As a Southerner, I feel that it is my duty to stand up here to-night and bear testimony against slavery. I have seen it! I have seen it! I know it has horrors that can never be described. I was brought up under its wing. I witnessed for many years its demoralizing influences and its destructiveness to human happiness. I have never seen a happy slave. I have seen him dance in his chains, it is true, but he was not happy. There is a wide difference between happiness and mirth. Man can not enjoy happiness while his manhood is destroyed. Slaves, however, may be, and sometimes are mirthful. When hope is extinguished, they say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." [Here stones were thrown at the windows—a great noise without and commotion within].

What is a mob? what would the breaking of every window be? What would the levelling of this hall be? Any evidence that we are wrong, or that slavery is a good and wholesome institution? What if the mob should now burst in upon us, break up our meeting, and commit violence upon our persons, would that be anything compared with what the slaves endure? No, no; and we do not remember them, "as bound with them," if we shrink in the time of peril, or feel unwilling to sacrifice ourselves, if need be, for their sake. [Great noise]. I thank the Lord that there is yet life enough left to feel the truth, even though it rages at it; that conscience is not so completely seared as to be unmoved by the truth of the living God. [Another outbreak of the mob and confusion in the house].

How wonderfully constituted is the human mind! How it resists, as long as it can, all efforts to reclaim it from error! I feel that all this disturbance is but an evidence that our efforts are the best that could have been adopted, or else the friends of slavery would not care for what we say and do. The South know what we do. I am thankful that they are reached by our efforts. Many times have I wept in the land of my birth over the system of slavery. I knew of none who sympathized in my feelings; I was unaware that any efforts were made to deliver the oppressed; no voice in the wilderness was heard calling on the people to repent and do works meet for repentance, and my heart sickened within me. Oh, how should I have rejoiced to know that such efforts as these were being made. I only wonder that I had such feelings. But in the midst of temptation I was preserved, and my sympathy grew warmer, and my hatred of slavery more inveterate, until at last I have exiled myself from my native land, because I could no longer endure to hear the wailing of the slave.

I fled to the land of Penn; for here, thought I, sympathy for the slave will surely be found. But I found it not. The people were kind and hospitable, but the slave had no place in their thoughts. I therefore shut up my grief in my own heart. I remembered that I was a Carolinian, from a State which framed this iniquity by law. Every Southern breeze wafted to me the discordant tones of weeping and wailing, shrieks and groans, mingled with prayers and blasphemous curses. My heart sank within me at the abominations in the midst of which I had been born and educated. What will it avail, cried I, in bitterness of spirit, to expose to the gaze of strangers the horrors and pollutions of slavery, when there is no ear to hear nor heart to feel and pray for the slave? But how different do I feel now! Animated with hope, nay, with an assurance of the triumph of liberty and good-will to man, I will lift up my voice like a trumpet, and show this people what they can do to influence the Southern mind and overthrow slavery. [Shouting, and stones against the windows].

We often hear the question asked, "What shall we do?" Here is an opportunity. Every man and every woman present may do something, by showing that we fear not a mob, and in the midst of revilings and threatenings, pleading the cause of those who are ready to perish. Let me urge every one to buy the books written on this subject; read them, and lend them to your neighbors. Give your money no longer for things which pander to pride and lust, but aid in scattering "the living coals of truth upon the naked heart of the nation"; in circulating appeals to the sympathies of Christians in behalf of the outraged slave.

But it is said by some, our "books and papers do not speak the truth"; why, then, do they not contradict what we say? They can not. Moreover, the South has entreated, nay, commanded us, to be silent; and what greater evidence of the truth of our publications could be desired?

Women of Philadelphia! allow me as a Southern woman, with much attachment to the land of my birth, to entreat you to come up to this work. Especially, let me urge you to petition. Men may settle this and other questions at the ballot-box, but you have no such right. It is only through petitions that you can reach the Legislature. It is, therefore, peculiarly your duty to petition. Do you say, "It does no good!" The South already turns pale at the number sent. They have read the reports of the proceedings of Congress, and there have seen that among other petitions were very many from the women of the North on the subject of slavery. Men who hold the rod over slaves rule in the councils of the nation; and they deny our right to petition and remonstrate against abuses of our sex and our kind. We have these rights, however, from our God. Only let us exercise them, and, though often turned away unanswered, let us remember the influence of importunity upon the unjust judge, and act accordingly. The fact that the South looks jealously upon our measures shows that they are effectual. There is, therefore, no cause for doubting or despair.

It was remarked in England that women did much to abolish slavery in her colonies. Nor are they now idle. Numerous petitions from them have recently been presented to the Queen to abolish apprenticeship, with its cruelties, nearly equal to those of the system whose place it supplies. One petition, two miles and a quarter long, has been presented. And do you think these labors will be in vain? Let the history of the past answer. When the women of these States send up to Congress such a petition our legislators will arise, as did those of England, and say: "When all the maids and matrons of the land are knocking at our doors we must legislate." Let the zeal and love, the faith and works of our English sisters quicken ours; that while the slaves continue to suffer, and when they shout for deliverance, we may feel the satisfaction of "having done what we could."

