly cultivated women, they would, if I am not much mistaken, get the benefit of certain lessons, upon manners and morals, that it is essential for all young men to learn. (Applause). It appears to me that by association of men and women in this profession, the bar might be purged of this indecorum, and possess the humanity, the wisdom, and the dignity that should ever characterize a Court of Justice.

You need not tell me that the profession would be overstocked, if women should enter it, for, like men, they must stand on their merits. Let there be no proscription on account of sex. Let talent be brought fairly into competition, and although many a young man, as well as young woman, would sit down forever briefless, having neither the capacity nor the acquirements to bring or retain clients, yet their loss would be for the public good, and for the honor and respectability of the profession. Let the talents of women be fully developed, and no man will lose any place that he is qualified to fill in consequence, and no woman will obtain that place who has not peculiar fitness. All these matters will find their own level, ultimately. I can point you to localities now where the people prefer women for teachers. A Union School in Northern Ohio, which is made up of ten departments, employs women for teachers, and a woman as superintendent of the whole. The people reason this way: We prefer women, because they bring us the best talent. Not that they have better talents than men, but with the latter, teaching is generally a stepping-stone to a profession. Woman accepts it as her highest post, and brings her best energies. With man, it is often a subordinate interest, and his best talents will be exercised upon what he regards as something higher and better. As in this, so in other things. The time will come when talent or capacity will govern the choice and not sex. It is so now in Art, to a great extent. I think there is not much known of sex there. The world does not care who wrote "Aurora Leigh." It does not recognize it as the production of a woman, but as the work of genius. Let the artists say what they please, the world does not care who chisels Zenobia, so that Zenobia be well chiseled. It does not care whether Landseer or Rosa Bonheur paints animals, so that animals are well painted. No one says this or that is well done for a woman, but he says, this is the work of an artist, that has no merit; not because a woman did it, not because a man did it, but because the author was destitute of capacity to embody the idea.

Again, read the little village newspapers, got out by little editors, and you will find, in many cases, an utter want of ability to fill the place that has been chosen. I hope young women will not make such mistakes as these young men have done, who might have been supposed to know something, if they had only kept still. (Laughter). If these papers, to which I have referred, were all in the hands of women, and so destitute of editorial pith and point as they now are, I should counsel against any further efforts for the elevation of the sex, believing the case to be hopeless. (Applause). If I mistake not, women have a peculiar fitness for trade. Mrs. Dall says, in her second lecture, that on the Island of Nantucket, women have engaged in commerce very successfully. They did it in the war, and afterward, when destitution drove the men to the whale fisheries, and again when they went to California. They have had much experience; and Eliza Barney tells of seventy women who engaged in trade, and retired with a competence, and besides brought up and educated large families of children. She says, also, that failures were very uncommon when women managed the business, and some of the largest and safest fortunes in Boston were founded by women. Whenever, therefore, one shows any ability for trade, that is her license for engaging in it—a license granted under the higher law, and therefore valid. I went into a bonnet store the other day, and saw a man-milliner holding up a bonnet on his soft white hand to a lady customer, and expatiating upon the beauties of the article with an earnestness, if not the eloquence, of an orator. She tried it on, and he went into ecstacies. (Laughter). It was so becoming! It was so charming! He complimented her, and he complimented the bonnet, and had she not been a strong-minded woman, I do not know how much of the flattery she would have taken for truth. I thought that man was out of his sphere: and not only that, but he had crowded some woman out of her appropriate place, out of the realm of taste and fashion. (Applause). When I passed out on the street, the harsh, discordant tone of a fish-woman fell upon my ear. I saw that she bore a heavy tub upon her head, evidently seeking by this branch of merchandise to procure a living for herself and family. So few were the avenues open to her, as she thought, and so much had men monopolized the places she could fill, that she was compelled to carry fish on her head, until she could raise money enough to procure a better conveyance.

Again, I see young men selling artificial flowers, and laces and embroidery, crinolines and balmorals, and I think to myself they had better be out digging coal or making brick. When I go back home to the West, I could take a car-load with me, and set them to work, and I would greatly benefit their condition, while the places they vacate here might be filled by the girls who are now starving in your garrets. (Applause). At a shoe-store, instead of finding a sprightly miss, to select and fit the ladies gaiters, you often see a strong, healthy man, kneeling before the customer with a gallantry that would be admirable in a drawing-room, and worth infinitely more than the price of the article he is selling; and he fusses over the gaiters and over the lady's foot, until you wonder if she is not tempted to propel him into a more appropriate sphere. (Laughter). Whatever possessed men to imagine that God designed them to fit ladies' gaiters, is more than I can imagine. (Applause). I am unable to realize how they obtained the revelation that for a woman to thus officiate would take her out of her appropriate sphere. Shall I be held to my principles here, and told that these men succeed in business, and success being the test of sphere, therefore they are in their place? It remains to be proved that they have succeeded. A man may jump Jim Crow from morning till night, or make a fool of himself in any other way, and succeed admirably in pleasing auditors and gathering pennies; but when you take into consideration his high and heavenly origin, and the noble purposes for which he was made, you can hardly call it a success. Neither should I think a woman was in suitable business, even if it were ever so lucrative and well done, unless that business developed her talents; made her stronger, more self-reliant, and better fitted her for life and its duties. These stores would be a good discipline for young girls, but not for men.

This whole question lies in a small compass. Our reform would leave woman just where God placed her—a moral, accountable being, endowed with talents whose scope and character indicate the work she is to do; and who is responsible primarily to her Creator for the use she makes of those talents. He says to every man and to every woman, Go work in my vineyard! That vineyard I understand to be the world, embracing all the varied responsibilities of life. Whether man shall pursue science, literature, or art, whether he shall engage in agriculture, manufactures, or mechanics, is for him to determine, and whether woman shall engage in any of these things is for her to determine. Nothing but an internal consciousness of power to perform certain work, and that it will be for her own good, can aid her in her choice. If a woman can write vigorous verse, then let her write verse. If she can build ships, then let her be a ship-builder. I know no reason why. If she can keep house, and that takes as much brains as any other occupation, let her be a housekeeper. They tell us that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty"; eternal vigilance is the price of a well-ordered home, and every woman before me knows it. (Applause). I know that the conservative, in his fear, says, Surely you would not have woman till the soil, sail the seas, run up the rigging of a ship like a monkey (I use the language of one of your most distinguished men), go to war, engage in political brawls? No! I would not have her do anything. She must be her own judge. In relation to tilling the soil, the last census of the United Kingdom reports 128,418 women employed in agriculture. Examples are by no means rare where a woman carries on a farm which her deceased husband has left, and I have, seen much skill evinced in the management. "In Media, Pa., two girls named Miller carry on a farm of 300 acres, raising hay and grain, hiring labor, but working mostly themselves." I have been on a farm in your own State where I saw, not Tennyson's six mighty daughters of the plow, but I saw three[166] who plowed, and not only that, but they plowed well. Doubtless, some of our fastidious young ladies would be greatly shocked at such an exhibition, and I must acknowledge that it was to me a novel sight; but the more I considered it, the more I thought that I would rather see a young woman holding the plow, than to see her leading such an aimless, silly life as many a young lady leads. I would rather see a young woman holding the plow, than to see her decked out in her finery, and sitting idle in the parlor, waiting for an offer of marriage. (Applause). I hope women will not copy the vices of men. I hope they will not go to war; I wish men would not. I hope they will not be contentious politicians; I am sorry that men are. I hope they will not regard their freedom as a license to do wrong; I am ashamed to acknowledge that men do. But we need not fear. We may safely trust the judgment of those who tell us that politics and morals, and every department into which woman may enter, will be elevated and refined by her influence.

So far as navigation is concerned, I think many women would not be attracted to that life. There might be now and then a Betsy Miller, who could walk the quarter-deck in a gale, and that certainly would indicate constitutional ability to become a sailor. I do not suppose so much violence would be done to her nature by navigating the seas, as by helping a drunken husband to navigate the streets habitually. (Applause). In relation to running up the rigging like a monkey, or in regard to any other monkey performance, I do not believe that women will ever enter into competition with men in these things, because the latter have shown such remarkable aptitude for that business. (Laughter and applause). But after all that may be said on this subject, we fail to reach one class in the community who have spare time, spare energies, abundance of power for work. I mean young ladies of wealth and rank. The world shows a degree of toleration now toward any young woman who from necessity has engaged in any industrial avocation to which women have not heretofore applied themselves. But there is no such toleration for the rich. Many of these are now striving to kill time with fancy-work and fiction, with flirtation and flaunting. Some are destitute of aspiration for anything better. These could be moved only by some convulsion in the social system, like the earthquake, or like the volcano that opens the ground at our feet and shows us our danger. But there are others whose convictions lead them to desire something better; who feel that they are living to no purpose; who know that their own powers, good as any God ever created, are lying in inglorious repose. Some of the advocates of our cause have said that for these there is no profession but marriage. If they are not literary, artistic, or philanthropic, what can they do? They are held by a cable, made up of home influence, of fashion, and of perverted Scripture, which binds them down to an insipid existence. Hence, they suppress all desire for a fuller, larger life; they smile graciously upon their fetters; they profess to be the happiest of all happy women, and thus they glide along through the thoroughfares of society with a lying tongue and an aching heart.

I wish these had enough vitality of soul and enough energy of character to rise superior to the circumstances around them, and make some approach to their own ideal. I know this is asking them to martyrize themselves. But could they see the beauty and the glory that will invest the future woman, when she shall have her proper place among the children of the Father; when she shall infuse her love, her moral perceptions, her sense of justice, into the ethics and governments of the earth; when she shall be united to man in a Divine harmony, and her children shall go forth to bless all coming generations, they would regard martyrdom but dust in the balance compared with such blessing. And when the world shall see the moral grandeur, the sublime position of a race redeemed by the sanctifying influences of this Divine harmony, it will weave for them a brighter chaplet than it has ever woven for any of its martyrs who have suffered at the stake. (Loud applause).

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Rev. Beriah Green, of Whitesboro', N. Y., was next introduced, and said:

It is not, I suppose, at all the design of this platform in any way to abolish what the grammarians call "the distinction of sex"; and when we speak of "woman's rights," we admit, in the very language which is thus employed, that she is a "woman"—that that is appropriately her character—that under this name she is fitly described. Now, a comprehensive description of all the rights which any member of the human family, whoever and whatever and wherever he may be, is entitled to challenge and maintain, we have in the brief and simple expression, the right to be himself; the right to be true to the nature which he has inherited; the right to the free and full development of the powers with which he is endowed; the right to lay out those resources of which he is constructed happily, effectively, properly; the right to rise to the highest position in excellence and in blessedness to which his capacities and powers may elevate him. This is a comprehensive description of man's rights, a comprehensive description of woman's rights, and a comprehensive description of human rights, under every form and phase of application of which human rights may be supposed capable.

Now, I regard it as a repulsive feature of the age, that one sex should feel itself constrained to come forward and defend itself from the other sex; to demand a redress of the wrongs to which it may be exposed, and a vindication of the rights to which it may be entitled; for, look you! most obviously and clearly, the relation between the sexes is naturally most intimate. The one lives in and through the other. They do not make two distinct classes, most obviously and certainly. They do not in nature; they do not according to the Divine arrangement; and it always seems to me to be most absurd, and in the highest degree ungrateful, to present the subject with which we are now occupied, under any such aspect. Mankind are divided, doubtless—divided now by accident, and now by arrangement—into different classes; but to make the women one class, and the men another class, seems to me to be essentially and flagrantly absurd. (Applause). Manifestly, the grand right of man (employing the term man here not generally, but specifically), in his relations to woman, as well as in all his other relations, is to be grandly, vigorously beautiful; in every way a man; in all the relations of life to be true to whatever may be characteristic of his nature, and to whatever may be distinctive in his sex. And what may be affirmed of him in this respect may be affirmed of his mother, of his wife, of his sister.

It is a general law of our humanity, an all-comprehensive and all controlling principle, that we belong, as human beings, to each other. Every man belongs to the whole human family, and the whole human family belongs to every one of its members. We are mutually, as a matter of course, under the controlling influence of this great law; we are mutually to contribute, as effectively and wisely as we may, to each other's improvement and welfare. This is the great general law which lies at the very basis of our being; this is the law which asserts its majesty in the depths of our consciousness. This law has manifestly a specific and beneficent application to the relation which binds man to woman, and unites woman to man. In a natural state of things, where the ordinances of our true Father were regarded, where the principles of our existence were reverently heeded, as a matter of course, individually and generally, man would devote himself, as man, generously, magnanimously, his entire self, whatever belongs to his manhood, in every department of his being—he would devote himself, as man, to woman; and woman, on the other hand, would just as characteristically, just as nobly, just as cheerfully, just as gratefully, just as effectively, devote herself to the improvement and welfare of man; and according to the nature of the relation which unites them, the one would supply whatever might seem to be demanded in the construction of the other. A man is never completely himself until he is united to woman, and a woman is never completely herself until she is united to man; and thus they become a beautiful unit, playing continually into each other's hands, their hearts beating in delightful harmony with each other. This is the great fundamental law of our social existence. The very germ of the social is to be found in the sexual relations which bind men and women together, and society, in all its forms and phases, is nothing under heaven but the development, the fit, symmetrical, and full development of the germ to which I have thus referred.

As has already been intimated in the beautiful thoughts which have been expressed by those who have preceded me, the great law, which was, perhaps, as intelligibly and impressively presented by Napoleon as by any other man, giving liberty to every man to use the tools who is qualified to use them—"The tools to him who can use them!"—or, in better language still, as it fell from the lips of the Great Teacher, "Every man according to his ability"—this great law applies with equal force to woman as to man. There have been women greatly distinguished for physical power. You remember the old story of Kate Guardinier. A distinguished wrestler, who came to lay hold of her brother, her muscular and gigantic brother, and measure strength with him, found that he was absent. "Well," says Kate, "I will wrestle with you, and if I throw you, you need not wait the return of my brother." And so she did, and he went away, fully satisfied that there was no occasion for him, to wait for any more vigorous arm than Kate Guardinier wielded. Now, wherever there is a strong arm, adapt its task to its powers—that is the will of High Heaven. Wherever there are well-trained powers, let these be recognized powers, and of course the general results can not be otherwise than happy.

In regard to the great question who shall take the lead in the family or the community, let me say, that I do not care through what medium wisdom may reach me, through what medium I may secure the benefit of healthful guidance. What I want is wisdom. Wisdom, goodness, and power are the soul of all government. Wherever these are combined, there you have the results of wisdom, goodness, and power. Now, then, if the mother in a household, or even if a daughter in a household, is more distinguished for these high qualities, for these grand attainments, than any other member of that family, why, it is nothing but rebellion against God, it is nothing but gibbering madness, that would make any member of that family hesitate to avail himself of the guidance thus offered, of the light of the wisdom which may thus be poured around him. In God's name, give me wisdom, give me genuine power, give me magnanimity!—as to the incidents of the matter, I do not insist upon them. Whether it be through my father or my mother that true guidance is afforded, whether it be by my wife or my daughter that good counsel is offered, very clearly, to reject these is to spurn the kindness of benignant Heaven.

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Wendell Phillips said:—We are here to enforce, on the consideration of the civil state, those elements of power which have already made the social state. You do not find it necessary to-day to say to a husband, "Your wife has a right to read"; or necessary to say to Dickens, "You have as many women over your pages as men." You do not find it necessary to say to the male members of a church that the women members have a right to change their creed. All that is settled; nobody contests it. If a man stood up here and said, "I am a Calvinist, and therefore my wife is bound to be one," you would send him to a lunatic asylum. You would say, "Poor man! don't judge him by what he says; he don't mean it." But law is halting back just where that old civilization was; we want to change it.

We are not doing anything new. There is no fanaticism about it. We are merely extending the area of liberty—nothing else. We have made great progress. The law passed at the last session of the New York Legislature grants, in fact, the whole question. The moment you grant us anything, we have gained the whole. You can not stop with an inconsistent statute-book. A man is uneasy who is inconsistent. As Thomas Fuller says, "You can not make one side of the face laugh, and the other cry!" You can not have one-half your statute-book Jewish, and the other Christian; one-half of the statute-book Oriental, the other Saxon. You have granted that woman may be hung, therefore you must grant that woman may vote. You have granted that she may be taxed, therefore, on republican principles, you must grant that she ought to have a voice in fixing the laws of taxation—and this is, in fact, all that we claim—the whole of it.

