It is easier, when the old is destroyed, to build the new right, than to right it after it is built.
The statute books of every State in the Union are disgraced by an article which limits the right to the elective franchise to "male citizens of twenty-one years of age and upwards," thus excluding one-half the population of the country from all political influence, subjecting woman to laws in the making of which she has neither vote nor voice. The lowest drunkard may come up from wallowing in the gutter, and, covered with filth, reel up to the ballot-box and deposit his vote, and his right to do so is not questioned. The meanest foreigner who comes to our shores, who can not speak his mother-tongue correctly, has secured for him the right of suffrage. The negro, crushed and degraded, as if he were not a brother man, made the lowest of the law, even he, in some of the States, can vote; but woman, in every State, is politically plunged in a degradation lower than his lowest depths.
Woman is taxed under laws made by those who profess to believe that taxation and representation are inseparable, while, in the use and imposition of the taxes, as in representation, she is absolutely without influence. Should she hint that the profession and practice do not agree, she is gravely told that "Women should not talk politics." In most of the States the married woman loses, by her marriage, the control of her person and the right of property, and, if she is a mother, the right to her children also: while she secures what the town paupers have—the right to be maintained. The legal disabilities under which women labor have no end: I will not attempt to enumerate them. Let the earnest women who speak in your Convention enter into the detail of this thing, nor stop to "patch fig-leaves for the naked truth," but "before all Israel and the sun," expose the atrocities of the laws relative to women, until the ears of those who hear shall tingle. So that the men who meet in Convention to form the new Constitution for Ohio, shall, for very shame's sake, make haste to put away the last remnant of the barbarism which your statute book (in common with other States) retains in its inequality and injustice to woman. We know too well the stern reform spirit of those who have called this Woman's Eights Convention, to doubt for a moment that what can be done by you to secure equal rights for all, will be done.
Massachusetts ought to have taken the lead in the work you are now doing, but if she chooses to linger, let her young sisters of the West set her a worthy example; and if the "Pilgrim spirit is not dead," we'll pledge Massachusetts to follow her.
Lucy Stone.
Yours, for Justice and Equal Rights,
Southampton, April 10, 1850.
Letter from Sarah Pugh.
"Lawrencian Villa is extremely beautiful; the grounds full of shrubbery and flowers; the splendid dairy, the green-houses and conservatories—four or five of them appropriated to fruit, flowers, and rare plants in large numbers—the whole presenting great taste and skill. Mrs. Lawrence's improvements are not completed; she is extending her shrubbery and walks. She is undoubtedly one of the most skillful cultivators and florists in the country (a country abounding with them), and carries off more prizes at the horticultural exhibitions than almost any one else. I am told Mr. Lawrence is an eminent surgeon in London, and that the whole of the country place is under Mrs. Lawrence's management."—Colman's Letters from Europe.
Dear Friends:—As I finished reading this paragraph, your letter, inviting me to your Convention, to be held on the 19th inst., was received. I can not, as I gladly would, be with you. That my mite may not be wanting in aid of the cause, taking the above extract for my text, I would add as a commentary, that, according to the laws and usages of a large portion of Christendom, in the event of the death of Mr. Lawrence, Mrs. Lawrence, the one whose skill and taste has formed this elegant establishment, would be left by the will of Mr. Lawrence an income from a part of the estate, and the "privilege" of occupying "during her natural life," two or three rooms in the large mansion, but powerless as a stranger in the beautiful demesne made valuable by her industry and skill! This is not "supposing" a case, only in the application of it to Mrs. L. In this country, where, as a general rule, women take their full share of the labor and responsibility of a household, and thus by their constant assiduity contribute their full proportion to the means by which a comfortable competence is secured, do we not see the disposal of it assumed as a matter of right by the male partner of the firm?