ABBY KELLY, of Lynn, Massachusetts, rose, and said: I ask permission to pay a few words. I have never before addressed a promiscuous assembly; nor is it now the maddening rush of those voices, which is the indication of a moral whirlwind; nor is it the crashing of those windows, which is the indication of a moral earthquake, that calls me before you. No, these pass unheeded by me. But it is the "still small voice within," which may not be withstood, that bids me open my mouth for the dumb; that bids me plead the cause of God's perishing poor; aye, God's poor.

The parable of Lazarus and the rich man we may well bring home to ourselves. The North is that rich man. How he is clothed in purple and fine linen, and fares sumptuously! Yonder, yonder, at a little distance, is the gate where lies the Lazarus of the South, full of sores and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fall from our luxurious table. Look! see him there! even the dogs are more merciful than we. Oh, see him where he lies! We have long, very long, passed by with averted eyes. Ought not we to raise him up; and is there one in this Hall who sees nothing for himself to do?

LUCRETIA MOTT, of Philadelphia, then stated that the present was not a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American women, as was supposed by some, and explained the reason why their meetings were confined to females; namely, that many of the members considered it improper for women to address promiscuous assemblies. She hoped that such false notions of delicacy and propriety would not long obtain in this enlightened country.

While the large Hall was filled with a promiscuous audience, and packed through all its sessions with full three thousand people, the women held their Convention in one of the committee-rooms. As they had been through terrible mobs already in Boston and New York, they had learned self-control, and with their coolness and consecration to the principles they advocated, they were a constant inspiration to the men by their side.

The Second National Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women assembled in the lecture-room of Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia, May 15, 1838, at ten o'clock A.M. The following officers were appointed:

PRESIDENT—Mary L. Parker, of Boston.

VICE-PRESIDENTS—Maria Weston Chapman, Catharine M. Sullivan, Susan Paul, of Boston, Mass.; Mariana Johnson, Providence, R. I.; Margaret Prior, Sarah T. Smith, of New York; Martha W. Storrs, of Utica, N. Y.; Lucretia Mott, of Philadelphia; Mary W. Magill, of Buckingham, Pa.; Sarah Moore Grimke, of Charleston, S. C.

SECRETARIES—Anne W. Weston, Martha V. Ball, of Boston; Juliana A. Tappan, of New York; Sarah Lewis, of Philadelphia.

TREASURER—Sarah M. Douglass, of Philadelphia.

BUSINESS COMMITTEE—Sarah T. Smith, Sarah R. Ingraham, Margaret Dye, Juliana A. Tappan, Martha W. Storrs, New York; Miriam Hussey, Maine; Louisa Whipple, New Hampshire; Lucy N. Dodge, Miriam B, Johnson, Maria Truesdell, Waity A. Spencer, Rebecca Pittman, Rhode Island; Lucretia Mott, Mary Grew, Sarah M. Douglass, Hetty Burr, Martha Smith, Pennsylvania; Angelina Grimke Weld, South Carolina.

On motion of SARAH PUSH, Elizabeth M. Southard, Mary G. Chapman, and Abby Kelly were appointed a committee to confer with other associations and the managers of Pennsylvania Hall to arrange for meetings during the week.

SARAH T. SMITH, from the Business Committee, presented letters from the Female Anti-Slavery Societies of Salem and Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, signed by their respective secretaries, Mary Spencer and L. Williams.

At this time, even the one and only right of woman, that of petition, had been trampled under the heel of slavery on the floor of Congress, which roused those noble women to a just indignation, as will be seen in their resolutions on the subject, presented by Juliana A. Tappan:

Resolved, That whatever may be the sacrifice, and whatever other rights may be yielded or denied, we will maintain practically the right of petition until the slave shall go free, or our energies, like Lovejoy's, are paralyzed in death.

Resolved, That for every petition rejected by the National Legislature during their last session, we will endeavor to send five the present year; and that we will not cease our efforts until the prayers of every woman within the sphere of our influence shall be heard in the halls of Congress on this subject.

MARY GREW offered the following resolution, which was adopted:

WHEREAS, The disciples of Christ are commanded to have no fellowship with the "unfruitful works of darkness"; and

WHEREAS, Union in His Church is the strongest expression of fellowship between men; therefore

Resolved, That it is our duty to keep ourselves separate from those churches which receive to their pulpits and their communion tables those who buy, or sell, or hold as property, the image of the living God.

This resolution was supported by Miss Grew, Lucretia Mott, Abby Kelly, Maria W. Chapman, Anne W. Weston, Sarah T. Smith, and Sarah Lewis; and opposed by Margaret Dye, Margaret Prior, Henrietta Wilcox, Martha W. Storrs, Juliana A. Tappan, Elizabeth M. Southard, and Charlotte Woolsey. Those who voted in the negative stated that they fully concurred with their sisters in the belief that slaveholders and their apologists were guilty before God, and that with the former, Northern Christians should hold no fellowship; but that, as it was their full belief that there was moral power sufficient in the Church, if rightly applied, to purify it, they could not feel it their duty to withdraw until the utter inefficiency of the means used should constrain them to believe the Church totally corrupt. And as an expression of their views, Margaret Dye moved the following resolution:

Resolved, That the system of American slavery is contrary to the laws of God and the spirit of true religion, and that the Church is deeply implicated in this sin, and that it therefore becomes the imperative duty of her members to petition their ecclesiastical bodies to enter their decided protests against it, and exclude slaveholders from their pulpits and communion tables.