Now, I want to consider some of the objections that are made to this claim. Men say, "Woman is not fit to vote; she does not know enough; she has not sense enough to vote." I take this idea of the ballot as the Gibraltar of our claim, for this reason, because I am speaking in a democracy; I am speaking under republican institutions. The rule of despotism is that one class is made to protect the other; that the rich, the noble, the educated are a sort of probate court, to take care of the poor, the ignorant, and the common classes. Our fathers got rid of all that. They knocked it on the head by the simple principle, that no class is safe, unless government is so arranged that each class has in its own hands the means of protecting itself. That is the idea of republics. The Briton says to the poor man, "Be content; I am worth five millions, and I will protect you." And America says, "Thank you, sir; I had rather take care of myself!"—and that is the essence of democracy. (Applause). It is the corner-stone of progress, also; because, the moment you have admitted that poor ignorant heart as an element of the government, able to mold your institutions, those five millions of dollars, feeling that their cradle is not safe and their life is in peril, unless that heart is bulwarked with education and informed with morality, selfishness dictates that wealth and education should do its utmost to educate poverty and hold up weakness—and that is the philosophy of democratic institutions. (Applause). I am speaking in a republic which admits the principle that the poor are not to be protected by the rich, but to have the means of protecting themselves. So, too, the ignorant; so, too, races. The Irish are not to trust to the sense of justice in the Saxon; the German is not to trust to the native-born citizen; the Catholic is not to trust to the Protestant; but all sects, all classes, are to hold in their own hands the scepter—the American scepter—of the ballot, which protects each class. We claim it, therefore, for woman. The reply is, that woman has not got sense enough. If she has not, so much the more shame for your public-schools—educate her! For you will not say that woman naturally has not mind enough. If God did not give her mind enough, then you are brutes, for you say to her: "Madam, you have sense enough to earn your own living—don't come to us!" You make her earn her own bread, and, if she has sense enough to do that, she has enough to say whether Fernando Wood or Governor Morgan shall take one cent out of every hundred to pay for fireworks. When you hold her up in both hands, and say, "Let me work for you! Don't move one of your dainty fingers! We will pour wealth into your lap, and be ye clothed in satin and velvet, every daughter of Eve!"—then you will be consistent in saying that woman has not sense enough to vote. But if she has sense enough to work, to depend for her bread on her work, she has sense enough to vote....

But men say it would be very indelicate for woman to go to the ballot-box or sit in the Legislature. Well, what would she see there? Why, she would see men. (Laughter). She sees men now. In "Cranford Village," that sweet little sketch by Mrs. Gaskill, one of the characters says, "I know these men—my father was a man." (Laughter). I think every woman can say the same. She meets men now; she could meet nothing but men at the ballot-box, or, if she meets brutes, they ought not to be there. (Applause). Indelicate for her to go to the ballot-box!—but you may walk up and down Broadway any time from nine o'clock in the morning until nine at night, and you will find about equal numbers of men and women crowding that thoroughfare, which is never still. You may get into an omnibus—women are there, crowding us out, sometimes. (Laughter). You can not go into a theater without being crowded to death by two women to one man. If you go to the lyceum, woman is there. I have stood on this very platform, and seen as many women as men before me, and one time, at least, when they could not have met any worse men at the ballot-box than they met in this hall. (Laughter and applause). You may go to church, and you will find her facing men of all classes—ignorant and wise, saints and sinners. I do not know anywhere that woman is not. It is too late now to say that she can not go to the ballot-box. Go back to Turkey, and shut her up in a harem; go back to Greece, and shut her up in the private apartments of women; go back to the old Oriental phases of civilization, that never allowed woman's eyes to light a man's pathway, unless he owned her, and you are consistent; but you see, we have broken down the bulwark, centuries ago. You know they used to let a man be hung in public, and said that it was for the sake of the example. They got ashamed of it, and banished the gallows to the jail-yard, and allowed only twelve men to witness an execution. It is too late to say that you hang men for the example, because the example you are ashamed to have public can not be a wholesome example. So it is with this question of woman. You have granted so much, that you have left yourselves no ground to stand on. My dear, delicate friend, you are out of your sphere; you ought to be in Turkey. My dear, religiously, scrupulously fashionable, exquisitely anxious hearer, fearful lest your wife, or daughter, or sister shall be sullied by looking into your neighbors' faces at the ballot-box, you do not belong to the century that has ballot-boxes. You belong to the century of Tamerlane and Timour the Tartar; you belong to China, where the women have no feet, because it is not meant that they shall walk. You belong anywhere but in America; and if you want an answer, walk down Broadway, and meet a hundred thousand petticoats, and they are a hundred thousand answers; for if woman can walk the streets, she can go to the ballot-box, and any reason of indelicacy that forbids the one covers the other.

Men say, "Why do you come here? What good are you going to do? You do nothing but talk." Oh, yes, we have done a great deal besides talk! But suppose we had done nothing but talk? I saw a poor man the other day, and said he (speaking of a certain period in his life), "I felt very friendless and alone—I had only God with me"; and he seemed to think that was not much. And so thirty millions of thinking, reading people are constantly throwing it in the teeth of reformers that they rely upon talk! What is talk? Why, it is the representative of brains. And what is the characteristic glory of the nineteenth century? That it is ruled by brains, and not by muscle; that rifles are gone by, and ideas have come in; and, of course, in such an era, talk is the fountain-head of all things. But we have done a great deal. In the first place, you will meet dozens of men who say, "Oh, woman's right to property, the right of the wife to her own earnings, we grant that; we always thought that; we have had that idea for a dozen years." I met a man the other day in the cars, and we read the statute of your New York Legislature. "Why," said he, "that is nothing; I have assented to that for these fifteen years." All I could say to that was this: "This agitation has either given you the idea, or it has given you the courage to utter it, for nobody ever heard it from you until to-day." ...

What do we toil for? Why, my friends, I do not care much whether a woman actually goes to the ballot-box and votes—that is a slight matter; and I shall not wait, either, to know whether every woman in this audience wants to vote. Some of you were saying to-day, in these very seats, coming here out of mere curiosity, to see what certain fanatics could find to say, "Why, I don't want any more rights; I have got rights enough." Many a lady, whose husband is what he ought to be, whose father is what fathers ought to be, feeling no want unsupplied, is ready to say, "I have all the rights I want." So the daughter of Louis Sixteenth, in the troublous time of 1791, when somebody told her that the people were starving in the streets of Paris, exclaimed, "What fools! I would eat bread first!" Thus wealth, comfort, and ease say, "I have rights enough." Nobody doubted it, madam! But the question is not of you; the question is of some houseless wife of a drunkard; the question is of some ground-down daughter of toil, whose earnings are filched from her by the rum debts of a selfishness which the law makes to have a right over her, in the person of a husband. The question is not of you, it is of some friendless woman of twenty, standing at the door of the world, educated, capable, desirous of serving her time and her race, and saying, "Where shall I use these talents? How shall I earn bread?" And orthodox society, cabined and cribbed in St. Paul, cries out, "Go sew, jade! We have no other channel for you. Go to the needle, or wear yourself to death as a school-mistress." We come here to endeavor to convince you, and so to shape our institutions that public opinion, following in the wake, shall be willing to open channels for the agreeable and profitable occupation of women as much as for men. People blame the shirt-makers and tailors because they pay two cents where they ought to pay fifty. It is not their fault. They are nothing but the weathercocks, and society is the wind. Trade does not grow out of the Sermon on the Mount; merchants never have any hearts, they have only ledgers; two per cent. a month is their Sermon on the Mount, and a balance on the wrong side of the ledger is their demonstration. (Laughter). Nobody finds fault with them for it. Everything according to the law of its life. A man pays as much for making shirts or coats as it is necessary to pay, and he would be a fool and a bankrupt if he paid any more. He needs only a hundred workwomen; there are a thousand women standing at his door saying, "Give us work; and if it is worth ten cents to do it, we will do it for two"; and a hundred get the work, and nine hundred are turned into the street, to drag down this city into the pit that it deserves. (Loud applause).

Now, what is the remedy? To take that tailor by the throat, and gibbet him in The New York Tribune? Not at all; it does the women no good, and he does not deserve it. I will tell you what is to be done. Behind the door at which those women stand asking for work, on one side stands an orthodox disciple of St. Paul, and on the other a dainty exquisite; and the one says, it is not religious, and the other says, it is not fashionable, for woman to be anything but a drudge. Now, strangle the one in his own creed, and smother the other in his own perfumes, and give to those thousand women freedom to toil. Let public opinion only grant that, like their thousand brothers, those thousand women may go out, and wherever they find work to do, do it, without a stigma being set upon them. Let the educated girl of twenty have the same liberty to use the pen, to practice law, to write books, to attend the telegraph, to go into the artist's studio, to serve in a library, to tend in a gallery of art, to do anything that her brother can do. St. Paul is dead and rotten, and ought to be forgotten—(Applause, laughter, and a few hisses)—so far as this doctrine goes, mark you! for his is the noblest figure in all history, except that of Christ, the broadest and most masterly intellect of any age; but he was a Jew and not a Christian; he lived under Jewish civilization and not ours, and was speaking by his own light, and not by inspiration of God.

This is all we claim; and we claim the ballot for this reason; the moment you give woman power, that moment men will see to it that she has the way cleared for her. There are two sources of power: one is civil, the ballot; the other is physical, the rifle. I do not believe that the upper classes—education, wealth, aristocracy, conservatism—the men that are in—ever yielded, except to fear. I think the history of the race shows that the upper classes never granted a privilege to the lower out of love. As Jeremy Bentham says, "The upper classes never yielded a privilege without being bullied out of it." When man rises in revolution, with the sword in his right hand, trembling wealth and conservatism say, "What do you want? Take it; but grant me my life." The Duke of Tuscany, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has told us, swore to a dozen constitutions when the Tuscans stood armed in the streets of Florence, and he forgot them when the Austrians came in and took the rifles out of the Tuscans' hands. You must force the upper classes to do justice by physical or some other power. The age of physical power is gone, and we want to put ballots into the hands of women....

Political economy puts in every man's hand, by the labor of half a day, money enough to be drunk a week. There is one temptation, dragging down the possibility of self-government into the pit of imbruted humanity; and on the other side, is that hideous problem of modern civilized life—prostitution—born of orthodox scruples and aristocratic fastidiousness—born of that fastidious denial of the right of woman to choose her own work, and, like her brother, to satiate her ambition, her love of luxury, her love of material gratifications, by fair wages for fair work. As long as you deny it, as long as the pulpit covers with its fastidious orthodoxy this question from the consideration of the public, it is but a concealed brothel, although it calls itself an orthodox pulpit. (Applause and hisses). I know what I say; your hisses can not change it. Go, clean out the Gehenna of New York! (Applause). Go, sweep the Augean stable that makes New York the lazar-house of corruption! You know that on one side or the other of these temptations lies very much of the evil of modern civilized life. You know that before them, statesmanship folds its hands in despair. Here is a method by which to take care of at least one. Give men fair wages, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will disdain to steal. The way to prevent dishonesty is to let every man have a field for his work, and honest wages; the way to prevent licentiousness is to give to woman's capacity free play. Give to the higher powers activity, and they will choke down the animal. The man who loves thinking, disdains to be the victim of appetite. It is a law of our nature. Give a hundred women honest wages for capacity and toil, and ninety-nine out of the hundred will disdain to win it by vice. That is a cure for licentiousness. (Applause).

I wish to put into our civil life the element of woman's right to shape the laws, for all our social life copies largely from the statute-book. Let woman dictate at the capital, let her say to Wall Street, "My votes on finance are to make stocks rise and fall," and Wall Street will say to Columbia College, "Open your classes to woman; it needs be that she should learn." The moment you give her the ballot, you take bonds of wealth and fashion and conservatism, that they will educate this power, which is holding their interest in its right hand. I want to spike the gun of selfishness; or rather, I want to double-shot the cannon of selfishness. Let Wall Street say, "Look you! whether the New York Central stock shall have a toll placed upon it, whether my million shares shall be worth sixty cents in the market or eighty, depends upon whether certain women up there at Albany know the laws of trade and the secrets of political economy"—and Wall Street will say, "Get out of the way, Dr. Adams!—absent yourself, Dr. Spring!—we don't care for Jewish prejudices; these women must have education!" (Loud applause). Show me the necessity in civil life, and I will find you forty thousand pulpits that will say St. Paul meant just that. (Renewed applause). Now, I am orthodox; I believe in the Bible; I reverence St. Paul; I believe his was the most masterly intellect that God ever gave to the race; I believe he was the connecting link, the bridge, by which the Asiatic and European mind were joined; I believe that Plato ministers at his feet; but, after all, he was a man, and not God. (Applause). He was limited, and made mistakes. You can not anchor this western continent to the Jewish footstool of St. Paul; and, after all, that is the difficulty—religious prejudice. It is not fashion—we shall beat it; it is not the fastidiousness of the exquisite—we shall smother it; it is the religious prejudice, borrowed from a mistaken interpretation of the New Testament. That is the real Gibraltar with which we are to grapple, and my argument with that is simply this: You left it when you founded a republic; you left it when you inaugurated Western civilization; we must grow out of one root.

Let me, in closing, show you, by one single anecdote, how mean a thing a man can be. You have heard of Mrs. Norton, "the woman Byron," as critics call her—the granddaughter of Sheridan, and the one on whose shoulders his mantle has rested—a genius by right of inheritance and by God's own gift. Perhaps you may remember that when the Tories wanted to break down the reform administration of Lord Melbourne, they brought her husband to feign to believe his wife unfaithful, and to sue her before a jury. He did so, brought an action, and an English jury said she was innocent; and his own counsel has since admitted, in writing, under his own signature, that during the time he prosecuted that trial, the Honorable Mr. Norton (for so he is in the Herald's Book) confessed all the time that he did not believe a word against his wife, and knew she was innocent. She is a writer. The profits of her books, by the law of England, belong to her husband. She has not lived with him—of course not, for she is a woman!—since that trial; but the brute goes every six months to John Murray, and eats the profits of the brain of the wife whom he tried to disgrace. (Loud cries of "shame," "shame"). And the law of England says it is right; the orthodox pulpit says, "If you change it, it will be the pulling down of the stars and St. Paul." I do not believe that the Honorable Mr. Norton is half as near to the mind of St. Paul as the Honorable Mrs. Norton. I go, therefore, for woman having her right to her brain, to her hands, to her toil, to her ballot. "The tools to him that can use them"—and let God settle the rest. If He made it just that we should have democratic institutions, then He made it just that everybody who is to suffer under the law should have a voice in making it; and if it is indelicate for woman to vote, then let Him stop making women (applause and laughter), because republicanism and such women are not consistent. I say it reverently; and I only say it to show you the absurdity. Why, my dear man and woman, we are not to help God govern the world by telling lies! He can take care of it Himself. If He made it just, you may be certain that He saw to it that it should be delicate; and you need not insert your little tiny roots of fastidious delicacy into the great giant rifts of God's world—they are only in the way. (Applause).

"One accent of the Holy Ghost,
A heedless word hath never lost."

Resolved, That woman's sphere can not be bounded. Its prescribed orbit is the largest place that in her highest development she can fill. The laws of mind are as immutable as are those of the planetary world, and the true woman most ever revolve around the great moral sun of light and truth.

The first evening session was called to order at 7½ o'clock. The President in the chair. The audience was very large, the hall being uncomfortably full, and the attention unremitting and profound. The most excellent order was preserved; the meeting, in this respect, furnishing a marked and gratifying contrast with the evening sessions of the last two years at Mozart Hall.

Mrs. Rose, from the Business Committee, presented a series of resolutions[167], which were read by Miss Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the first speaker of the evening. By particular request she gave the same address recently delivered before the Legislature at Albany, and was followed by Ernestine L. Rose with one of her logical and convincing arguments.

Susan B. Anthony then read the following letters:

LETTER FROM HON. GERRIT SMITH.

Peterboro, May 3, 1860.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton:

My Very Dear Cousin:—It is proper that one of the first letters which I write in my new life, should be to the cousin whose views are most in harmony with my own. I call it my new life, because I have come up into it from the gates of death. May it prove a new life also, in being a far better and nobler one than that which I had hitherto lived!

