Famous leaders among men

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

When they reached England, the women were refused as delegates. They asked Wendell Phillips to plead their cause. When he left the house in London to do so, his wife said to him, "Wendell, don't shilly-shally."

He spoke with his usual politeness and power: "It is the custom there [America] not to admit colored men into respectable society; and we have been told again and again that we are outraging the decencies of humanity when we permit colored men to sit by our side. When we have submitted to brickbats and the tar-tub and feathers in America, rather than yield to the custom prevalent there of not admitting colored brethren into our friendship, shall we yield to parallel custom or prejudice against women in Old England?

"We cannot yield this question if we would, for it is a matter of conscience, ... and British virtue ought not to ask us to yield."

The women were not admitted, however, and were obliged to sit in the gallery as spectators. None the less the women of both nations owe Phillips hearty thanks for his appreciation and his justice. Father Mathew, the great temperance leader of Ireland, deeply regretted the exclusion of the women delegates.

After the convention, Phillips and his wife went, by way of Belgium and the Rhine, to Kissingen, in Bavaria. He writes to a friend in England: "To Americans it was especially pleasant to see at Frankfort the oldest printed Bible in the world, and two pairs of Luther's shoes, which Ann would not quit sight of till I had mustered German enough to ask the man to let the 'little girl' feel of them."

Again he writes: "We started for Florence, by Bologna, that jewel of a city; ... for she admits women to be professors in her university, her gallery guards their paintings, her palaces boast their sculptures. I gloried in standing beside a woman-professor's monument, set up side by side with that of the illustrious Galvani."

To Garrison he writes from Naples, having then the same sympathy for the poor and the laborer which he showed through life: "When you meet in the same street a man encompassed with all the equipage of wealth, and the beggar, on whose brow disease and starvation have written his title to your pity, the question is, involuntarily, Is this a Christian city? To my mind the answer is, No....

"I hope the discussion of the question of property will not cease until the Church is convinced that, from Christian lips ownership means responsibility for the right use of what God has given; that the title of a needy brother is as sacred as the owner's own, and infringed upon, too, whenever that owner allows the siren voice of his own tastes to drown the cry of another's necessities.... None know what it is to live till they redeem life from monotony by sacrifice."