The last session was opened by the reading of the sixth chapter of 2 Corinthians, and prayer by Sarah M. Grimke. An Address to Anti-Slavery Societies was read by Sarah T. Smith, and adopted. We copy from it the plea and argument for woman's right and duty to be interested in all questions of public welfare:

ADDRESS TO ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETIES.

DEAR FRIENDS:—In that love for our cause which knows not the fear of man, we address you in confidence that our motives will be understood and regarded. We fear not censure from you for going beyond the circle which has been drawn around us by physical force, by mental usurpation, by the usages of ages; not any one of which can we admit gives the right to prescribe it; else might the monarchs of the old world sit firmly on their thrones, the nobility of Europe lord it over the man of low degree, and the chains we are now seeking to break, continue riveted, on the neck of the slave. Our faith goes not back to the wigwam of the savage, or the castle of the feudal chief, but would rather soar with hope to that period when "right alone shall make might"; when the truncheon and the sword shall lie useless; when the intellect and heart shall speak and be obeyed; when "He alone whose right it is shall rule and reign in the hearts of the children of men."

We are told that it is not within "the province of woman" to discuss the subject of slavery; that it is a "political question," and that we are "stepping out of our sphere" when we take part in its discussion. It is not true that it is merely a political question; it is likewise a question of justice, of humanity, of morality, of religion; a question which, while it involves considerations of immense importance to the welfare, and prosperity of our country, enters deeply into the home—concerns the every-day feelings of millions of our fellow beings. Whether the laborer shall receive the reward of his labor, or be driven daily to unrequited toil: whether he shall walk erect in the dignity of conscious manhood, or be reckoned among the beasts which perish; whether his bones and sinews shall be his own, or another's; whether his child shall receive the protection of its natural guardian, or be ranked among the live-stock of the estate, to be disposed of as the caprice or interest of the master may dictate; whether the sun of knowledge shall irradiate the hut of the peasant, or the murky cloud of ignorance brood darkly over it; whether "every one shall have the liberty to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience," or man assume the prerogative of Jehovah and impiously seek to plant himself upon the throne of the Almighty. These considerations are all involved in the question of liberty or slavery.

And is a subject comprehending interests of such magnitude, merely a "political question," and one in which woman "can take no part without losing something of the modesty and gentleness which are her most appropriate ornaments"? May not the "ornament of a meek and quiet spirit" exist with an upright mind and enlightened intellect? Must woman necessarily be less gentle because her heart is open to the claims of humanity, or less modest because she feels for the degradation of her enslaved sisters, and would stretch forth her hand for their rescue?

By the Constitution of the United States, the whole physical power of the North is pledged for the suppression of domestic insurrections; and should the slaves maddened by oppression endeavor to shake off the yoke of the task-master, the men of the North are bound to make common cause with the tyrant, to put down at the point of the bayonet every effort on the part of the slave for the attainment of his freedom. And when the father, husband, son, and brother shall have left their homes to mingle in the unholy warfare; "to become the executioners of their brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands," will the mother, wife, daughter, and sister feel that they have no interest in this subject? Will it be easy to convince them that it is no concern of theirs, that their homes are rendered desolate and their habitations the abodes of wretchedness? Surely this consideration is of itself sufficient to arouse the slumbering energies of woman, for the overthrow of a system which thus threatens to lay in ruins the fabric of her domestic happiness; and she will not be deterred from the performance of her duty to herself, her family, and her country, by the cry of "political question."

But, admitting it to be a political question, have we no interest in the welfare of our country? May we not permit a thought to stray beyond the narrow limits of our own family circle and of the present hour? May we not breathe a sigh over the miseries of our countrywomen nor utter a word of remonstrance against the unjust laws that are crushing them to the earth? Must we witness "the headlong rage of heedless folly" with which our nation is rushing onward to destruction, and not seek to arrest its downward course? Shall we silently behold the land which we love with all the heart-warm affection of children, rendered a hissing and a reproach throughout the world by the system which is already "tolling the death-knell of her decease among the nations"?

No; the events of the last two years have "cast their dark shadows before," overclouding the bright prospects of the future, and shrouding our country in more than midnight gloom; and we can not remain inactive. Our country is as dear to us as to the proudest statesman; and the more closely our hearts cling to "our altars and our homes," the more fervent are our aspirations, that every inhabitant of our land may be protected in his fireside enjoyments by just and equal laws; that the foot of the tyrant may no longer invade the domestic sanctuary, nor his hand tear asunder those whom God himself has united by the most holy ties.