I wake up with joy to see my old fellow-laborers still in their work of honoring God, in benefiting and blessing man. Your own zeal for truth is unabated. I see that you are still laboring to free the slave from his chains, and woman from her social, civil, and political disabilities; and to preserve both man and woman from defiling and debasing themselves with intoxicating liquors and tobacco. Precious reforms are these which have enlisted your powers! It is true that they do not cover the whole ground of religious duty. But it is also true that the religion, which, like the current one, opposes or ignores them all, is spurious; and so, too, that the religion which opposes or ignores any one of them is always sadly defective, if not always spurious.

Please add the inclosed draft for $25 to the fund for serving the cause of woman's rights. To no better cause can money, time, or talents be appropriated. I am in high, health, compared with any I have enjoyed since the succession of my frightful diseases, begun two and a half years ago. My nerves, however, are still weak, and most of the year 1859 is still full of confusion and darkness to me.

Gerrit Smith.

Your friend and cousin,

LETTER FROM FRANCIS JACKSON, ESQ.

Boston, May 6, 1860.

Lucy Stone:

Dear Friend:—I intend to be at the annual meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society, but my engagements are such that I shall not stop long enough in New York to attend your meeting of Woman's Rights. I herewith inclose you $20 to help the cause along.

Francis Jackson.

Hon. Erastus D. Culver, of Brooklyn, New York, being present among that portion of the audience seated upon the platform, was recognized and loudly called for, and came forward in response to the call, and spoke as follows:

Mrs. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen:—They used to have, in old times, in the country where I was brought up, a minister, who, after delivering his sermon, would call upon some brother to get up and make the application. Now, I want to give you an application of what I have heard to-night, and there seems to be a sort of providence in it. This very day, since I opened my court this morning, three cases have come in review before me, each one of them directly connected with the subject matter of this evening's deliberations, and with the law which has been alluded to to-night. The first was the case of a woman who had brought a suit, in conjunction with her husband (as she had to do, as the law was) against the city of Brooklyn, for personal injuries, received by falling into a hole; and on the first trial, it was found very difficult to make out the case, because we were obliged to exclude the woman as a witness. If her husband had fallen into that hole, and hurt his side, making him a cripple for life, he might have brought a suit, and he would have been by law a competent witness: but his wife was not; and as he was not with her at the time of the accident, of course he could not testify. To-day the case came on again, and they were making a very poor show at proving the accident, when the lawyer for the lady said, "I will offer the lady as a witness." The other lawyer started up (he is an old fogy, who does not keep up with the times) and said, "She is a party out of sight in law; in law, she is one of the invisibles"; when, to my great surprise and joy (for I had lost track of it myself) the lady's lawyer pulled out from his pocket a slip from a newspaper, which contained the noble law of the 20th of March, 1860, and that law says that "any married woman may bring and maintain an action in her own name for damages against any person or body corporate for any injury to her person or character." That obviated the difficulty. The law was handed to the opposite lawyer, and when he had read it through, with a frown on his face, he said, ill-naturedly, "If your honor please, it is so; they have emancipated the women from all obligations to their husbands." Now, just look at that old presumption of the law, that a married woman could not tell the truth, even in a matter about which she knew better than any one else, on the ground that she was a feme covert, and was nil—nothing!

That was one case. Another was that of a woman who made a bitter complaint against her husband, saying that he had become a drunkard, and was squandering her estate, and threatened to take their two children away. I signed the writ, and the husband and two children were brought in. He addressed the Court in his own defence, and I have not heard such eloquence in court for many a year. He told how he loved his wife, how devoted he was, and that it would ruin him for ever to be separated from her. He said to his lawyer, "Do you keep still; I can talk better than you can." "Now," said he to the Court, "I adjure you, by the feelings of a father and a man, restore to me my wife and children! Do not disgrace me in this way!" All present were deeply affected, and it seemed as if he had carried the people with him, whether he had the Court or not. His speech sounded admirably; but I am sorry to say, that when his wife's turn came, she had not spoken five minutes before she had taken the wind entirely out of his sails. "I was married," she said, "eleven years ago, and not a fortnight after, he beat me, and left his bruises upon me. He has pawned all my clothes, everything I have in the house has been pledged, and I am left destitute; and here, your honor, are the wounds upon my head, here are the bruises that he has left. I can not live with him any longer; I can not be reconciled, until he abjures rum and comes home resolved to live a sober life." "Well," said the husband's lawyer, "we claim our paramount rights—that the father shall have the custody of the children." Then came up this very law again, and this lawyer was as much surprised as the one to whom I first referred. There is a clause in that law which declares that, from this time forward, there shall be no such thing as "paramount rights." It is declared in that statute that from this day "every married woman is constituted and declared to be the joint guardian of her children, with equal powers, rights, and duties in regard to them, with her husband." In view of that law, I said, "I can not take the children away from the mother; she has just as much right to them as her husband, and if she says she must have them, I will let her have them." (Loud applause).

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I have never been identified with this Woman's Rights movement, but I tell you what it is, we have got to admit some things. We have got to admit that these indefatigable laborers, amid obloquy and reproach, in Church and State, by buffoons and by men, have at last set the under-current in motion. The statute-book is their vindication to-night. The last measure passed has relieved woman, to a great extent, from the disabilities under which she was placed. I am one who believes that she may go forward. There will come a time, friends, when we shall see the ballot-box open, and one particular department (as we have at the post-office) where the ladies will all march up and vote. (Applause, and a few hisses). Now, you men that hiss, you would like to have them help you elect your candidate this year, wouldn't you? I wish most sincerely that they could help elect our Republican candidate. (Applause). There is to be a still further advance in this matter. I do not think it at all degrading to say, that there will come a time when ladies will sit in the jury-box, to pass upon certain cases that come particularly within their sphere; and I will say (now that I am off the bench) that they would make better judges than some who are on the benches now. (Laughter and applause).

Mrs. Rose added: I have been most happy to hear the remarks of Judge Culver. Who can doubt of our success, when judges, and noble ones, too—for it is only noble ones who are ready to identify themselves with this cause before it becomes fully successful—come forward to endorse our movement! All we now have to do is, to continue in the good cause, and, depend upon it, the time will come when we shall look back to this last spring's enactment of the Legislature, as the commencement of the real "good time coming." But we have yet some duties to perform. What we have gained, has not been gained without labor. Freedom, my friends, does not come from the clouds, like a meteor; it does not bloom in one night; it does not come without great efforts and great sacrifices; all who love liberty, have to labor for it. We expect that from this hour, you will all help us to work out that glorious problem, whether or not woman can govern herself quite as well as man can govern her. Give us the elective franchise, and we ask for no more. When we have obtained that, it shall be our fault if we do not take all the rights we now claim. (Applause).

Elizabeth Jones said: The adoption of the plans now proposed would place woman above the necessity of any mercenary marriages. She could leave her father's home if she didn't like it, and engage in business and support herself. Who cared for the husband of Jenny Lind, or of Mrs. Norton? It was not necessary for Florence Nightingale, Harriet Hosmer, or Elizabeth Blackwell to marry to secure the world's consideration. The wife should have equal and joint proprietorship with her husband. Two brothers, John and Henry, go to California and form a partnership; John cooks while Henry digs. Henry finds one day a lump of gold worth a hundred dollars. Will he pay John fifty cents for cooking, and take the rest himself? Of course not; he will divide with him. So the husband should regard the property that he accumulates as owned by his wife jointly and equally with himself. Woman would have her rights, let man do what he might. She asked no rights from man, for man had none to give her—none to spare from himself. Satan promised Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, if He would fall down and worship him; but it was well known that the poor devil had not a foot to give. And so man could give no rights to woman. She was born with rights, and only wanted man to recognize them. Her purpose was to demand them persistently, or, if need be, like the Prince of Orange, die in the last ditch before she surrendered them. (Applause).

Rev. Samuel Longfellow, of Brooklyn, N. Y., brother of the poet, was next introduced, and spoke as follows:

Mrs. President:—It might seem, that on a platform like this, when a woman speaks, her presence is not merely a plea and an argument, but also a proof. When a woman speaks, and speaks well, speaks so as to interest and move and persuade men, there is no need of any argument back of that to prove that she has the liberty and the right, and that it is a part of her sphere to do it. She has done it; and that of itself is the whole argument—both premise and conclusion in one. And I think if there were none but men present here, it would be better that only women should speak; for there is a subtle power which God implanted from the first in woman over man, so that the thought of her mind and the tone of her voice are more powerful over us than almost any man, be he eloquent as he may; but not only men are here, but women, also; and as our friend who has just spoken has addressed herself to men, I will address myself to women.

I have often thought that the obstacle in the way of a full allowance and recognition of woman's right to stand side by side with man in all the departments of life, and to add her feminine influence and fiber twined in with man's influence and fiber, in all things that are thought and done, that the obstacle lay more in woman than in man. I have often thought that men were more willing to accept these ideas and grant these claims than women were even to make the claims for themselves; and I have no doubt that those women who have labored, through so much difficulty, through so much scorn and obloquy, in behalf of these simple rights, will tell you that they have often found the greatest opposition among their own sex.

The simple proposition which, it seems to me, includes the whole of this matter, is, what I should call a self-evident truth—that, in all departments of life, men and women, made from the first to be co-mates and partners, should stand side by side, and work hand to hand. Not because men and women are identical, not because they are not different, but because they are different; because each has a special quality running through the whole organization of the man and the woman, which quality is needed to make a complete manhood and womanhood. And then there is another proposition, which is this: that whatever any human being can do well, that being has a right to do, and the ability of any person marks the sphere of that person. ("Hear"—"hear"). This, I say, I count to be strictly a self-evident proposition. (Applause). If you want to know what the level of water is at any particular spot upon the face of the earth, you do not force the water up with a force-pump, you do not build a great reservoir with high stone walls, to hold it, you simply leave it alone, and it finds its level. So, if you want to know what is the true sphere of man or woman, just leave the man or the woman alone, and the natural law, and the divine law, which can not be broken, and which are as sure in the moral and human world as they are in the external world, will settle the matter. If you want to know, really and sincerely, what woman's sphere is, leave her unhampered and untrammeled, and her own powers will find that sphere. She may make mistakes, and try, as man often does, to do things which she can not, but the experiment will settle the matter; and nothing can be more absurd than for man, especially, a priori, to establish the limits which shall bound woman's sphere, or for woman, as a mere matter of speculation, to debate what her sphere shall be, since the natural laws are revealed, not to speculation, but to action.

The obstacle to the progress of the simple ideas which underlie this movement and to their being carried out into practice, I take to be nothing else than this—the vis inertiæ of prejudice, the dead-weight of the customary and familiar—that which has been; and that is simply the dead-weight which hangs upon the wheels of every movement of reform. A thing has not not been, it is not customary, it is strange, it disturbs our ordinary modes of thought, and we will have nothing to do with it. When you are driving with your carriage along the track of the horse-railroad, your wheels run very smoothly; but if you are obliged to turn out, it wrenches the wheels and jars your carriage; and the deeper the ruts, the more disturbance and trouble will you have if you are obliged to move out of them. We all move in the ruts of habit and custom; and it disturbs and troubles us to be asked to move out of them—to do or think anything unusual. This vis inertiae is what stands in the way, first and most of all, of the success of this movement, of the reception of these ideas, as of every other movement of reform. And this dead-weight of prejudice, this vis inertiae of old and traditional thought, is concentrated in this phrase, uttered with tones of indifference or with tones of self-satisfaction and pride, "I think, for my part, that woman's sphere is home." This phrase you hear everywhere—in the parlors, in the streets, in conventions, and in pulpits, and read in books—"Woman's sphere is home!" (Applause). "Well, is it not?" some one asks among you, perhaps. Now, I have no desire to deny that the home is for woman, as for man, the most noble sphere of life. I am sure that there is not one who will stand upon this platform, or speak or write in this cause, who will deny that; not one but will declare that they count home a sacred and noble sphere for woman, as for man—a sphere for grand and high influence, for noble consecration and devoted work; whether it be the simple duties of housekeeping, which a high and cultivated soul can make beautiful by the spirit in which they are done—or whether it be the care of children and the training up of the youthful mind into noble thought and preparation for noble action, which is a sphere so high, that none of us, perhaps, know how high it is—or whether it be as the friend and comforter, encourager and inspirer, to all things noble in thought and grand in action, of man. But if home be the sphere of woman—as none of us deny or doubt for a moment—if it be a sphere for woman high and noble, and to some altogether sufficient to bound their capacities and bound their desires, it is also a sphere for man—a sphere which he altogether too much neglects, not knowing how high and noble it is, and that his duty lies at home, however much he ignores it, with his wife and with his children. But when it is said that home is woman's only sphere—and that is what is meant—it is simply a mistake; it is simply a narrow statement. Take the very woman who says this. As she passes along the street, she sees a placard for a Woman's Rights meeting, and with scornful lip she says, "I think woman's sphere is home"—and goes promenading up and down the street to meet acquaintances, and spends all the morning in shopping—because woman's sphere is home! (Applause and laughter). And after dinner, she says to her husband, "Where shall we go this evening?" "I think we will go to the opera," he says; and so she leaves the children with the servant, and spends half the night at the opera, because woman's sphere is home! (Laughter). On Sunday she goes to church morning and evening, because woman's sphere is home! and during the week goes to concerts and lectures and balls, perhaps, because woman's sphere is home! This is the answer to be given to all those who claim that woman can do nothing but attend to household affairs, or to those duties which are called especially the duties of home. No woman attends to these utterly. No woman need neglect the duties of home in order to fulfill duties in a wider sphere. It takes as much time to sit and hear a lecture as to stand and deliver it; to sit and hear a concert as to stand before the audience and sing. There is time enough, and if one has a talent for either, that is the sphere for him or her.

But when this claim is made that woman's sphere is at home, it is quite forgotten how many women there are who have not imposed upon them the cares of a home; what numbers there are who are not at the head of families; what numbers there are who have not these domestic ties to call upon them for effort; and it is also forgotten how many there are who can not possibly always remain at home, because upon their going forth depends the getting of the money that shall provide for the wants of the home—that shall bring the clothing and the bread that are to supply the home's outward wants. To do this, these women must go from their homes; and oh! hundreds and thousands of working-women in this city are women whose sphere can not be home alone. It is upon this ground that there is pressed home upon us the consideration of the demands for a wider sphere of work for woman, that she shall not be cut off from this and that means of getting a living, which are freely opened to man, but from which woman is excluded, through prejudices and fears. Let the wide sphere of work be opened to woman, that she may select from it, just as man does, whatever her strength and skill are sufficient for her to accomplish. She is not to be shut up, it is claimed, and justly, to a few poor, small, and wretchedly-paid employments, by which she can, with her own hands and skill, gain a living, but is to be allowed and encouraged to open to herself every variety of employment wherein she shall be paid an equal sum with that which man is paid for doing the same work; a claim which has been too long ignored and set aside, but which will press itself until its manifest justice shall compel its admission. The woman who has not the care of a family is to be encouraged to expand her powers, her talents, and genius, and to apply them to the purpose of securing a livelihood, without any obstacle whatever being put in the way; for when we talk of man's sphere and woman's sphere, it is all a farce. There is no one sphere fitted for all men, any more than for all women. Some men can not make good business men, and must fail if they try; and some men can not possibly write books, or preach, or speak in public, and must fail if they try. They do not try, because they have wisdom enough to know that they could not succeed. So it will be with women. People commonly think, that if you grant this claim of woman's right to make her own sphere, that all women will immediately rush into public speaking, and be crowding to the platform, or into the pulpit, or writing books, or carving statues, or painting pictures. There is not the slightest danger of that. Of course, if either of these is the true sphere of any woman, she ought to go there; but those who have not a talent for these things will not try them.

If the right to vote was granted to woman—from which I do not see how we can escape—I do not suppose that all women would go to the polls, for I know that many men do not, although they have much to say about the great privilege which every man enjoys, of having a voice in the government, and the responsibility of a voter. Things would remain much as now if to-morrow every obstacle were removed from woman's path. Only gradually would the change occur, as individual after individual found larger room for action than that in which she is now pent. As this discussion has been going on, woman after woman has been enlarging the sphere allowed her. Women write admirable books, paint admirable pictures, chisel admirable statues, make most excellent and well-instructed physicians. Women are doing everything which it is now claimed they have the right to do, except voting, which they are not yet permitted to do; and I am not sure, in regard to that, that the best plan would not be, as our Platonic friend in New England once said, for the women to go quietly and vote, without waiting to be asked or told that they would be permitted to do so. To be sure, he said, their votes could not be counted, but there they would be, and they would have their force. He thought that the moral influence of those votes would go a great ways, and it is quite possible that they would have that effect. But I hope, whether in that way or some other—perhaps before that step is taken—men will be led to see, that in the sphere of politics, as well as in the sphere of literature and art, woman's influence is needed; and all the objections that are made to woman's voting are of the most trivial character, that would not stand a day before any serious desire that she should have her simple right in this matter, so far as she chooses to claim it. And her right lies simply in these old propositions, so dear to our fathers—upon which they stood and fought an eight years' war—"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and that "all just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed." And there is nothing in these two propositions which confines their application to man; there is nothing in them which does not demand that woman should be included as well as man. Wherever woman is taxed, she has a right to vote, by this fundamental principle of our government; and wherever she is legislated for and governed, she is entitled to a voice in that legislation and government.

