Miss Jane Cobden, daughter of Richard Cobden, said in the course of her letter: "I feel all the more certain of the righteousness of the work in which I am so much engaged, because I know from words spoken and written by my father as far back as 1845, that had he been living at the present day I should have had his sympathy. He was nothing if not consistent, and so he said in a speech delivered in London that year on Free Trade: 'There are many ladies present, I am happy to say. Now it is a very anomalous and singular fact that they can not vote themselves and yet they have the power of conferring votes upon other people. I wish they had the franchise, for they would often make a much better use of it than their husbands.'"
Miss Caroline Ashurst Biggs, for many years editor of the Englishwoman's Review, sent a full report of the situation in England. There was a letter of greeting also from Miss Lydia Becker, editor of the Women's Suffrage Journal and member of the Manchester School Board. John P. Thomasson and Peter A. Taylor, members of Parliament, favored woman suffrage in the strongest terms, the latter saying: "Justice never can be done to the rising generations till the influence of the mother is freed from the ignominy of exclusion from the great political and social work of the day." Mrs. Thomasson, daughter of Margaret Bright Lucas, and Mrs. Taylor, known as the organizer of the women's suffrage movement in England, also sent cordial good wishes.[14]
The wife of Jacob Bright, who was largely responsible for the Married Women's Property Bill, presented a review of present suffrage laws; his sister, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, wife of Duncan McLaren, M. P., and the great Abolitionist, Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichol of Edinburgh, sent long and valuable letters. Mrs. McLaren wrote:
I was in Exeter Hall, London, on the day our Parliament assembled; a prayer-meeting was held there the whole of that day. Earnest were the intercessions that the hearts of our rulers might be influenced to repeal every vestige of the Contagious Diseases Acts; and the women especially prayed that our men might be led to send representatives to Parliament of much higher morality than such Acts testified to, and that the eyes of the women of their country might be opened to see the iniquity of such legislation. I venture to express that the burden of my prayer had been, whilst sitting in that meeting, that the eyes of the women there assembled, and of the women throughout our country, might be opened to see that we could not expect men who did not consider morality to be a necessary part of their own character, to regard it as needful for the men who were to represent them in Parliament; that we needed a new moral power to be brought into exercise at our elections, and as Parliament was meeting that day and one of its first acts would be to bring in a new reform bill, that we might unite in prayer that the petitions so long put forth by many of the women of this land, that their claim to the suffrage should be included in this new Act for the extended representation of the people, might be righteously answered; and the power given to women not only to pray for what was just and right, but to have by the Parliamentary vote a direct power to promote that higher legislation which they all so much desired. I know nothing which calls for more faith and patience than to hear women pleading for justice, and refusing to help get it in the only legitimate way....
Whilst we have our anomalies here, you have a glaring inconsistency in your country. It is not a property qualification which gives a vote in America. Is not every human being, who is of age, according to your Constitution, entitled to equal justice and freedom? Are you women not human beings? The lowest and most ignorant man who leaves any shore and lands on yours, ere he has earned a home or made family ties, becomes a citizen of your great country; whilst your own women, who during a life-time may have done much service and given much to the State, are denied the right accorded to that man, however low his condition may be. You are fighting to overcome this great monopoly of citizenship. We watch your proceedings with deep interest. We rejoice in your successes and sympathize with you in your endeavors to gain fresh victories.
Congratulatory letters were received from Ewing Whittle, M. D., of the Royal Academy, Liverpool, and Miss Isabella M. S. Tod, the well-known reformer of Belfast. M. Leon Richer, the eminent writer of Paris, and Mlle. Hubertine Auclert, editor of La Citoyenne, sent cordial words of co-operation. There were also greetings from Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, a Polish exile, one of the first women lecturers in America; from the wife and daughter of A. A. Sargent, U. S. Minister to Berlin; from Theodore Stanton; Miss Florence Kelley, daughter of the Hon. William D. Kelley; the wife of Moncure D. Conway; Rosamond, daughter of Robert Dale Owen; Mrs. Charlotte B. Wilbour and Dr. Frances E. Dickinson, all Americans residing abroad.
Among the noted men and women of the United States who sent letters endorsing equal suffrage, were George William Curtis, William Lloyd Garrison, U. S. Senators Henry B. Anthony and Henry W. Blair, the Hon. George W. Julian, the Hon. William I. Bowditch, Robert Purvis, the Rev. Anna Oliver, Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, the "mother" of Ben Hur, and Mrs. Abby Hutchinson Patton.[15]
To this assembly Bishop Matthew Simpson, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, sent almost his last public utterance:
For more than thirty years I have been in favor of woman suffrage. I was led to this position not by the consideration of the question of natural rights or of alleged injustice or of inequality before the law, but by what I believed would be the influence of woman on the great moral questions of the day. Were the ballot in the hands of women, I am satisfied that the evils of intemperance would be greatly lessened, and I fear that without that ballot we shall not succeed against the saloons and kindred evils in large cities. You will doubtless have many obstacles placed in your way; there will be many conflicts to sustain; but I have no doubt that the coming years will see the triumph of your cause; and that our higher civilization and morality will rejoice in the work which enlightened woman will accomplish.
The resolutions presented by Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert (Ills.), chairman of the committee, were adopted.
Whereas, The fundamental idea of a republic is the right of self-government, the right of every citizen to choose her own representatives to enact the laws by which she is governed; and
Whereas, This right can be secured only by the exercise of the suffrage; therefore
Resolved, That the ballot in the hand of every qualified citizen constitutes the true political status of the people, and to deprive one-half of the people of the use of the ballot is to deny the first principle of a republican government.
Resolved, That it is the duty of Congress to submit a Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution, securing to women the right of suffrage; first, because the disfranchisement of one-half of the people deprives that half of the means of self-protection and support, limits their resources for self-development and weakens their influence on popular thought; second, because giving all men the absolute authority to decide the social, civil and political status of women, creates a spirit of caste, unrepublican in tendency; third, because in depriving the State of the united wisdom of man and woman, that important "consensus of the competent," our form of government becomes in fact an oligarchy of males instead of a republic of the people.
Resolved, That since the women citizens of the United States have thus far failed to receive proper recognition from any of the existing political parties, we recommend the appointment by this convention of a committee on future political action.
Resolved, That as there is a general awakening to the rights of women in all European countries, the time has arrived to take the initiative steps for a grand International Woman Suffrage Convention, to be held in either England or America, and that for this purpose a committee of three be appointed at this convention to correspond with leading persons in different countries interested in the elevation of women.