Let our course then still be onward! Justice, humanity, patriotism; every high and every holy motive urge us forward, and we dare not refuse to obey. The way of duty lies open before us, and though no pillar of fire be visible to the outward sense, yet an unerring light shall illumine our pathway, guiding us through the sea of persecution and the wilderness of prejudice and error, to the promised land of freedom, where "every man shall sit under his own vine and fig-tree, and none shall make him afraid."

THANKFUL SOUTHWICK[64] moved the following:

Resolved, That it is the duty of all those who call themselves Abolitionists, to make the most vigorous efforts to procure for the use of their families the products of FREE LABOR, so that their hands may be clean in this particular when inquisition is made for blood.

ESTHER MOORE made remarks upon the importance of carrying into effect the resolutions that had been passed.

This was the last meeting held in Pennsylvania Hall! Business connected with the safety of the building made it necessary for members of the board of managers to pass several times through the saloon, when this Convention was in session, and they said

they never saw a more dignified, calm, and intrepid body of persons assembled. Although the building was surrounded all day by the mob who crowded about the doors, and at times even attempted to enter the saloon, yet the women were perfectly collected, unmoved by the threatening tempest. The cause which they were assembled to promote is one that nerves the soul to deeds of noble daring. The Convention had already adjourned late in the afternoon, when the mob which destroyed the building began to assemble. The doors were blocked up by the crowd, and the streets almost impassable from the multitude of "fellows of the baser sort." But these "American Women" passed through the whole without manifesting any sign of fear, as if conscious of their own greatness and of the protecting care of the God of the oppressed.

We give our readers these interesting pages of anti-slavery history because they were the initiative steps to organized public action and the Woman Suffrage Movement per se, and to show how much more enthusiasm women manifested in securing freedom for the slaves, than they ever have in demanding justice and equality for themselves. Where are the societies to rescue unfortunate women from the bondage they suffer under unjust law? Where are the loving friends who keep midnight vigils with young girls arraigned in the courts for infanticide? Where are the underground railroads and watchful friends at every point to help fugitive wives from brutal husbands? The most intelligent, educated women seem utterly oblivious to the wrongs of their own sex; even those who so bravely fought the anti-slavery battle have never struck as stout blows against the tyranny suffered by women.

Take, for example, the resolution presented by Mary Grew, and passed in the Woman's Anti-Slavery Convention forty-three years ago, declaring that it was the Christian duty of every woman to withdraw from all churches that fellowshiped with slavery, which was a sin against God and man. Compare the conscience and religious earnestness for a principle implied in such a resolution with the apathy and supineness of the women of to-day. No such resolution has ever yet passed a woman's rights convention. And yet is injustice to a colored man a greater sin than to a woman? Is liberty and equality more sweet to him than to her! Is the declaration by the Church that woman may not be ordained or licensed to preach the Gospel, no matter how well fitted, how learned or devout, because of her sex, less insulting and degrading than the old custom of the negro pew?

The attitude of the Church to-day is more hostile and insulting to American womanhood than it ever was to the black man, by just so much as women are nearer the equals of priests and bishops than were the unlettered slaves. When women refuse to enter churches that do not recognize them as equal candidates for the joys of earth and heaven, equal in the sight of man and God, we shall have a glorious revival of liberty and justice everywhere.

How fully these pages of history illustrate the equal share woman has had in the trials and triumphs of all the political and moral revolutions through which we have passed, from feeble colonies to an independent nation; suffering with man the miseries of poverty and war, all the evils of bad government, and enjoying with him the blessings of luxury and peace, and a wise administration of law. The experience of the heroines of anti-slavery show that no finespun sentimentalism in regard to woman's position in the clouds ever exempt her from the duties or penalties of a citizen. Neither State officers, nor mobs in the whirlwind of passion, tempered their violence for her safety or benefit.

When women proposed to hold a fair in Concert Hall, their flag was torn down from the street, while they and their property were ejected by the high constable. When women were speaking in Pennsylvania Hall, brickbats were hurled at, them through the windows. When women searched Philadelphia through for a place where they might meet to speak and pray for the slave-mother and her child (the most miserable of human beings), halls and churches were closed against them. And who were these women? Eloquent speakers, able writers, dignified wives and mothers, the most moral, religious, refined, cultured, intelligent citizens that Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania could boast. There never was a queen on any European throne possessed of more personal beauty, grace, and dignity than Maria Weston Chapman.[65] The calmness and impassioned earnestness of Angelina Grimke, speaking nearly an hour 'mid that howling mob, was not surpassed in courage and consecration even by Paul among the wild beasts at Ephesus. Here she made her last public speech, and as the glowing words died upon her lips, a new voice was heard, rich, deep, and clear upon the troubled air; and the mantle of self-sacrifice, so faithfully worn by South Carolina's brave daughter, henceforth rested on the shoulders of an equally brave and eloquent Quaker girl from Massachusetts,[66] who for many years afterward preached the same glad tidings of justice, equality, and liberty for all.

TEMPERANCE.