This is a very simple matter. To-day, it is only a question of time, when, from a matter of speculation, it will become a matter of fact, the details of which can be managed as well as anything in the world. Women will not be obliged to enter into a scramble with dirty and fighting men at the polls—though it is possible, if she went where such men are, they would be put on their good manners, and be as well-behaved as anybody; but she could have a separate place to vote, and go to the polls as quietly, and with as little loss of time, as she now goes to the post-office, or walks the streets, where rough, rude men congregate, but where she has enough room to go and purchase her silks and satins and laces in Broadway. (Applause). I congratulate those who, taking an interest in this cause, espoused it when it was a great cross to bear—who took it up with the simple courage of woman, the patient perseverance of woman, and have carried it through as far as it has gone now—upon the advances which it has made, upon the opening and enlightenment of the public mind, and upon its favorable reception, spite of all the obstacles that still remain. I bid them be of good cheer, and remember that the great law of progress is a law of steps; so that we must needs all be patient, while we must also all needs be persevering. It is but a question of time and of steps. The great psalm of human progress is (to borrow a phrase from the Hebrew Bible) a psalm of degrees. By patient steps man rises out of falsehood into truth, out of wrongs into rights. So it is with woman, as a part of humanity. Let every woman be true to this as her mission; let no woman dare to place any obstacle or coldness in the way of this movement; but let all calmly consider it, hear the arguments that are made, and allow them to have their full weight; look at the simple facts, and decide. Then we may, perhaps, all of us live to see the day when, throughout all the spheres of his life, and all the departments of his action, side by side with man and the manly quality, there shall be woman and the womanly quality, and a new Eden begin on earth. (Applause).

The President said:—Before introducing the next speaker, I want to express the gratitude which we women feel to Mr. Longfellow and the other gentlemen who have identified themselves with an unpopular and ridiculed cause. Permit me to say one word in relation to this matter of woman's sphere. There is a lady in my neighborhood, who was speaking to me not long since, in the most enthusiastic terms, of this recent law that has passed through our Legislature, and of gratitude toward Susan B. Anthony, through whose untiring exertions and executive ability, aided by two or three other women, this law has been secured. After she had expatiated for a while on this subject, her husband said, "Miss Anthony had a great deal better have been at home, taking care of her husband and children." Thank Heaven! there is one woman who has leisure to care for others as well as herself. (Applause).

Elizabeth Cady Stanton then presented a series of resolutions,[168] in support of which she addressed the Convention as follows:

Mrs. President:—In our common law, in our whole system of jurisprudence, we find man's highest idea of right. The object of law is to secure justice. But inasmuch as fallible man is the maker and administrator of law, we must look for many and gross blunders in the application of its general principles to individual cases.

The science of theology, of civil, political, moral, and social life, all teach the common idea, that man ever has been, and ever must be, sacrificed to the highest good of society; the one to the many—the poor to the rich—the weak to the powerful—and all to the institutions of his own creation. Look, what thunderbolts of power man has forged in the ages for his own destruction!—at the organizations to enslave himself! And through those times of darkness, those generations of superstition, behold all along the relics of his power and skill, that stand like mile-stones, here and there, to show how far back man was great and glorious! Who can stand in those vast cathedrals of the old world, as the deep-toned organ reverberates from arch to arch, and not feel the grandeur of humanity? These are the workmanship of him, beneath whose stately dome the architect himself now bows in fear and doubt, knows not himself, and knows not God—a mere slave to symbols—and with holy water signs the Cross, whilst He who died thereon declared man God.

I repudiate the popular idea of man's degradation and total depravity. I place man above all governments, all institutions—ecclesiastical and civil—all constitutions and laws. (Applause). It is a mistaken idea, that the same law that oppresses the individual can promote the highest good of society. The best interests of a community never can require the sacrifice of one innocent being—of one sacred right. In the settlement, then, of any question, we must simply consider the highest good of the individual. It is the inalienable right of all to be happy. It is the highest duty of all to seek those conditions in life, those surroundings, which may develop what is noblest and best, remembering that the lessons of these passing hours are not for time alone, but for the ages of eternity. They tell us, in that future home—the heavenly paradise—that the human family shall be sifted out, and the good and pure shall dwell together in peace. If that be the heavenly order, is it not our duty to render earth as near like heaven as we may?

For years, there has been before the Legislature of this State a variety of bills, asking for divorce in cases of drunkenness, insanity, desertion, cruel and brutal treatment, endangering life. My attention was called to this question very early in life, by the sufferings of a friend of my girlhood, a victim of one of those unfortunate unions, called marriage. What my great love for that young girl, and my holy intuitions, then decided to be right, has not been changed by years of experience, observation, and reason. I have pondered well these things in my heart, and ever felt the deepest interest in all that has been written and said upon the subject, and the most profound respect and loving sympathy for those heroic women, who, in the face of law and public sentiment, have dared to sunder the unholy ties of a joyless, loveless union.

If marriage is a human institution, about which man may legislate, it seems but just that he should treat this branch of his legislation with the same common-sense that he applies to all others. If it is a mere legal contract, then should it be subject to the restraints and privileges of all other contracts. A contract, to be valid in law, must be formed between parties of mature age, with an honest intention in said parties to do what they agree. The least concealment, fraud, or deception, if proved, annuls the contract. A boy can not contract for an acre of land, or a horse, until he is twenty-one, but he may contract for a wife at fourteen. If a man sell a horse, and the purchaser find in him great incompatibility of temper—a disposition to stand still when the owner is in haste to go—the sale is null and void, and the man and his horse part company. But in marriage, no matter how much fraud and deception are practiced, nor how cruelly one or both parties have been misled; no matter how young, inexperienced, or thoughtless the parties, nor how unequal their condition and position in life, the contract can not be annulled. Think of a husband telling a young and trusting girl, but one short month his wife, that he married her for her money; that those letters so precious to her, that she had read and re-read, and kissed and cherished, were written by another; that their splendid home, of which, on their wedding-day, her father gave him the deed, is already in the hands of his creditors; that she must give up the elegance and luxury that now surround her, unless she can draw fresh supplies of money to meet their wants! When she told the story of her wrongs to me—the abuse to which she was subject, and the dread in which she lived—I impulsively urged her to fly from such a monster and villain, as she would before the hot breath of a ferocious beast of the wilderness. (Applause). And she did fly; and it was well with her. Many times since, as I have felt her throbbing heart against my own, she has said, "Oh, but for your love and sympathy, your encouragement, I should never have escaped from that bondage. Before I could, of myself, have found courage to break those chains my heart would have broken in the effort."

Marriage, as it now exists, must seem to all of you a mere human institution. Look through the universe of matter and mind—all God's arrangements are perfect, harmonious, and complete! There is no discord, friction, or failure in His eternal plans. Immutability, perfection, beauty, are stamped on all His laws. Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe—the open sesame to every human soul. Where two beings are drawn together, by the natural laws of likeness and affinity, union and happiness are the result. Such marriages might be Divine. But how is it now? You all know our marriage is, in many cases, a mere outward tie, impelled by custom, policy, interest, necessity; founded not even in friendship, to say nothing of love; with every possible inequality of condition and development. In these heterogeneous unions, we find youth and old age, beauty and deformity, refinement and vulgarity, virtue and vice, the educated and the ignorant, angels of grace and goodness, with devils of malice and malignity: and the sum of all this is human wretchedness and despair; cold fathers, sad mothers, and hapless children, who shiver at the hearthstone, where the fires of love have all gone out. The wide world, and the stranger's unsympathizing gaze, are not more to be dreaded for young hearts than homes like these. Now, who shall say that it is right to take two beings, so unlike, and anchor them right side by side, fast bound—to stay all time, until God shall summon one away?

Do wise, Christian legislators need any arguments to convince them that the sacredness of the family relation should be protected at all hazards? The family, that great conservator of national virtue and strength, how can you hope to build it up in the midst of violence, debauchery, and excess? Can there be anything sacred at that family altar, where the chief-priest who ministers makes sacrifice of human beings, of the weak and the innocent? where the incense offered up is not to the God of justice and mercy, but to those heathen divinities, who best may represent the lost man in all his grossness and deformity? Call that sacred, where woman, the mother of the race—of a Jesus of Nazareth—unconscious of the true dignity of her nature, of her high and holy destiny, consents to live in legalized prostitution!—her whole soul revolting at such gross association!—her flesh shivering at the cold contamination of that embrace, held there by no tie but the iron chain of the law, and a false and most unnatural public sentiment? Call that sacred, where innocent children, trembling with fear, fly to the corners and dark places of the house, to hide themselves from the wrath of drunken, brutal fathers, but, forgetting their past sufferings, rush out again at their mother's frantic screams, "Help, oh help"? Behold the agonies of those young hearts, as they see the only being on earth they love, dragged about the room by the hair of the head, kicked and pounded, and left half dead and bleeding on the floor! Call that sacred, where fathers like these have the power and legal right to hand down their natures to other beings, to curse other generations with such moral deformity and death?

Men and brethren, look into your asylums for the blind, the deaf and dumb, the idiot, the imbecile, the deformed, the insane; go out into the by-lanes and dens of this vast metropolis, and contemplate that reeking mass of depravity; pause before the terrible revelations made by statistics, of the rapid increase of all this moral and physical impotency, and learn how fearful a thing it is to violate the immutable laws of the beneficent Ruler of the universe; and there behold the terrible retributions of your violence on woman! Learn how false and cruel are those institutions, which, with a coarse materialism, set aside those holy instincts of the woman to bear no children but those of love! In the best condition of marriage, as we now have it, to woman comes all the penalties and sacrifices. A man, in the full tide of business or pleasure, can marry and not change his life one iota; he can be husband, father, and everything beside; but in marriage, woman gives up all. Home is her sphere, her realm. Well, be it so. If here you will make us all-supreme, take to yourselves the universe beside; explore the North Pole; and, in your airy car, all space; in your Northern homes and cloud-capt towers, go feast on walrus flesh and air, and lay you down to sleep your six months' night away, and leave us to make these laws that govern the inner sanctuary of our own homes, and faithful satellites we will ever be to the dinner-pot, the cradle, and the old arm-chair. (Applause).

Fathers, do you say, let your daughters pay a life-long penalty for one unfortunate step? How could they, on the threshold of life, full of joy and hope, believing all things to be as they seemed on the surface, judge of the dark windings of the human soul? How could they foresee that the young man, to-day so noble, so generous, would in a few short years be transformed into a cowardly, mean tyrant, or a foul-mouthed, bloated drunkard? What father could rest at his home by night, knowing that his lovely daughter was at the mercy of a strong man drunk with wine and passion, and that, do what he might, he was backed up by law and public sentiment? The best interests of the individual, the family, the State, the nation, cry out against these legalized marriages of force and endurance. There can be no heaven without love, and nothing is sacred in the family and home, but just so far as it is built up and anchored in love. Our newspapers teem with startling accounts of husbands and wives having shot or poisoned each other, or committed suicide, choosing death rather than the indissoluble tie; and, still worse, the living death of faithless wives and daughters, from the first families in this State, dragged from the privacy of home into the public prints and courts, with all the painful details of sad, false lives. What say you to facts like these? Now, do you believe, men and women, that all these wretched matches are made in heaven? that all these sad, miserable people are bound together by God? I know Horace Greeley has been most eloquent, for weeks past, on the holy sacrament of ill-assorted marriages; but let us hope that all wisdom does not live, and will not die with Horace Greeley. I think, if he had been married to The New York Herald, instead of the Republican party, he would have found out some Scriptural arguments against life-long unions, where great incompatibility of temper existed between the parties. (Laughter and applause).

Our law-makers have dug a pit, and the innocent have fallen into it; and now will you coolly cover them over with statute laws, Tribunes, and Weeds,[169] and tell them to stay there and pay the life-long penalty of having fallen in? Nero was thought the chief of tyrants, because he made laws and hung them up so high that his subjects could not read them, and then punished them for every act of disobedience. What better are our Republican legislators? The mass of the women of this nation know nothing about the laws, yet all their specially barbarous legislation is for woman. Where have they made any provision for her to learn the laws? Where is the Law School for our daughters? where the law office, the bar, or the bench, now urging them to take part in the jurisprudence of the nation?

But, say you, does not separation cover all these difficulties? No one objects to separation when the parties are so disposed. But, to separation there are two very serious objections. First, so long as you insist on marriage as a divine institution, as an indissoluble tie, so long as you maintain your present laws against divorce, you make separation, even, so odious, that the most noble, virtuous, and sensitive men and women choose a life of concealed misery, rather than a partial, disgraceful release. Secondly, those who, in their impetuosity and despair, do, in spite of public sentiment, separate, find themselves in their new position beset with many temptations to lead a false, unreal life. This isolation bears especially hard on woman. Marriage is not all of life to man. His resources for amusement and occupation are boundless. He has the whole world for his home. His business, his politics, his club, his friendships with either sex, can help to fill up the void made by an unfortunate union or separation. But to woman, marriage is all and everything; her sole object in life—that for which she is educated—the subject of all her sleeping and her waking dreams. Now, if a noble, generous girl of eighteen marries, and is unfortunate, because the cruelty of her husband compels separation, in her dreary isolation, would you drive her to a nunnery; and shall she be a nun indeed? Her solitude is nothing less, as, in the present undeveloped condition of woman, it is only through our fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, that we feel the pulsations of the great outer world.

One unhappy, discordant man or woman in a neighborhood, may mar the happiness of all the rest. You can not shut up discord, any more than you can small-pox. There can be no morality where there is a settled discontent. A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbade as few things as possible; a wise legislation would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man can not and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government? What do our present divorce laws amount to? Those who wish to evade them have only to go into another State to accomplish what they desire. If any of our citizens can not secure their inalienable rights in New York State, they may in Connecticut and Indiana. Why is it that all agreements, covenants, partnerships, are left wholly at the discretion of the parties, except the contract, which of all others is considered most holy and important, both for the individual and the race? This question of divorce, they tell us, is hedged about with difficulties; that it can not be approached with the ordinary rules of logic and common-sense. It is too holy, too sacred to be discussed, and few seem disposed to touch it. From man's standpoint, this may be all true, as to him they say belong reason, and the power of ratiocination. Fortunately, I belong to that class endowed with mere intuitions, a kind of moral instinct, by which we feel out right and wrong. In presenting to you, therefore, my views of divorce, you will of course give them the weight only of the woman's intuitions. But inasmuch as that is all God saw fit to give us, it is evident we need nothing more. Hence, what we do perceive of truth must be as reliable as what man grinds out by the longer process of reason, authority, and speculation.

Horace Greeley, in his recent discussion with Robert Dale Owen, said, this whole question has been tried, in all its varieties and conditions, from indissoluble monogamic marriage down to free love; that the ground has been all gone over and explored. Let me assure him that but just one-half of the ground has been surveyed, and that half but by one of the parties, and that party certainly not the most interested in the matter. Moreover, there is one kind of marriage that has not been tried, and that is, a contract made by equal parties to live an equal life, with equal restraints and privileges on either side. Thus far, we have had the man marriage, and nothing more. From the beginning, man has had the sole and whole regulation of the matter. He has spoken in Scripture, he has spoken in law. As an individual, he has decided the time and cause for putting away a wife, and as a judge and legislator, he still holds the entire control. In all history, sacred and profane, the woman is regarded and spoken of simply as the toy of man—made for his special use—to meet his most gross and sensuous desires. She is taken or put away, given or received, bought or sold, just as the interest of the parties might dictate. But the woman has been no more recognized in all these transactions, through all the different periods and conditions of the race, than if she had had no part nor lot in the whole matter. The right of woman to put away a husband, be he ever so impure, is never hinted at in sacred history. Even Jesus himself failed to recognize the sacred rights of the holy mother of the race. We can not take our gauge of womanhood from the past, but from the solemn convictions of our own souls, in the higher development of the race. No parchments, however venerable with the mould of ages, no human institutions, can bound the immortal wants of the royal sons and daughters of the great I Am,—rightful heirs of the joys of time, and joint heirs of the glories of eternity.

If in marriage either party claims the right to stand supreme, to woman, the mother of the race, belongs the scepter and the crown. Her life is one long sacrifice for man. You tell us that among all womankind there is no Moses, Christ, or Paul,—no Michael Angelo, Beethoven, or Shakspeare,—no Columbus, or Galileo,—no Locke or Bacon. Behold those mighty minds attuned to music and the arts, so great, so grand, so comprehensive,—these are our great works of which we boast! Into you, O sons of earth, go all of us that is immortal. In you center our very life-thoughts, our hopes, our intensest love. For you we gladly pour out our heart's blood and die, knowing that from our suffering comes forth a new and more glorious resurrection of thought and life. (Loud applause).

Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell followed, and prefaced her remarks by saying: "Ours has always been a free platform. We have believed in the fullest freedom of thought and in the free expression of individual opinion. I propose to speak upon the subject discussed by our friend, Mrs. Stanton. It is often said that there are two sides to every question; but there are three sides, many sides, to every question. Let Mrs. Stanton take hers; let Horace Greeley take his; I only ask the privilege of stating mine. (Applause). I have embodied my thought, hastily, in a series of resolutions,[170] and my remarks following them will be very brief."

Mrs. Blackwell continued:

I believe that the highest laws of life are those which we find written within our being; that the first moral laws which we are to obey are the laws which God's own finger has traced upon our own souls. Therefore, our first duty is to ourselves, and we may never, under any circumstances, yield this to any other. I say we are first responsible to ourselves, and to the God who has laid the obligation upon us, to make ourselves the grandest we may. Marriage grows out of the relations of parties. The law of our development comes wholly from within; but the relation of marriage supposes two persons as being united to each other, and from this relation originates the law. Mrs. Stanton calls marriage a "tie." No, marriage is a relation; and, once formed, that relation continues as long as the parties continue with the natures which they now essentially have. Let, then, the two parties deliberately, voluntarily consent to enter into this relation. It is one which, from its very nature, must be permanent. Can the mother ever destroy the relation which exists between herself and her child? Can the father annul the relation which exists between himself and his child? Then, can the father and mother annul the relation which exists between themselves, the parents of the child? It can not be. The interests of marriage are such that they can not be destroyed, and the only question must be, "Has there been a marriage in this case or not?" If there has, then the social law, the obligations growing out of the relation, must be life-long.

But I assert that every woman, in the present state of society, is bound to maintain her own independence and her own integrity of character; to assert herself, earnestly and firmly, as the equal of man, who is only her peer. This is her first right, her first duty; and if she lives in a country where the law supposes that she is to be subjected to her husband, and she consents to this subjection, I do insist that she consents to degradation; that this is sin, and it is impossible to make it other than sin. True, in this State, and in nearly all the States, the idea of marriage is that of subjection, in all respects, of the wife to the husband—personal subjection, subjection in the rights over their children and over their property; but this is a false relation. Marriage is a union of equals—equal interests being involved, equal duties at stake; and if any woman has been married to a man who chooses to take advantage of the laws as they now stand, who chooses to subject her, ignobly, to his will, against her own, to take from her the earnings which belong to the family, and to take from her the children which belong to the family, I hold that that woman, if she can not, by her influence, change this state of things, is solemnly obligated to go to some State where she can be legally divorced; and then she would be as solemnly bound to return again, and, standing for herself and her children, regard herself, in the sight of God, as being bound still to the father of those children, to work for his best interests, while she still maintains her own sovereignty. Of course, she must be governed by the circumstances of the case. She may be obliged, for the protection of the family, to live on one continent while her husband is on the other: but she is never to forget that in the sight of God and her own soul, she is his wife, and that she owes to him the wife's loyalty; that to work for his redemption is her highest social obligation, and that to teach her children to do the same is her first motherly duty. Legal divorce may be necessary for personal and family protection; if so, let every woman obtain it. This, God helping me, is what I would certainly do, for under no circumstances will I ever give my consent to be subjected to the will of another, in any relation, for God has bidden me not to do it. But the idea of most women is, that they must be timid, weak, helpless, and full of ignoble submission. Only last week, a lady who has just been divorced from her husband said to me—"I used to be required to go into the field and do the hardest laborer's work, when I was not able to do it; and my husband would declare, that if I would not thus labor, I should not be allowed to eat, and I was obliged to submit." I say the fault was as much with the woman as with the man; she should never have submitted.

Our trouble is not with marriage as a relation between two; it is all individual. We have few men or women fit to be married. They neither fully respect themselves and their own rights and duties, nor yet those of another. They have no idea how noble, how godlike is the relation which ought to exist between the husband and wife.

Tell me, is marriage to be merely a contract—something entered into for a time, and then broken again—or is the true marriage permanent? One resolution read by Mrs. Stanton said that, as men are incompetent to select partners in business, teachers for their children, ministers of their religion, or makers, adjudicators, or administrators of their laws, and as the same weakness and blindness must attend in the selection of matrimonial partners, the latter and most important contract should no more be perpetual than either or all of the former. I do not believe that, rightly understood, she quite holds to that position herself. Marriage must be either permanent, or capable of being any time dissolved. Which ground shall we take? I insist that, from the nature of things, marriage must be as permanent and indissoluble as the relation of parent and child. If so, let us legislate toward the right. Though evils must sometimes result, we are still to seek the highest law of the relation.

Self-devotion is always sublimely beautiful, but the law has no right to require either a woman to be sacrificed to any man, or a man to be sacrificed to any woman, or either to the good of society; but if either chooses to devote himself to the good of the other, no matter how low that other may have fallen, no matter how degraded he may be, let the willing partner strive to lift him up, not by going down and sitting side by side with him—that is wrong—but by steadily trying to win him back to the right: keeping his own sovereignty, but trying to redeem the fallen one as long as life shall endure. I do not wish to go to the other state of being, and state what shall be our duty there, but I do say, that where there is sin and suffering in this universe of ours, we may none of us sit still until we have overcome that sin and suffering. Then if my husband was wretched and degraded in this life, I believe God would give me strength to work for him while life lasted. I would do that for the lowest drunkard in the street, and certainly I would do as much for my husband. I believe that the greatest boon of existence is the privilege of working for those who are oppressed and fallen; and those who have oppressed their own natures are those who need the most help. My great hope is, that I may be able to lift them upwards. The great responsibility that has been laid upon me is the responsibility never to sit down and sing to myself psalms of happiness and content while anybody suffers. (Applause). Then, if I find a wretched man in the gutter, and feel that, as a human sister, I must go and lift him up, and that I can never enjoy peace or rest until I have thus redeemed him and brought him out of his sins, shall I, if the man whom I solemnly swore to love, to associate with in all the interests of home and its holiest relations—shall I, if he falls into sin, turn him off, and go on enjoying life, while he is sunk in wretchedness and sin? I will not do it. To me there is a higher idea of life. If, as an intelligent human being, I promised to co-work with him in all the higher interests of life, and if he proves false, I will not turn from him, but I must seek first to regenerate him, the nearest and dearest to me, as I would work, secondly, to save my children, who are next, and then my brothers, my sisters, and the whole human family. (Applause).

Mrs. Stanton asks, "Would you send a young girl into a nunnery, when she has made a mistake?" Does Mrs. Stanton not know that nunneries belong to a past age, that people who had nothing to do might go there and try to expiate their own sins? I would teach the young girl a higher way. I do not say to her, "If you have foolishly united yourself to another" (not "if you have been tied by the law"; for, remember, it was not the law that tied her; she said, "I will do it," and the law said, "So let it be!")—"sunder the bond"; but I say to her, that her duty is to reflect, "Now that I see my mistake, I will commence being true to myself; I will become a true unit, strong and noble in myself; and if I can never make our union a true one, I will work toward that good result, I will live for this great work—for truth and all its interests." Let me tell you, if she is not great enough to do this, she is not great enough to enter into any union!

Look at those who believe in thus easily dissolving the marriage obligation! In very many cases they can not be truly married, or truly happy in this relation, because there is something incompatible with it in their own natures. It is not always so; but when one feels that it is a relation easily to be dissolved, of course, incompatibility at once seems to arise in the other, and every difficulty that occurs, instead of being overlooked, as it ought to be, in a spirit of forgiveness, is magnified, and the evil naturally increased. We purchase a house, the deed is put into our hands, and we take possession. We feel at once that it is really very convenient. It suits us, and we are surprised that we like it so much better than we supposed. The secret is, that it is our house, and until we are ready to part with it, we make ourselves content with it as it is. We go to live in some country town. At first we do not like it; it is not like the home we came from; but soon we begin to be reconciled, and feel that, as Dr. Holmes said of Boston, our town is the hub of the universe. So, when we are content to allow our relations to remain as they are, we adapt ourselves to them, and they adapt themselves to us, and we constantly, unconsciously (because God made us so) work toward the perfecting of all the interests arising from those relations. But the moment we wish to sell a house, or remove from a town, how many defects we discover! The place has not the same appearance to us at all; we wish we could get out of it; we feel all the time more and more dissatisfied. So, let any married person take the idea that he may dissolve this relation, and enter into a new one, and how many faults he may discover that otherwise never would have been noticed! The marriage will become intolerable. The theory will work that result; it is in the nature of things, and that to me is everything.

Of course, I would not have man or woman sacrificed—by no means. First of all, let every human being maintain his own position as a self-protecting human being. At all hazards, let him never sin, or consent to be sacrificed to the hurt of himself or of another; and when he has taken this stand, let him act in harmony with it. Would I say to any woman, "You are bound, because you are legally married to one who is debased to the level of the brute, to be the mother of his children?" I say to her, "No! while the law of God continues, you are bound never to make one whom you do not honor and respect, as well as love, the father of any child of yours. It is your first and highest duty to be true to yourself, true to posterity, and true to society." (Applause). Thus, let each decide for himself and for herself what is right. But, I repeat, either marriage is in its very nature a relation which, once formed, never can be dissolved, and either the essential obligations growing out of it exist forever, or the relation may at any time be dissolved, and at any time those obligations be annulled. And what are those obligations? Two persons, if I understand marriage, covenant to work together, to uphold each other in all excellence, and to mutually blend their lives and interests into a common harmony. I believe that God has so made man and woman, that it is not good for them to be alone, that they each need a co-worker. There is no work on God's footstool which man can do alone and do well, and there is no work which woman can do alone and do well. (Applause). We need that the two should stand side by side everywhere. All over the world, we need this co-operation of the two classes—not because they are alike, but because they are unlike—in trying to make the whole world better. Then we need something more than these class workers. Two persons need to stand side by side, to stay up each other's hands, to take an interest in each other's welfare, to build up a family, to cluster about it all the beauties and excellencies of home life; in short, to be to each other what only one man and one woman can be to each other in all God's earth.

No grown-up human being ought to rush blindly into this most intimate, most important, most enduring of human relations; and will you let a young man, at the age of fourteen, contract marriage, or a young maiden either? If the law undertakes to regulate the matter at all, let it regulate it upon principles of common-sense. But this is a matter which must be very much regulated by public opinion, by our teachers. What do you, the guides of our youth, say? You say to the young girl, "You ought to expect to be married before you are twenty, or about that time; you should intend to be; and from the time you are fifteen, it should be made your one life purpose; and in all human probability, you may expect to spend the next ten or twenty years in the nursery, and at forty or fifty, you will be an old woman, your life will be well-nigh worn out." I stand here to say that this is all false. Let the young girl be instructed that, above her personal interests, her home, and social life, she is to have a great life purpose, as broad as the rights and interests of humanity. I say, let every young girl feel this, as much as every young man does. We have no right, we, who expect to live forever, to play about here as if we were mere flies, enjoying ourselves in the sunshine. We ought to have an earnest purpose outside of home, outside of our family relations. Then let the young girl fit herself for this. Let her be taught that she ought not to be married in her teens. Let her wait, as a young man does, if he is sensible, until she is twenty-five or thirty. (Applause). She will then know how to choose properly, and probably she will not be deceived in her estimate of character; she will have had a certain life-discipline, which will enable her to control her household matters with wise judgment, so that, while she is looking after her family, she may still keep her great life purpose, for which she was educated, and to which she has given her best energies, steadily in view. She need not absorb herself in her home, and God never intended that she should; and then, if she has lived according to the laws of physiology, and according to the laws of common-sense, she ought to be, at the age of fifty years, just where man is, just where our great men are, in the very prime of life! When her young children have gone out of her home, then let her enter in earnest upon the great work of life outside of home and its relations. (Applause).

It is a shame for our women to have no steady purpose or pursuit, and to make the mere fact of womanhood a valid plea for indolence; it is a greater shame that they should be instructed thus to throw all the responsibility of working for the general good upon the other sex. God has not intended it. But as long as you make women helpless, inefficient beings, who never expect to earn a farthing in their lives, who never expect to do anything outside of the family, but to be cared for and protected by others throughout life, you can not have true marriages; and if you try to break up the old ones, you will do it against the woman and in favor of the man. Last week I went back to a town where I used to live, and was told that a woman, whose husband was notoriously the most miserable man in the town, had in despair taken her own life. I asked what had become of the husband, and the answer was, "Married again." And yet everybody there knows that he is the vilest and most contemptible man in the whole neighborhood. Any man, no matter how wretched he maybe, will find plenty of women to accept him, while they are rendered so helpless and weak by their whole education that they must be supported or starve. The advantage, if this theory of marriage is adopted, will not be on the side of woman, but altogether on the side of man. The cure for the evils that now exist is not in dissolving marriage, but it is in giving to the married woman her own natural independence and self-sovereignty, by which she can maintain herself.

Yes, our women and our men are both degenerate; they are weak and ignoble. "Dear me!" said a pretty, indolent young lady, "I had a great deal rather my husband would take care of me, than to be obliged to do it for myself." "Of course you would," said a blunt old lady who was present; "and your brother would a great deal rather marry an heiress, and lie upon a sofa eating lollypops, bought with her money, than to do anything manly or noble. The only difference is, that as heiresses are not very plenty, he may probably have to marry a poor girl, and then society will insist that he shall exert himself to earn a living for the family; but you, poor thing, will only have to open your mouth, all your life long, like a clam, and eat." (Applause and laughter). So long as society is constituted in such a way that woman is expected to do nothing if she have a father, brother, or husband able to support her, there is no salvation for her, in or out of marriage. When you tie up your arm, it will become weak and feeble; and when you tie up woman, she will become weak and helpless. Give her, then, some earnest purpose in life, hold up to her the true ideal of marriage, and it is enough—I am content! (Loud applause).

Ernestine L. Rose said:—Mrs. President—The question of a Divorce law seems to me one of the greatest importance to all parties, but I presume that the very advocacy of divorce will be called "Free Love." For my part (and I wish distinctly to define my position), I do not know what others understand by that term; to me, in its truest significance, love must be free, or it ceases to be love. In its low and degrading sense, it is not love at all, and I have as little to do with its name as its reality.

The Rev. Mrs. Blackwell gave us quite a sermon on what woman ought to be, what she ought to do, and what marriage ought to be; an excellent sermon in its proper place, but not when the important question of a Divorce law is under consideration. She treats woman as some ethereal being. It is very well to be ethereal to some extent, but I tell you, my friends, it is quite requisite to be a little material, also. At all events, we are so, and, being so, it proves a law of our nature. (Applause).

It were indeed well if woman could be what she ought to be, man what he ought to be, and marriage what it ought to be; and it is to be hoped that through the Woman's Rights movement—the equalizing of the laws, making them more just, and making woman more independent—we will hasten the coming of the millennium, when marriage shall indeed be a bond of union and affection. But, alas! it is not yet; and I fear that sermons, however well meant, will not produce that desirable end; and as long as the evil is here, we must look it in the face without shrinking, grapple with it manfully, and the more complicated it is, the more courageously must it be analyzed, combated, and destroyed. (Applause).

Mrs. Blackwell told us that, marriage being based on the perfect equality of husband and wife, it can not be destroyed. But is it so? Where? Where and when have the sexes yet been equal in physical or mental education, in position, or in law? When and where have they yet been recognized by society, or by themselves, as equals? "Equal in rights," says Mrs. B. But are they equal in rights? If they were, we would need no conventions to claim our rights. "She can assert her equality." Yes, she can assert it, but does that assertion constitute a true marriage? And when the husband holds the iron heel of legal oppression on the subjugated neck of the wife until every spark of womanhood is crushed out, will it heal the wounded heart, the lacerated spirit, the destroyed hope, to assert her equality? And shall she still continue the wife? Is that a marriage which must not be dissolved? (Applause).