In this reform, also, the women of Pennsylvania took an equally active part. We are indebted to Hannah Darlington, of Kennett Square, Chester Co., for the following record of the temperance work in this State:

KENNETT SQUARE, 2 mo., 6, 1881.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:—I did not think our early temperance work of sufficient account to preserve the reports, hence with considerable research am able to send you but very little. Many mixed meetings were held through the county before 1847. Woods-meetings, with decorated stands, were fashionable in Chester in warm weather, for several years before we branched off with a call for a public meeting. That brought quite a number together in Friends' Meeting-house at Kennett Square, where we discussed plans for work and appointed committees to carry them out.

Sidney Peirce, Ann Preston, and myself, each prepared addresses to read at meetings called in such places as the Committee arranged; and with Chandler Darlington to drive us from place to place, we addressed many large audiences, some in the day-time and some in the evening; scattered appeals and tracts, and collected names to petitions asking for a law against licensing liquor-stands.

In 1848, we went to Harrisburg, taking an address to the Legislature written by Ann Preston, and sanctioned by the meeting that appointed us. The address, with our credentials and petitions, was presented to the two Houses, read in our presence, and referred to the Committee on "Vice and Immorality," which called a meeting and invited us to give our address. Sidney Peirce, who was a good reader, gave it with effect to a large roomful of the Committee and legislators. It was listened to with profound attention, complimented highly, and I think aroused a disposition among the best members to give the cause of temperance more careful consideration. The Local Option Law was passed by that Legislature.

We also aided the mixed meetings by our presence and addresses, and by circulating petitions, and publishing appeals in the county papers; helping in every way to arouse discussion and prepare the people to sustain the new law. But the Supreme Court of the State, through the liquor influence, declared the law unconstitutional, after a few months' successful trial. Drinking, however, has not been as respectable since that time. We continued active work in our association until the inauguration of the Good Templars movement, in which men and women worked together on terms of equality.

Respectfully yours, HANNAH M. DARLINGTON.

TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.

A Temperance Convention of Women of Chester County, met at Marlborough Friends' Meeting-house, on Saturday, the 30th of December, 1848, and was organized by the appointment of MARTHA HAYHURST, President; SIDNEY PEIRCE and HANNAH PENNOCK, Secretaries.

Letters received by a Committee of Correspondence, appointed at a Convention last winter, were read; one, from Pope Bushnell, Chairman of the Committee on Vice and Immorality, to which temperance petitions were referred; and also from our Representatives in the Legislature, pledging themselves to use all their influence to obtain the passage of a law to prohibit the sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage amongst us. The Business Committee reported addresses to the men and women of Chester County, which were considered, amended, and adopted, as follows:

To the Women of Chester County:

DEAR SISTERS:—Again we would urge upon you the duty and necessity of action in the temperance cause. Notwithstanding the exertions that have been made, intoxicating liquors continue to be sold and drank in our midst. Still, night after night, the miserable drunkard reels to that home he has made desolate. Still, wives and sisters weep in anguish as they look on those dearer to them than life, and see, trace by trace, their delicacy and purity of soul vanishing beneath the destroying libations that tempt them when they pass the domestic threshold.

We need not depict to you the poverty and crime and unutterable woe that result from intemperance, nor need you go far to be reminded of the revolting fact, that under the sanction of laws, men still make it a deliberate business to deal out that terrible agent, the only effect of which is to darken the God-like in the human soul, and to foster in its place the appetites of demons. The law passed the 7th of April, 1846, under which the sale of intoxicating drinks was prohibited by vote of the people in most of the townships in Chester County, has been decided by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional; and this decision, by inspiring confidence in the dealers and consumers of the fatal poison, seems to have given a new impetus to this diabolical traffic. Wider and deeper its ravages threaten to extend themselves; and to every benevolent mind comes the earnest question, What must now be done? It is too late for women to excuse themselves from exertion in this cause, on the ground that it would be indelicate to leave the sheltered retirement of home. Alas! where is the home-shelter that guards the delicacy of the drunkard's wife and daughter? We all recognize the divine obligation to relieve suffering and to cherish virtue as binding alike on man and woman. Our hearts thrill at the mention of those women who were "last at the cross and earliest at the grave" of the crucified Nazarine. We commend her whose prayers and entreaties once saved her native Rome from pillage. We admire the heroism of a Joan of Arc, as it is embalmed in history and song. We boast of virgin martyrs to the faith of their convictions, and we dare not now put forth the despicable plea of feminine propriety to excuse our supineness, when fathers, sons, and brothers are falling around us, degraded, bestialized, thrice murdered by this foe at our doors. No! we have solemn obligations resting upon us, and we should be unfaithful to the holiest call of duty, false to the instincts of womanhood and the pleading voice of love, if we should sit quietly down in careless ease while vice is thus spreading around us, and human souls are falling into the fell snare of the destroyer.