According to Mr. Greeley's definition, viz., that there is no marriage unless the ceremony is performed by a minister and in a church, the tens of thousands married according to the laws of this and most of the other States, by a lawyer or justice of the peace, a mayor or an alderman, are not married at all. According to the definition of our reverend sister, no one has ever yet been married, as woman has never yet been perfectly equal with man. I say to both, take your position, and abide by the consequences. If the few only, or no one, is really married, why do you object to a law that shall acknowledge the fact? You certainly ought not to force people to live together who are not married. (Applause).

Mr. Greeley tells us, that, marriage being a Divine institution, nothing but death should ever separate the parties; but when he was asked, "Would you have a being who, innocent and inexperienced, in the youth and ardor of affection, in the fond hope that the sentiment was reciprocated, united herself to one she loved and cherished, and then found (no matter from what cause) that his profession was false, his heart hollow, his acts cruel, that she was degraded by his vice, despised for his crimes, cursed by his very presence, and treated with every conceivable ignominy—would you have her drag out a miserable existence as his wife?" "No, no," says he; "in that case, they ought to separate." Separate? But what becomes of the union divinely instituted, which death only should part? (Applause).

The papers have of late been filled with the heart-sickening accounts of wife-poisoning. Whence come these terrible crimes? From the want of a Divorce law. Could the Hardings be legally separated, they would not be driven to the commission of murder to be free from each other; and which is preferable, a Divorce law, to dissolve an unholy union, which all parties agree is no true marriage, or a murder of one, and an execution (legal murder) of the other party? But had the unfortunate woman, just before the poisoned cup was presented to her lips, pleaded for a divorce, Mrs. Blackwell would have read her a sermon equal to St. Paul's "Wives, be obedient to your husbands," only she would have added, "You must assert your equality," but "you must keep with your husband and work for his redemption, as I would do for my husband"; and Mr. Greeley would say, "As you chose to marry him, it is your own fault; you must abide the consequences, for it is a 'divine institution, a union for life, which nothing but death can end.'" (Applause). The Tribune had recently a long sermon, almost equal to the one we had this morning from our reverend sister, on "Fast Women." The evils it spoke of were terrible indeed, but, like all other sermons, it was one-sided. Not one single word was said about fast men, except that the "poor victim had to spend so much money." The writer forgot that it is the demand which calls the supply into existence. But what was the primary cause of that tragic end? Echo answers, "what?" Ask the lifeless form of the murdered woman, and she may disclose the terrible secret, and show you that, could she have been legally divorced, she might not have been driven to the watery grave of a "fast woman." (Applause).

But what is marriage? A human institution, called out by the needs of social, affectional human nature, for human purposes, its objects are, first, the happiness of the parties immediately concerned, and, secondly, the welfare of society. Define it as you please, these are only its objects; and therefore if, from well-ascertained facts, it is demonstrated that the real objects are frustrated, that instead of union and happiness, there are only discord and misery to themselves, and vice and crime to society, I ask, in the name of individual happiness and social morality and well-being, why such a marriage should be binding for life?—why one human being should be chained for life to the dead body of another? "But they may separate and still remain married." What a perversion of the very term! Is that the union which "death only should part"? It may be according to the definition of the Rev. Mrs. Blackwell's theology and Mr. Greeley's dictionary, but it certainly is not according to common-sense or the dictates of morality. No, no! "It is not well for man to be alone," before nor after marriage. (Applause).

I therefore ask for a Divorce law. Divorce is now granted for some crimes; I ask it for others also. It is granted for a State's prison offense. I ask that personal cruelty to a wife, whom he swore to "love, cherish, and protect," may be made a heinous crime—a perjury and a State's prison offense, for which divorce shall be granted. Willful desertion for one year should be a sufficient cause for divorce, for the willful deserter forfeits the sacred title of husband or wife. Habitual intemperance, or any other vice which makes the husband or wife intolerable and abhorrent to the other, ought to be sufficient cause for divorce. I ask for a law of Divorce, so as to secure the real objects and blessings of married life, to prevent the crimes and immoralities now practiced, to prevent "Free Love," in its most hideous form, such as is now carried on but too often under the very name of marriage, where hypocrisy is added to the crime of legalized prostitution. "Free Love," in its degraded sense, asks for no Divorce law. It acknowledges no marriage, and therefore requires no divorce. I believe in true marriages, and therefore I ask for a law to free men and women from false ones. (Applause).

But it is said that if divorce were easily granted, "men and women would marry to-day and unmarry to-morrow." Those who say that, only prove that they have no confidence in themselves, and therefore can have no confidence in others. But the assertion is false; it is a libel on human nature. It is the indissoluble chain that corrodes the flesh. Remove the indissolubility, and there would be less separation than now, for it would place the parties on their good behavior, the same as during courtship. Human nature is not quite so changeable; give it more freedom, and it will be less so. We are a good deal the creatures of habit, but we will not be forced. We live (I speak from experience) in uncomfortable houses for years, rather than move, though we have the privilege to do so every year; but force any one to live for life in one house, and he would run away from it, though it were a palace.

But Mr. Greeley asks, "How could the mother look the child in the face, if she married a second time?" With infinitely better grace and better conscience than to live as some do now, and show their children the degrading example, how utterly father and mother despise and hate each other, and still live together as husband and wife. She could say to her child, "As, unfortunately, your father proved himself unworthy, your mother could not be so unworthy as to continue to live with him. As he failed to be a true father to you, I have endeavored to supply his place with one, who, though not entitled to the name, will, I hope, prove himself one in the performance of a father's duties." (Applause).

Finally, educate woman, to enable her to promote her independence, and she will not be obliged to marry for a home and a subsistence. Give the wife an equal right with the husband in the property acquired after marriage, and it will be a bond of union between them. Diamond cement, applied on both sides of a fractured vase, re-unites the parts, and prevents them from falling asunder. A gold band is more efficacious than an iron law. Until now, the gold has all been on one side, and the iron law on the other. Remove it; place the golden band of justice and mutual interest around both husband and wife, and it will hide the little fractures which may have occurred, even from their own perception, and allow them effectually to re-unite. A union of interest helps to preserve a union of hearts. (Loud applause).

Wendell Phillips then said: I object to entering these resolutions upon the journal of this Convention. (Applause). I would move to lay them on the table; but my conviction that they are out of order is so emphatic, that I wish to go further than that, and move that they do not appear on the journals of this Convention. If the resolutions were merely the expressions of individual sentiments, then they ought not to appear in the form of resolutions, but as speeches, because a resolution has a certain emphasis and authority. It is assumed to give the voice of an assembly, and is not taken as an individual expression, which a speech is.

Of course, every person must be interested in the question of marriage, and the branch that grows out of it, the question of divorce; and no one could deny, who has listened for an hour, that we have been favored with an exceedingly able discussion of those questions. But here we have nothing to do with them, any more than with the question of intemperance, or Kansas, in my opinion. This Convention is no Marriage Convention—if it were, the subject would be in order; but this Convention, if I understand it, assembles to discuss the laws that rest unequally upon women, not those that rest equally upon men and women. It is the laws that make distinctions between the sexes. Now, whether a man and a woman are married for a year or a life is a question which affects the man just as much as the woman. At the end of a month, the man is without a wife exactly as much as the woman is without a husband. The question whether, having entered into a contract, you shall be bound to an unworthy partner, affects the man as much as the woman. Certainly, there are cases where men are bound to women carcasses as well as where women are bound to men carcasses. (Laughter and applause). We have nothing to do with a question which affects both sexes equally. Therefore, it seems to me we have nothing to do with the theory of marriage, which is the basis, as Mrs. Rose has very clearly shown, of divorce. One question grows out of the other; and therefore the question of the permanence of marriage, and the laws relating to marriage, in the essential meaning of that word, are not for our consideration. Of course I know, as everybody else does, that the results of marriage, in the present condition of society, are often more disastrous to woman than to men. Intemperance, for instance, burdens a wife worse than a husband, owing to the present state of society. It is not the fault of the statute-book, and no change in the duration of marriage would alter that inequality.

The reason why I object so emphatically to the introduction of the question here is because it is a question which admits of so many theories, physiological and religious, and what is technically called "free-love," that it is large enough for a movement of its own. Our question is only unnecessarily burdened with it. It can not be kept within the convenient limits of this enterprise; for this Woman's Rights Convention is not Man's Convention, and I hold that I, as a man, have an exactly equal interest in the essential question of marriage as woman has. I move, then, that these series of resolutions do not appear at all upon the journal of the Convention. If the speeches are reported, of course the resolutions will go with them. Most journals will report them as adopted. But I say to those who use this platform to make speeches on this question, that they do far worse than take more than their fair share of the time; they open a gulf into which our distinctive movement will be plunged, and its success postponed two years for every one that it need necessarily be.

Of course, in these remarks, I intend no reflection upon those whose views differ from mine in regard to introducing this subject before the Convention; but we had an experience two years ago on this point, and it seems to me that we might have learned by that lesson. No question—Anti-Slavery, Temperance, Woman's Rights—can move forward efficiently, unless it keeps its platform separate and unmixed with extraneous issues, unmixed with discussions which carry us into endless realms of debate. We have now, under our present civilization, to deal with the simple question which we propose—how to make that statute-book look upon woman exactly as it does upon man. Under the law of Divorce, one stands exactly like the other. All we have asked in regard to the law of property has been, that the statute-book of New York shall make the wife exactly like the husband; we do not go another step, and state what that right shall be. We do not ask law-makers whether there shall be rights of dower and courtesy—rights to equal shares—rights to this or that interest in property. That is not our business. All we say is, "Gentlemen law-makers, we represent woman; make what laws you please about marriage and property, but let woman stand under them exactly as man does; let sex deprive her of no right, let sex confer no special right; and that is all we claim." (Applause). Society has done that as to marriage and divorce, and we have nothing more to ask of it on this question, as a Woman's Rights body.

Abby Hopper Gibbons, of New York City, seconded the motion of Mr. Phillips, and said that she wished the whole subject of marriage and divorce might be swept from that platform, as it was manifestly not the place for it.

Mr. Garrison said he fully concurred in opinion with his friend, Mr. Phillips, that they had not come together to settle definitely the question of marriage, as such, on that platform; still, he should be sorry to have the motion adopted, as against the resolutions of Mrs. Stanton, because they were a part of her speech, and her speech was an elucidation of her resolutions, which were offered on her own responsibility, not on behalf of the Business Committee, and which did not, therefore, make the Convention responsible for them. It seemed to him that, in the liberty usually taken on that platform, both by way of argument and illustration, to show the various methods by which woman was unjustly, yet legally, subjected to the absolute control of man, she ought to be permitted to present her own sentiments. It was not the specific object of an Anti-Slavery Convention—for example—to discuss the conduct of Rev. Nehemiah Adams, or the position of Stephen A. Douglas, or the course of The York Herald; yet they did, incidentally, discuss all these, and many other matters closely related to the great struggle for the freedom of the slave. So this question of marriage came in as at least incidental to the main question of the equal rights of woman.

Mrs. Blackwell: I should like to say a few words in explanation. I do not understand whether our friend Wendell Phillips objects to both series of resolutions on the subject of divorce, or merely to mine.

Mr. Phillips: To both.

Mrs. Blackwell: I wish simply to say, that I did not come to the Convention proposing to speak on this subject, but on another; but finding that these resolutions were to be introduced, and believing the subject legitimate; I said, "I will take my own position." So I prepared the resolutions, as they enabled me at the moment better to express my thought than I could do by merely extemporizing.

Now does this question grow legitimately out of the great question of woman's equality? The world says, marriage is not an alliance between equals in human rights. My whole argument was based on the position that it is. If this question is not legitimate, what is? Then do we not ask for laws which are not equal between man and woman? What have we been doing here in New York State? I spent three months asking the State to allow the drunkard's wife her own earnings. Do I believe that the wife ought to take her own earnings, as her own earnings? No; I do not believe it. I believe that in a true marriage, the husband and wife earn for the family, and that the property is the family's—belongs jointly to the husband and wife. But if the law says that the property is the husband's, if it says that he may take the wages of his wife, just as the master does those of the slave, and she has no right to them, we must seek a temporary redress. We must take the first step, by compelling legislators, who will not look at great principles, to protect the wife of the drunkard, by giving her her own earnings to expend upon herself and her children, and not allow them to be wasted by the husband. I say that it is legitimate for us to ask for a law which we believe is merely a temporary expedient, not based upon the great principle of human and marriage equality. Just so with this question of marriage. It must come upon this platform, for at present it is a relation which legally and socially bears unequally upon woman. We must have temporary redress for the wife. The whole subject must be incidentally opened for discussion. The only question is one of present fitness. Was it best, under all the circumstances, to introduce it now? I have not taken the responsibility of answering in the affirmative. But it must come here and be settled, sooner or later, because its interests are everywhere, and all human relations center in this one marriage relation. (Applause).

Susan B. Anthony: I hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion that these resolutions shall not appear on the records of the Convention. I am very sure that it would be contrary to all parliamentary usage to say, that when the speeches which enforced and advocated the resolutions are reported and published in the proceedings, the resolutions shall not be placed there. And as to the point that this question does not belong to this platform,—from that I totally dissent. Marriage has ever been a one-sided matter, resting most unequally upon the sexes. By it, man gains all—woman loses all; tyrant law and lust reign supreme with him—meek submission and ready obedience alone befit her. Woman has never been consulted; her wish has never been taken into consideration as regards the terms of the marriage compact. By law, public sentiment and religion, from the time of Moses down to the present day, woman has never been thought of other than as a piece of property, to be disposed of at the will and pleasure of man. And this very hour, by our statute-books, by our (so called) enlightened Christian civilization, she has no voice whatever in saying what shall be the basis of the relation. She must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all.

And then again, on Mr. Phillips' own ground, the discussion is perfectly in order, since nearly all the wrongs of which we complain grow out of the inequality, the injustice of the marriage laws, that rob the wife of the right to herself and her children—that make her the slave of the man she marries.

I hope, therefore, the resolutions will be allowed to go out to the public, that there may be a fair report of the ideas which have actually been presented here, that they may not be left to the mercy of the secular press. I trust the Convention will not vote to forbid the publication of those resolutions with the proceedings.

Rev. Wm. Hoisington, the blind preacher: Publish all that you have said and done here, and let the public know it.

The question was then put on the motion of Mr. Phillips, and it was lost.

After which, the resolutions reported by the Business Committee were adopted without dissent.

Miss Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, said: Friends, we are about to separate. This convention was called for the consideration of one of the most important questions before the American people. The press may ridicule your movement, the pulpit denounce it, but, as time rolls on, it will be seen—the press and pulpit will see—that it is one of the most important questions that has ever agitated the community. It is well that those who are engaged in this movement should go forth deeply impressed with the importance of the work that is before them. It is well that you who have assembled from curiosity, to listen to what these "fanatics" have to say, should take home with you to your souls one thought which is sufficient to settle this whole question. All the arguments that have been adduced against us, and against granting to woman all her rights, come to us in one form or another of prejudice or expediency. Talk with whom you will about it,—the priest, politician, merchant, farmer, mechanic, and one after another says, (you have heard them, I have heard them, we all hear them,) to every right which woman claims, "I grant you that, in the abstract, you are right; but it is not expedient, nor wise, nor safe for woman nor man, nor good for the world." Let me tell you, that the man who grants that the position we assume is, in the abstract, right, has granted all we want; and if he is not ready to take that step of abstract right, he only assumes to be wiser than He who made the world.

Mrs. President, I hear every day of my life, almost, the assertion that it is fanaticism to say that it is always safe and right to follow abstract right. This principle does not belong to any one belief; it is the living soul of God's universe, that the absolute right is safe. If woman has the same right as man to read, to vote, to rule, to learn, to teach, there is nothing further to be said about it; and I never care to argue with the man who says it is right, but for some reason or other, it ought not to be granted, for he has granted everything, and has no ground left to stand upon.