By meeting together and taking counsel one with another, we will become more alive to our duty in relation to this momentous subject. The more we prize the sweet privacy of happy homes, the more strong is the appeal to us to labor to make sacred and joyful the hearth-stones of others. If men will remain comparatively supine we must the more energetically sound the alarm, and point them to the danger. If rulers will devise wickedness by law, we must give them no rest, till, like the unjust judge, they yield to our very importunity, and repeal their iniquitous statutes. The temporal and spiritual welfare of many an immortal being is at stake, and we should esteem it a high privilege to labor in this holy cause with an earnest and, if need be, a life-long consecration. Let us, then, apply ourselves devotedly to the work, and a fresh and resistless impulse will be given to the temperance reformation. The electrical fervor of earnest spirits ever communicates itself to others, and the Legislature itself can not long resist our united efforts. In such a cause "we have great allies." God and humanity are on our side, our own souls Will be strengthened and elevated by the work; "failure" is a word that belongs not to us, since our efforts are in a righteous cause.

To the Men of Chester County:

Permit us once more to plead with you on behalf of temperance. We know that to some of you this may seem an old and wearisome subject, but we know also that the sorrow and crime caused by intemperance are not old; new, fresh cases are around us now. Its ravages are repeated every day, and we must beseech you to "hear us for our cause." We can not be silent while the grog-shop stands like the poisonous upas amongst us, and men openly deal out crime and wretchedness in the form of intoxicating drinks.

We need not in this place enlarge upon the danger ever attendant upon the use of those stimulants, nor will we now stop long to dwell upon the solemn fact, that whoever, at the demand of appetite, drinks even the sweet cider, weakens his own moral strength, becomes a tempter to the weak, and casts away the pure influence of an unsullied example. Reckless and guilty indeed is that man who, in the light of this day, dares to insult humanity and defy heaven by publicly putting the glass to his lips.

Men of Chester County! you possess the power to put a stop to the traffic in liquors, and we conjure you by the sacred obligations of virtue and humanity, as you hope to stand acquitted before the just tribunal of God, to arise in your might and banish it from the community; think, we beseech you, of the depths of pollution to which intemperance leads, of the bestial appetites it fosters, of all the unnameable impurities that revel in its abodes; think of the hearth-stones desolated, of the mothers and daughters whose earthly hopes and joys have been destroyed by that charnel-house, the tavern. The incendiary who applies the midnight torch to peaceful dwellings, the robber who commits murder to secure his prey, is not an enemy to society half so dangerous, as he who inflames all evil passions and scatters wretchedness through a community, by dispensing alcoholic poison. Oh! are there not sorrows enough in our best condition? have we not temptations strong enough within and without? Shall men progress too fast in the "onward and upward" road of virtue and happiness, that you leave before them these sinks of pollution, these trap-doors of ruin, these fatal sirens, enticing the unwary listener to destruction? Call us not fanatical. Indifference is crime; silence is fatal here. When the midnight cry of fire is sounded, you rush from your slumbers, and, heedless of danger, hasten to extinguish the flames; but here is a devouring element, burning on from year to year, consuming not mere shingles and rafters, but the priceless hopes and aspirations of immortal souls, leaving blackened ruins in the place of beauty; and we must continue to cry "Fire! fire!" until you hasten to stop the fearful conflagration. Tell us not of liberty and natural right, as a plea for this traffic. It is the liberty to rob innocent families and reduce them to pauperism; the right to break hearts and hopes, to reduce men to demons, to scatter vice and anguish and desolation around the land. Well may we exclaim with Madame Roland, when she was taken along the bloody streets of Paris, about to be murdered in the abused name of freedom, "Oh, Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!"

Fathers and brothers, shall woman in her agony, and man in his degradation, appeal to you in vain? Too long has this evil been borne, too long have minor points of public good taken precedence of this reform. It must not be that you will be content to dwell in quiet indifference, in the midst of a rum-selling community, and die, leaving your children exposed to the tempter's snare. It must not be endured that this infernal traffic, this shame to civilization, this slur on Christianity, shall continue amongst us. It must not be endured that men shall be clothed with the monstrous authority to demoralize neighborhoods and scatter the fire-brands of death and destruction. The power to arrest this horrible work is in your hands. Be vigilant, be active. There is resistless might in the energy of earnest wills devoted to a noble cause. Petition, remonstrate, work while yet it is day. Say not that we can gain nothing by petitioning. Was it not through this means, we obtained the law under which a vote of the majority excluded the sale of intoxicating liquors amongst us? Did not our petitions last winter cause a bill for its prohibition to be reported in the Legislature, which was lost in the House by a small majority? True, the law we desire may not entirely prevent drunkenness, but it will certainly act as a restraint. It will make drinking less reputable, and thus prevent drunkard-making. It will have the moral influence of a State verdict against the practice. The dread responsibility of this traffic must rest upon you, if, through silent acquiescence, you permit its ravages. Do what you can, and peace and prosperity will soon sit where the blackness of ruin has brooded, and the sweet reward of approving consciences and the blessings of joyful hearts will gladden your pathway.

The following resolutions were adopted:

Resolved, That petitioning the Legislature is the most definite and efficient means at our command, whereby to obtain a law to abolish the sale of intoxicating drinks, as a beverage amongst us.

Resolved, That the following persons be appointed to obtain names in their respective neighborhoods, to the petition referred to: Sarah Evans, Grace Anna Lewis, Jane Kimber, H. A. Pennypacker, Catherine Hawley, Deborah Way, Sarah Wood, M. B. Thomas, Anna Parke, Margaret Lea, Susannah Cox, Elizabeth Evans, E. Garrett, M. Darlington, Eliza Agnew, M. P. Wilson, Eliza Pyle, Mary Chambers, H. M. Barnard, Mrs. Jefferis, Alice Speakman, Sarah S. Barnard, Susan Fulton, Mary W. Coates, Millicent Stern, Mrs. Ramsey, Mrs. Hamilton, A. E. Valentine, Ruth Ann Seal, R. W. Taylor, M. K. Darlington, Lydia Agnew, M. Taylor, Alice Lewis, Ann Barnard, Rebecca Pugh, Lydia Jacobs, Margaret Ross, Rachel Leake, Ann Preston, M. W. Cox, Ann Coates, Rachel Good, Esther Jane Kent, Ellen Wilkinson, Mary Pugh, Sarah Ann Cunningham, Eliza Lysle, Beulah Hughes, Sarah Ann Conard.

Resolved, That we urgently solicit those having care of petitions, to make use of every opportunity to obtain men's and women's names in different columns, or on separate petitions, and thus aid the Chester County Temperance Society in procuring the names of those favorable to obtaining a prohibitory law.

Resolved, That Hannah Cox, Sidney Peirce, Ann Preston, Mary Cox, Mary Ann Fulton, Dinah Mendenhall, Mary K. Darlington, Mary S. Agnew, and Hannah M. Darlington, be a committee to call meetings of the people in different neighborhoods, at which to read the addresses to men and women, obtain signatures to petitions, etc.

Resolved, That we offer the proceedings of this meeting for publication in the County papers and Temperance Standard.

Resolved, That we adjourn to meet in Kennett Square, on Saturday, the 3d of February, 1849.

MARTHA HAYHURST, President.

SIDNEY PEIRCE } } Secretaries. HANNAH PENNOCK }

At their next Convention in Kennett Square, another stirring appeal was issued, and the following resolutions adopted:

WHEREAS, The peace of our homes, the security of our property, and our inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, are all jeoparded by intemperance; and whereas, this monstrous vice, with all its attendant train of evils, will continue to spread its ravages over our fair country so long as the traffic in intoxicating drinks is supported and sanctioned by law; and,

WHEREAS, The people have the same right to be protected from the desolations of this vice, that they have to be protected from the depredations of the incendiary, the robber, and the murderer, whose deeds are but too often instigated by it; therefore,

Resolved, That we demand of the Representatives of the people, at the next session, a law for the total prohibition of the traffic in intoxicating drinks as a beverage, within the limits of Chester County.

Resolved, That we see neither reason nor consistency in the conduct of our law-makers in restraining the thief, the burglar, the counterfeiter, and the robber, while they let loose upon society the legalized rum-seller.

"Will they the felon fox restrain, And yet take oft the tiger's chain?"

Resolved, That we hail with joy the appearance of a recent pastoral letter issued by the Synod of the Free Church of Cincinnati, containing sentiments in regard to the advancement of this reform, which meet our hearty approval, and which, if adopted by all religious bodies, would insure the speedy triumph of temperance, with all the blessings that follow in its train.

Resolved, That we adjourn to meet at Old Kennett, on Saturday, the 8th of December, 1849.

HANNAH M. DARLINGTON, President.

ALICE LEWIS } }Secretaries. MARY S. AGNEW, }

NORTH AMERICAN AND UNITED STATE GAZETTE, FEB. 6, 1852.

The ladies of the City and County of Philadelphia, and all other persons who feel impressed with the importance of PETITIONING THE LEGISLATURE TO ENACT A LAW PROHIBITING THE USE OF ALL INTOXICATING DRINKS as a beverage, are earnestly requested to attend a meeting to be held at the CHINESE MUSEUM, corner of NINTH and GEORGE STREETS, on SATURDAY EVENING, Feb. 7th, at 7-1/2 o'clock.

The meeting will be addressed by the REV. ALBERT BARNES, REV. JOHN CHAMBERS, JUDGE KELLEY, DR. JAS. BRYAN, and WM. J. MULLEN. JUDGE ALLISON will preside. The LADIES' TEMPERANCE UNION is particularly invited to attend. Admittance five cents, to defray expenses.

Two weeks after this, Feb. 21st, a Woman's Temperance Mass Meeting was held in Philadelphia; an immense assemblage of both sexes.

The Pennsylvania Freeman of March 4, 1852, says: "A large number of petitions from various parts of the State, most of them numerously signed, asking for the passage of the Maine Anti-Liquor Law, have been presented in both Houses. On Tuesday, in the Senate, one was presented from this city signed by 15,580 ladies; and another in the House, signed by 14,241 ladies. What the Legislature will do we shall not venture to predict."

It is interesting to note the same successive steps in every State, and how naturally, in laboring for anti-slavery and temperance, women have at last in each case demanded freedom for themselves. In the anti-slavery school, 'mid violence and persecution they learned the a, b, c of individual rights; in the temperance struggle they learned that the ultimate power in moral movements is found in wise legislation, and in graduating on the woman suffrage platform, they have learned that prayers and tears are worth little until coined into law, and that to command the attention of legislators, petitioners must represent votes.