Is it fanaticism to believe that God is wiser than man; that He, "who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth," who "commanded the morning, and caused the day-spring to know its place," is wise enough to give laws to the universe which it shall be safe for you and me to obey? (Applause). Into this fanaticism this world is to be educated, if it is to be saved from going down to moral ruin and death. Remember, then, O man! father, husband, brother, clergyman, and politician—remember, when these words slip so easily from your tongues, as they often do, "I grant you have the same abstract right to do this that man has," you grant all that woman claims; and remember, as you stand reverently in the presence of God, that if you assert that that is not safe which He has pronounced to be right, you claim to be wiser, not than these women or these men who stand on the platform of the "Woman's Rights Convention," but you claim to be wiser than the Creator of man and woman. (Applause).

Allusion was made here this morning—well and wisely made—to the charge that when woman walks out into the avenues of public life, there to gain a living for herself and her children, or to help guide the nation, she ceases to be domestic, and faithful to the cares and shrine of home. We heard something well said this morning on the sphere of woman being the home, and we are told that this objection to our movement was altogether dishonest, contemptible, and ridiculous. It is not always such. Good men and true, and sometimes wise men, also, really in their souls believe that if a woman touches a ballot, her hand will be unfit for domestic duties; that if she teaches in the public congregation, she can not act well her part in the family circle. As I listened to what was said here, the words called to my mind the image of a woman of America, known as a religious and moral teacher, who bears a name of which this nation will one day be proud, but now slandered by a venal press, scorned by an arrogant pulpit, little appreciated by the mass of men and women, for whom the bearer of it is laboring night and day. The image of that woman rose before me. The world regards her as a public woman, as out of her sphere, and infers that she is neglectful of the cares and insensible to the loveliness of domestic life; and as I remembered her, I felt as I ever feel, that there is not a woman who, as a representative of my own sex, I would sooner show to the world as the embodiment of all domestic beauty and wifely care and motherly fidelity. I only wish that they and you might know her as I know her. I only wish that you might see in her, as I see in her, the very best possible illustration of the power of guiding and guarding all the sanctity of home, of blessing husband and children and grandchildren, and exerting in the guidance of her household an intellectual power which would be the glory of this or any other platform. Not only do husband and children "rise up and call her blessed," but in the time to come, the children and children's children of those who now scorn her name—of priests who have despised it, editors who have ridiculed and slandered it, and heaped upon it all of the ignominy of their souls—will thank God, as they reap the benefit of her exertions and her beautiful life, for the name of Lucretia Mott. (Applause).

The word I would impress upon you all, as you go hence, is this—it is always safe to do right. Carry away with you from this Convention, my friends, this one thought—God is wiser than man. What He has made right, He has also made safe. His paths are paths of pleasantness, and all His ways are peace. And to those who go forward, bearing this great cause in their hands, to work for themselves, for their sisters, for their mothers—to them I would say, "Be not discouraged at any obstacles that may lie in your way! Forget, for a little while, the sneers of the press and the pulpit, the laugh of the fashionable lady, who calls you unladylike, and the scorn of arrogant men, who appreciate not your labors! You need not pay back the laughter and the scorn with scorn. Your work is too great, too high, too holy. Forgive them, and pass on! Rejoice to think that, in a few years, they, too, will rise up and thank you for it. Those who work for mankind must be content not to receive their reward in the appreciation of their services as they pass through life. It is of little consequence. The only thing is to be sure we are doing right, and living for some great purpose; for, of all the afflictions that can befall a man or woman, there is none so great as to pass through life without effecting anything—to die and leave the world no better than we found it, never being missed in consequence of any useful work we have done. (Applause). No good cause can go backward. No good cause declines. Nothing can put us down if we are right. All that we need to sustain and strengthen us in any great work is to be quite satisfied with the smile of God, and to have faith and hope that man shall at last be wholly and utterly redeemed and saved." (Applause).

The Convention then adjourned sine die.

From The New York Tribune of May 80.

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.

To the Editor of The New York Tribune:

Sir:—At our recent National Woman's Rights Convention many were surprised to hear Wendell Phillips object to the question of Marriage and Divorce, as irrelevant to our platform. He said: "We had no right to discuss there any laws or customs but those where inequality existed in the sexes; that the laws on Marriage and Divorce rested equally on man and woman; that he suffered, as much as she possibly could, the wrongs and abuses of an ill-assorted marriage."

Now, it must strike every careful thinker, that an immense difference rests in the fact, that man has made the laws, cunningly and selfishly, for his own purpose. From Coke down to Kent, who can cite one clause of the marriage contract where woman has the advantage? When man suffers from false legislation, he has his remedy in his own hands. Shall woman be denied the right of protest against laws in which she has had no voice—laws which outrage the holiest affections of her nature—laws which transcend the limits of human legislation—in a Convention called for the express purpose of considering her wrongs? He might as well object to a protest against the injustice of hanging a woman, because capital punishment bears equally on man and woman.

The contract of marriage is by no means equal. The law permits the girl to marry at twelve years of age, while it requires several years more of experience on the part of the boy. In entering this compact, the man gives up nothing that he before possessed—he is a man still; while the legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, and henceforth she is known but in and through the husband. She is nameless, purseless, childless—though a woman, an heiress, and a mother.

Blackstone says: "The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband." Kent says: "The legal effects of marriage are generally deducible from the principle of the common law, by which the husband and wife are regarded as one person, and her legal existence and authority lost or suspended during the continuance of the matrimonial union."—Vol. 2, p. 109. Kent refers to Coke on Littleton, 112, a. 187, B. Litt. sec. 168, 291.

The wife is regarded by all legal authorities as a "feme-covert," placed wholly sub potestate viri. Her moral responsibility, even, is merged in the husband. The law takes it for granted that the wife lives in fear of her husband; that his command is her highest law: hence a wife is not punishable for theft committed in presence of her husband.—Kent, vol. 2, p. 127. An unmarried woman can make contracts, sue and be sued, enjoy the rights of property, to her inheritance—to her wages—to her person—to her children; but, in marriage, she is robbed by law of all and every natural and civil right. "The disability of the wife to contract, so as to bind herself, arises not from want of discretion, but because she has entered into an indissoluble connection, by which she is placed under the power and protection of her husband."—Kent, vol. 2, p. 127. She is possessed of certain rights until she is married; then all are suspended, to revive again the moment the breath goes out of the husband's body.—See "Cowen's Treatise," vol. 2, p. 709.

If the contract be equal, whence come the terms "marital power"—"marital rights"—"obedience and restraint"—"dominion and control"—"power and protection," etc., etc.? Many cases are stated, showing the exercise of a most questionable power over the wife, sustained by the courts.—See Bishop on Divorce, p. 489.

The laws on Divorce are quite as unequal as those on Marriage; yes, far more so. The advantages seem to be all on one side, and the penalties on the other. In case of divorce, if the husband be the guilty party, he still retains the greater part of the property. If the wife be the guilty party, she goes out of the partnership penniless.—Kent, vol. 2, p. 33; Bishop on Divorce, p. 492.

In New York and some other States, the wife of the guilty husband can now sue for a divorce in her own name, and the costs come out of the husband's estate; but, in the majority of the States, she is still compelled to sue in the name of another, as she has no means of paying costs, even though she may have brought her thousands into the partnership. "The allowance to the innocent wife of ad interim alimony and money to sustain the suit, is not regarded as strict right in her, but of sound discretion in the court."—Bishop on Divorce, p. 581.

"Many jurists," says Kent, vol. 2, p. 88, "are of opinion that the adultery of the husband ought not to be noticed or made subject to the same animadversions as that of the wife, because it is not evidence of such entire depravity, nor equally injurious in its effects upon the morals, good order, and happiness of domestic life. Montesquieu, Pothier, and Dr. Taylor all insist that the cases of husband and wife ought to be distinguished, and that the violation of the marriage vow, on the part of the wife, is the most mischievous, and the prosecution ought to be confined to the offense on her part.—"Esprit des Loix," tom. 3, 186; "Traité du Contrat de Mariage," No. 516; "Elements of Civil Law," p. 254.

Say you, "These are but the opinions of men"? On what else, I ask, are the hundreds of women depending, who this hour demand in our courts a release from burdensome contracts? Are not these delicate matters left wholly to the discretion of courts? Are not young women from the first families dragged into the public courts—into assemblies of men exclusively—the judges all men, the jurors all men?—no true woman there to shield them by her presence from gross and impertinent questionings, to pity their misfortunes, or to protest against their wrongs?

The administration of justice depends far more on the opinions of eminent jurists, than on law alone, for law is powerless when at variance with public sentiment.

Do not the above citations clearly prove inequality? Are not the very letter and spirit of the marriage contract based on the idea of the supremacy of man as the keeper of woman's virtue—her sole protector and support? Out of marriage, woman asks nothing at this hour but the elective franchise. It is only in marriage that she must demand her rights to person, children, property, wages, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How can we discuss all the laws and conditions of marriage, without perceiving its essential essence, end, and aim? Now, whether the institution of marriage be human or divine, whether regarded as indissoluble by ecclesiastical courts, or dissoluble by civil courts, woman, finding herself equally degraded in each and every phase of it, always the victim of the institution, it is her right and her duty to sift the relation and the compact through and through, until she finds out the true cause of her false position. How can we go before the Legislatures of our respective States, and demand new laws, or no laws, on divorce, until we have some idea of what the true relation is?

We decide the whole question of slavery by settling the sacred rights of the individual. We assert that man can not hold property in man, and reject the whole code of laws that conflicts with the self-evident truth of that assertion.

Again I ask, is it possible to discuss all the laws of a relation, and not touch the relation itself?

Yours respectfully,

Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Horace Greeley in The New York Tribune, May 14, 1860.

One Thousand Persons Present, seven-eighths of them Women, and a fair Proportion Young and Good-looking.—Whether the Woman's Rights Convention will finally succeed or not in enlarging the sphere of woman, they have certainly been very successful in enlarging that of their platform. Having introduced easy Divorce as one of the reforms which the new order of things demands, we can see no good reason why the platform should not be altogether replanked. We respectfully suggest that with this change of purpose there shall also be a change in name, and that hereafter these meetings shall be called not by name of Woman, but in the name of Wives Discontented. Hitherto we have supposed that the aim of this movement related to wrongs which woman suffered as woman, political and social inequalities, and disabilities with which she was mightily burdened. A settlement of the marriage relation, we conceive, does not come within this category. As there can be no wives without husbands, the subject concerns the latter quite as much as it does the former. One of the wrongs which it is charged woman suffers from man, is that he legislates for her when she is not represented. We acknowledge the justice of that plea, and, for that very reason, complain that she, under the name of Woman's Rights, should attempt to settle a question of such vital importance to him where he is supposed to be admitted only on suffrance. We believe in woman's rights; we have some conclusions(?) on the rights of husbands and wives; we are not yet, we confess, up to that advanced state which enables us to consider the rights of wives as something apart from that of husbands.

On the subject of marriage and divorce we have some very positive opinions, and what they are is pretty generally known. But even were they less positive and fixed, we should none the less protest against the sweeping character of the resolutions introduced at the Woman's Rights Convention on Friday by Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. We can not look upon the marriage relation as of no more binding force than that which a man may make with a purchaser for the sale of dry-goods, or an engagement he may contract with a schoolmaster or governess. Such doctrine seems to us simply shocking.

The intimate relation existing between one man and one woman, sanctified by, at least, the memory of an early and sincere affection, rendered more sacred by the present bond of dependent children, the fruit of that love, hallowed by many joys and many sorrows, though they be only remembered joys and sorrows, with other interests that can be broken in upon only to be destroyed—such a relation, we are very sure, has elements of quite another nature than those which belong to the shop or the counting-house. In our judgment, the balance of duty can not be struck like the balance of a mercantile statement of profit and loss, or measured with the calculations we bestow on an account current. Such a doctrine we regard as pernicious and debasing. We can conceive of nothing that would more utterly sap the foundations of sound morality, or give a looser rein to the most licentious and depraved appetites of the vilest men and women. Upon the physiological and psychological laws which govern generation, we do not care here to enter, even if Mrs. Stanton leads the way; but we believe that the progress of the world, springing out of connections formed under such a dispensation of humanity as is here indicated, with so little of duty or conscience, with so little hope or expectation of abiding affection, with so little intention of permanency as must necessarily belong to them, would be more monstrous than the world has ever dreamed of. For such a rule of married life contemplates no married life at all, and no parental relation. It destroys the family; it renders the dearest word in the Saxon tongue (home) a vague and unmeaning term; it multiplies a thousand-fold and renders universal all the evils which in the imperfections of human nature are now occasional under the binding force of a moral sense, the duty of continency, and the remnant of nothing else is left of love.

There are some other things besides in these resolutions to which we might object on the score of truth, some things which we rather marvel, modest women should say, and that modest women, in a mixed assembly, should listen to with patience. But these are secondary matters. The thought—more than them all—that the marriage tie is of the same nature as a mere business relation, is so objectionable, so dangerous, that we do not care to draw attention from that one point.

In asserting that marriage is an equal relation for husbands and wives, Mr. Greeley, like Mr. Phillips, begs the whole question. If it is legitimate to discuss all laws that bear unequally on man and woman in woman's rights conventions, surely those that grow out of marriage, which are the most oppressive and degrading on the statute-book, should command our first consideration. There could be no slaveholders without slaves; the one relation involves the other, and yet it would be absurd to say that slaves might not hold a convention to discuss the inequality of the laws sustaining that relation, and incidentally the whole institution itself, because the slaveholder shared in the evils resulting from it. There never has been a woman's convention held in which the injustice suffered by wives and mothers has not been a topic for discussion, and legitimately so. And if the only way of escape from the infamous laws by which all power is placed in the hands of man, is through divorce, then that is the hospitable door to open for those who wish to escape. No proposition contained in Mrs. Stanton's speech on divorce, viewed in any light, can be a tenth part so shocking as the laws on the statute-books, or the opinions expressed by many of the authorities in the English and American systems of jurisprudence.

It is difficult to comprehend that the release of the miserable from false relations, would necessarily seduce the contented from happy ones, or that the dearest word in the Saxon tongue (home) should have no significance, after drunkards and villains were denied the right to enter it. It is a pleasant reflection, in view of the dolorous results Mr. Greeley foresees from the passage of a divorce law, that the love of men and women for each other and their children in no way depends on the Statutes of New York. In the State of Indiana, where the laws have been very liberal for many years, family life is as beautiful and permanent as in South Carolina and New York, where the tie can be dissolved for one cause only. When we consider how little protection the State throws round the young and thoughtless in entering this relation, stringent laws against all escape are cruel and despotic, especially to woman, for if home life, which is everything to her, is discordant, where can she look for happiness?

APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF NEW YORK.

Women Of New York:—Once more we appeal to you to make renewed efforts for the elevation of our sex. In our marital laws we are now in advance of every State in the Union. Twelve years ago New York took the initiative step, and secured to married women their property, received by gift or inheritance. Our last Legislature passed a most liberal act, giving to married women their rights, to sue for damages of person or property, to their separate earnings and their children; and to the widow, the possession and control of the entire estate during the minority of the youngest child. Women of New York! You can no longer be insulted in the first days of your widowed grief by the coarse minions of the law at your fireside, coolly taking an inventory of your household goods, or robbing your children of their natural guardian.

While we rejoice in this progress made in our laws, we see also a change in the employment of women. They are coming down from the garrets and up from the cellars to occupy more profitable posts in every department of industry, literature, science, and art. In the church, too, behold the spirit of freedom at work. Within the past year, the very altar has been the scene of well-fought battles; women claiming and exercising their right to vote in church matters, in defiance of precedent, priest, or Paul.

Another evidence of the importance of our cause is seen in the deep interest men of wealth are manifesting in it. Three great bequests have been given to us in the past year. Five thousand dollars from an unknown hand,[171] a share in the munificent fund left by that noble man of Boston, Charles F. Hovey, and four hundred thousand dollars by Mr. Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, to found a college for girls, equal in all respects to Yale and Harvard. Is it not strange that women of wealth are constantly giving large sums of money to endow professorships and colleges for boys exclusively—to churches and to the education of the ministry, and yet give no thought to their own sex—crushed in ignorance, poverty, and prostitution—the hopeless victims of custom, law, and Gospel, with few to offer a helping hand, while the whole world combine to aid the boy and glorify the man?

Our movement is already felt in the Old World. The nobility of England, with Lord Brougham at their head, have recently formed a "Society for Promoting the Employments of Women."

All this is the result of the agitation, technically called "Woman's Rights," through conventions, lectures, circulation of tracts and petitions, and by the faithful word uttered in the privacy of home. The few who stand forth to meet the world's cold gaze, its ridicule, its contumely, and its scorn, are urged onward by the prayers and tears, crushed hopes and withered hearts of the sad daughters of the race. The wretched will not let them falter; and they who seem to do the work, ever and anon draw fresh courage and inspiration from the noblest women of the age, who, from behind the scene, send forth good words of cheer and heartfelt thanks.

Six years hence, the men of New York purpose to revise our State Constitution. Among other changes demanded, is the right of suffrage for women—which right will surely be granted, if through all the intervening years every woman does her duty. Again do we appeal to each and all—to every class and condition—to inform themselves on this question, that woman may no longer publish her degradation by declaring herself satisfied in her present position, nor her ignorance by asserting that she has "all the rights she wants."

Any person who ponders the startling fact that there are four millions of African slaves in this republic, will instantly put the question to himself, "Why do these people submit to the cruel tyranny that our government exercises over them?" The answer is apparent—"simply because they are ignorant of their power." Should they rise en masse, assert and demand their rights, their freedom would be secure. It is the same with woman. Why is it that one-half the people of this nation are held in abject dependence—civilly, politically, socially, the slaves of man? Simply because woman knows not her power. To find out her natural rights, she must travel through such labyrinths of falsehood, that most minds stand appalled before the dark mysteries of life—the seeming contradictions in all laws, both human and divine. But, because woman can not solve the whole problem to her satisfaction, because she can not prove to a demonstration the rottenness and falsehood of our present customs, shall she, without protest, supinely endure evils she can not at once redress? The silkworm, in its many wrappings, knows not it yet shall fly. The woman, in her ignorance, her drapery, and her chains, knows not that in advancing civilization, she too must soon be free, to counsel with her conscience and her God.

The religion of our day teaches that in the most sacred relations of the race, the woman must ever be subject to the man; that in the husband centers all power and learning; that the difference in position between husband and wife is as vast as that between Christ and the church; and woman struggles to hold the noble impulses of her nature in abeyance to opinions uttered by a Jewish teacher, which, alas! the mass believe to be the will of God. Woman turns from what she is taught to believe are God's laws to the laws of man; and in his written codes she finds herself still a slave. No girl of fifteen could read the laws, concerning woman, made, executed, and defended by those who are bound to her by every tie of affection, without a burst of righteous indignation. Few have ever read or heard of the barbarous laws that govern the mothers of this Christian republic, and fewer still care, until misfortune brings them into the iron grip of the law. It is the imperative duty of educated women to study the Constitution and statutes under which they live, that when they shall have a voice in the government, they may bring wisdom and not folly into its councils.

We now demand the ballot, trial by jury of our peers, and an equal right to the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership. And, until the Constitution be so changed as to give us a voice in the government, we demand that man shall make all his laws on property, marriage, and divorce, to bear equally on man and woman.

New York State Woman's Rights Committee.

{

E. Cady Stanton, President. Lydia Mott,[172] Sec. and Treas. Ernestine L. Rose. Martha C. Wright. Susan B. Anthony.

November, 1860.

N. B.—Let every friend commence to get signatures to the petition without delay, and send up to Albany early in January, either to your representative or to Lydia Mott.

How can any wife or mother, who to-day rejoices in her legal right to the earnings of her hands, and the children of her love, withhold the small pittance of a few hours or days in getting signatures to the petition, or a few shillings or dollars to carry the work onward and upward, to a final glorious consummation.

New York State Woman's Rights Committee.

{

E. Cady Stanton, President. Lydia Mott,[172] Sec. and Treas. Ernestine L. Rose. Martha C. Wright. Susan B. Anthony.

CONVENTION IN ALBANY AND HEARING BEFORE THE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE IN THE ASSEMBLY CHAMBER.
February 7th and 8th, 1861.

The last Convention before the War was held in Albany. Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. Beriah Green, Aaron M. Powell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony were the speakers. They had a hearing also before the Judiciary Committee on the bill then pending asking divorce for various causes.[173] The interest in the question was intense at this time, owing to several very aggravated cases among leading families, both in this country and England. The very liberal bill pending in the Legislature had drawn special attention to it in the Empire State, which not only made the whole question of marriage and divorce a topic of conversation at every fireside, but of many editorial debates in our leading journals. Among others, Horace Greeley, in The New York Tribune, had a prolonged discussion with the Hon. Robert Dale Owen,[174] in which it was generally thought that the weight of argument rested with Mr. Owen; but it was evident that Mr. Greeley did not think so, as he afterward republished the whole controversy at his own expense. The Albany Evening Journal also took strong grounds against the bill. But the opponents invariably discussed the question on the basis that marriage was an equal relation, in which man suffered as much as woman, ignoring the fact that man had made the laws governing it, and all to his own advantage.

From the following letter of Lucretia Mott, we see how clear she was as to the merits of the position we had taken in the discussion of this vital question:

Roadside, near Philadelphia, 4th Mo., 30th, '61.

My Dear Lydia Mott:—I have wished ever since parting with thee and our other dear friends in Albany to send thee a line, and have only waited in the hope of contributing a little "substantial aid" toward your neat and valuable "depository." The twenty dollars enclosed is from our Female Anti-Slavery Society.

I see the annual meeting in New York is not to be held this spring. Sister Martha is here, and was expecting to attend both anniversaries. But we now think the Woman's Rights meeting had better not be attempted, and she has written Elizabeth C. Stanton to this effect.

I was well satisfied with being at the Albany meeting. I have since met with the following from a speech of Lord Brougham's, which pleased me, as being as radical as mine in your stately Hall of Representatives:

"Before woman can have any justice by the laws of England, there must be a total reconstruction of the whole system; for any attempt to amend it would prove useless. The great charter, in establishing the supremacy of law over prerogative, provides only for justice between man and man; for woman nothing is left but common-law, accumulations and modifications of original Gothic and Roman heathenism, which no amount of filtration through ecclesiastical courts could change into Christian laws. They are declared unworthy a Christian people by great jurists; still they remain unchanged."

So Elizabeth Stanton will see that I have authority for going to the root of the evil.

We had a delightful golden-wedding on the 10th inst. All our children and children's children were present, and a number of our friends hereaway. Our sister Mary W. Hicks and her grand daughter May were all of James's relatives from New York. Brother Richard and daughter Cannie could not feel like coming. Brother Silas and Sarah Cornell could not come.

Lucretia Mott.

Love to all,

In 1861 came "the war of the rebellion," the great conflict between the North and the South, the final struggle between freedom and slavery. The women who had so perseveringly labored for their own enfranchisement now gave all their time and thought to the nation's life; their patriotism was alike spontaneous and enduring. In the sanitary movement, in the hospitals, on the battle-field, gathering in the harvests on the far-off prairies—all that heroic women dared and suffered through those long dark years of anxiety and death, should have made "justice to woman" the spontaneous cry on the lips of our rulers, as we welcomed the return of the first glad days of peace. All specific work for her own rights she willingly thrust aside. No Conventions were held for five years; no petitions circulated for her civil and political rights; the action of State Legislatures was wholly forgotten. In their stead, Loyal Leagues were formed, and petitions by the hundred thousand for the emancipation of the slaves rolled up and sent to Congress—a measure which with speech and pen they pressed on the nation's heart, seeing clearly as they did that this was the pivotal point of the great conflict.

Thus left unwatched, the Legislature of New York amended the law of 1860, taking from the mother the lately guaranteed right to the equal guardianship of her children, replacing it by a species of veto power, which did not allow the father to bind out or will away a child without the mother's consent in writing. The law guaranteeing the widow the control of the property, which the husband should leave at death, for the care and protection of minor children, was also repealed. This cowardly act of the Legislature of 1862[175] is the strongest possible proof of woman's need of the ballot in her own hand for protection. Had she possessed the power to make and unmake legislators, no State Assembly would have dared thus to rob the mother of her natural rights. But without the suffrage she was helpless. While, in her loyalty to the Government and her love to humanity, she was encouraging the "boys in blue" to fight for the freedom of the black mothers of the South, these dastardly law-makers, filled with the spirit of slaveholders, were stealing the children and the property of the white mothers in the Empire State!

When Susan B. Anthony heard of the repeal of 1862, she was filled with astonishment, and wrote thus to Miss Lydia Mott:

Dear Lydia:—Your startling letter is before me. I knew some weeks ago that that abominable thing was on the calendar, with some six or eight hundred bills before it, and hence felt sure it would not come up this winter, and that in the meantime we should sound the alarm. Well, well; while the old guard sleep the young "devils" are wide-awake, and we deserve to suffer for our confidence in "man's sense of justice," and to have all we have gained thus snatched from us. But nothing short of this can rouse our women again to action. All our reformers seem suddenly to have grown politic. All alike say, "Have no conventions at this crisis"! Garrison, Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Wright Mrs. Stanton, etc., say, "Wait until the war excitement abates"; which is to say, "Ask our opponents if they think we had better speak, or, rather, if they do not think we had better remain silent." I am sick at heart, but I can not carry the world against the wish and the will of our best friends. But what can we do now, when even the motion to retain the mother's joint guardianship is voted, down? Twenty thousand petitions rolled up for that—a hard year's work!—the law secured!—the echoes of our words of gratitude in the capitol have scarce died away, and now all is lost!

And, worse still, in 1871,[176] after the black man was not only emancipated, but enfranchised, by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which, overriding State Constitution and statute law, abolished the property qualification for colored voters in the State of New York, another step of retrogressive legislation was taken against woman, in the repeal of section nine[177] of the Act of 1860, re-enacting the spirit and letter of the old common law, which holds that the children born in legal wedlock belong to the father alone. Had woman held the ballot—that weapon of protection—in her hand to punish legislators, by withholding her vote from those thus derelict to duty, no repeal of the law of 1860 could have possibly taken place.

Albany, April 8, 1881.

Dear Miss Anthony:—Your esteemed favor of the 6th duly received.

The Statute of 1862, Laws of 1862, chapter 90, page 157, repealed the grandest and crowning section of the Statute of 1860, viz: Sections 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11, copies of which sections I herewith inclose you. Had these sections remained, wives in this State would have possessed equal rights with their husbands, save simply the right of voting. It was a great mistake and wrong to repeal them. Had I been a member of the Senate at that time, as I was not, I don't think it would have been done.

I do not know who was the author of the repeal bill, nor did I know of its existence until I saw it in the statute-book. I think Judge Charles J. Folger, now Chief-Justice of the Court of Appeals, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the bill of 1862 must therefore have passed through the hands of that Committee, in which it originated, or through which it was reported, and by the influence of which it must have been adopted.

Strange that you women, so watchful and so regardful of your rights, should have allowed the repeal of those important sections, without strenuous opposition.

Very sincerely yours,

Andrew J. Colvin.

We were busily engaged rolling up petitions for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, our hearts and hands full of work for the Government in the midst of the war, supposing all was safe at Albany. But how comes it that the author of the bill of 1860, residing at the capital, never heard of its repeal? If the bill was so slyly passed that Mr. Colvin himself did not know of it until he saw it in the statute-book, it is not remarkable that it escaped our notice in time to prevent it.

Genena, N. Y., April 12, 1881.

Miss Anthony, Dear Madam:—I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the New York Senate in 1862-'3-'4-'5-'6-'7-'8-'9. Judge John Willard, of Saratoga County, was a member of the State Senate in that year, and a member of that Committee. He was the author of the Act of 1862. His object, as I have always understood it, was to simplify, make clear, consistent, and practical some of the legislation in regard to married women. I think, with deference I say it, that you are not strictly accurate in calling the legislation of 1862 a repealing one. The first section of the Act of 1862 (chap. 172, p. 343) amends the third section of the Act of 1860 (chap. 90, p. 157), by striking out the provision requiring the assent of the husband, and giving the wife the right (or privilege) to contract and convey as a feme sole, and to covenant for title, etc., etc. That amendment rendered unnecessary the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of the Act of 1860. They would have fallen of themselves, that is, have been repealed by implication, as inconsistent with the greater power and freedom attained by married women by the amendment of 1862 to the Act of 1860. But ex abundanti cautela, as Judge Willard would have said, there was an express repeal of them. The tenth and eleventh sections of the Act of 1860 were also repealed expressly; but not to the sole detriment of married women. The tenth section gave to married men and married women a life estate in certain cases in one-third of all the real estate of which the wife or husband died seized. The wife had before the Act of 1860, and has now, that estate. The tenth section gave her nothing. The repeal of it took nothing from her. The eleventh section, so far as it gave a life estate, is the same as the tenth. So far as it gave the use of all the real estate of the intestate for the minority of the youngest child, it was an addition to the property rights of the wife, but it was also an addition to the property rights of the husband. I am not able from memory to say why it was repealed; and it is remembrance and not reasoning that you ask for. The third section of the Act of 1862 amends the seventh of the Act of 1860 by striking out the phrase, "except her husband," thus enabling a married woman to protect the property given to her by the husband, in which the Act of 1860 was lame, and in other ways gave more freedom and power to married women. The fourth section of the Act of 1862 amends the eighth section of the Act of 1860, but only in its verbiage. The fifth section of the Act of 1862 does not impair the Act of 1860; it simply puts the woman before the courts, and the law as an entity able to go alone. The sixth section of the Act of 1862 increases the powers of a married woman, by giving her a veto on some acts of her husband. The seventh section is like the fifth. In no other respect than those I have named did the Act of 1862 affect the Act of 1860. In but one thing did it repeal, in the sense of taking away any right or power or privilege or freedom that the Act of 1860 gave. On the contrary, in some respects, it gave more or greater.

I am glad that you wrote to me. I am glad that I have the opportunity to defend the memory of a good man, Judge John Willard. I make bold to ask you to turn to the thirty-seventh volume of Barbour's Supreme Court Reports, Appendix, pp. 670 et seq., and read the words spoken of him by his peers. I am glad also to have the opportunity to speak a word for my Judiciary Committee.

And I will not close this lengthened answer, without suggesting a suspicion, that those who have taken the notion that the Act of 1862 was a retrograde step, have done so without comparing for themselves the two acts.

For myself, I have the distinction of being one of less than half-a-dozen Senators who voted that women have the right to vote for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1866; and one of about a dozen and a half members of that Convention who voted to erase from the suffrage article the word "male." I have never been convinced of the expediency of giving to females the privilege of suffrage; but I have never been able to see the argument by which they were not as much entitled to the right as males.

Trusting that you will forgive the length of this epistle,

I am with respect, yours, etc., etc.,

Charles J. Folger.

Miss Susan B. Anthony.

As will be seen by the above letters, both Mr. Colvin and Mr. Folger make mistakes in regard to the effect of these bills. In speaking of the complete equality of husbands and wives under the law of 1860, Mr. Colvin said, "All the wife then had to ask was the right of suffrage," quite forgetting that the wife has never had an equal right to the joint earnings of the copartnership, as no valuation has ever been placed on her labor in the household, to which she gives all her time, thought, and strength, the absolute sacrifice of herself, mind and body, all possibility of self-development and self-improvement being in most cases out of the question. Mr. Folger in saying the repeal of section eleven affected man as much as woman, falls into the same mistake, assuming that the joint earnings belong to man. We say that the wife who surrenders herself wholly to domestic life, foregoing all opportunities for pecuniary independence and personal distinction in the world of work, or the higher walks of literature and art, in order to make it possible for the husband to have home and family ties, and at the same time, his worldly successes and ambitions, richly earns the place of an equal partner. In their joint accumulations, her labor and economy should be taken into account.

This is the vital point of interest to the vast majority of married women, since it is only the few who ever possess anything through separate earnings or inheritance. A law securing to the wife the absolute right to one-half the joint earnings, and at the death of the husband, the same control of property and children that he has when she dies, might make some show of justice; but it is a provision not yet on the statute-books of any civilized nation on the globe.

The seeming sophistry of Judge Folger may be traced to the universal fact that man does not appreciate the arduous and unremitting labors of the wife in the household, or her settled dissatisfaction in having no pecuniary recompense for her labors. No man with cultured brain and skilled hands would consider himself recompensed for a life of toil in being provided with shelter, food, and clothes while his employer was living, to be cut down in his old age to a mere pittance; yet such is the fate of the majority of wives and widows under the most beneficent provisions of our statutes in this favored republic. True, the law says "the husband shall maintain the wife in accordance with his circumstances"; he being judge, jury, executive. Though she may toil incessantly, and her duties be far more exhaustive than his, yet he is supposed to maintain her, and the joint property is always disposed of on that basis. Legislation for woman proceeds on the assumption, that all she needs is a bare support; and that she is destitute of the natural human desire to accumulate, possess, and control the results of her own labor.