A moral power that has no direct influence on the legislation of a nation, is an abstraction, and might as well be expended in the clouds as outside of codes and constitutions, and this has too long been the realm where women have spent their energies fighting shadows. The power that makes laws, and baptizes them as divine at every church altar, is the power for woman to demand now and forever.

WESTCHESTER CONVENTION. June 2, 1852.

The first Woman's Rights Convention held in Pennsylvania was called in the leafy month of June, in the quiet Quaker town of West Chester, in one of the loveliest regions of that State. Chester County had long been noted for its reform movements and flourishing schools, in which the women generally took a deep interest.

It was among these beautiful hills that Bayard Taylor lived and wrote his "Hannah Thurston," a most contemptible burlesque of his own neighbors and the reforms they advocated.

Kennett Square and Longwood have for years been noted for their liberal religious meetings, in which the leading reformers of the nation have in turn been annually represented. In those gatherings of the Progressive Friends, all the questions of the hour were freely discussed, and their printed testimonies sent forth to enlighten the people.

The Convention assembled at ten o'clock in Horticultural Hall, and was called to order by Lucretia Mott, and the following officers chosen:

PRESIDENT.—Mariana Johnson.

SERVICE-PRESIDENTS.—Mary Ann Fulton, William Jackson, Chandler Darlington.

SECRETARIES.—Sarah L. Miller, Hannah Darlington, Sidney Peirce, Edward Webb.

BUSINESS COMMITTEE.—James Mott, Ann Preston, Lucretia Mott, Frances D. Gage, Sarah D. Barnard, Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Joseph A. Dugdale, Margaret Jones, Ernestine L. Rose, Alice Jackson, Jacob Painter, Phebe Goodwin.

FINANCE COMMITTEE, appointed by the Chair.—Hannah Darlington, Jacob Painter, Isaac Mendenhall, Elizabeth Miller.

Mrs. Mott read the following call:

The friends of Justice and Equal Rights are earnestly invited to assemble in Convention, to consider and discuss the present position of Woman in Society, her Natural Eights and Relative Duties.

The reasons for such a Convention are obvious. With few exceptions, both the radical and conservative portions of the community agree that woman, even in this progressive age and country, suffers under legal, educational, and vocational disabilities which ought to be removed. To examine the nature of these disabilities, to inquire into their extent, and to consider the most feasible and proper mode of removing them, will be the aim of the Convention which it is proposed to hold.

If it shall promote in any degree freedom of thought and action among women; if it shall assist in opening to them any avenues to honorable and lucrative employment (now unjustly and unwisely closed); if it shall aid in securing to them more thorough intellectual and moral culture; if it shall excite higher aspirations; if it shall advance by a few steps just and wise public sentiment, it will not have been held in vain.

The elevation of woman is the elevation of the human race. Her interests can not be promoted or injured without advantage or injury to the whole race. The call for such a Convention is therefore addressed to those who desire the physical, intellectual, and moral improvement of mankind. All persons interested in its objects are respectfully requested to be present at its sessions and participate in its deliberations.

THE PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS

The position in which woman has been placed is an anomaly. On the one hand she is constantly reminded of duties and responsibilities from which an angel might shrink. The world is to be saved by her prayers, her quiet and gentle efforts. Man, she is told, is ruled by her smiles; his whole nature subdued by the potency of her tears. Priests, politicians, and poets assure her with flattering tongue, that on her depend the progress and destiny of the race. On the other hand, she is told that she must lovingly confide in the strength and skill of man, who has been endowed with superior intellectual powers; that she must count it her highest honor to reflect upon the world the light of his intelligence and wisdom, as the moon reflects the light of the sun!

We may congratulate one another on this occasion in view of the cheering indications so manifest on every hand that the ignorance and darkness which have so long brooded over the prospects of woman, are beginning to give place to the light of truth. In the summer of 1848, in the village of Seneca Falls, a small number of women, disregarding alike the sneers of the ignorant and the frowns of the learned, assembled in Convention and boldly claimed for themselves, and for their sex, the rights conferred by God and so long withheld by man. Their courageous words were the expression of sentiments which others had felt as deeply as themselves, but which the restraints imposed by long-established custom had taught them to suppress. But now the hour had come, and the world stood prepared for the reception of a new thought, which is destined to work a revolution in human society, more beneficent than any that has preceded it. The seeds of truth which that Convention planted in faith and hope were not left to perish. In many thoughtful minds they germinated apace and brought forth fruit. That fruit was seen in the large Convention held in Ohio in the spring of 1850, in that held in Massachusetts in the autumn of the same year, and in those which have followed since in New England and the West.

Woman at length is awaking from the slumber of ages. Many of the sex already perceive that knowledge, sound judgment, and perfect freedom of thought and action are quite as important for the mothers as for the fathers of the race. They weary of the senseless talk of "woman's sphere," when that sphere is so circumscribed that they may not exert their full influence and power to save their country from war, intemperance, slavery, licentiousness, ignorance, poverty, and crime, which man, in the mad pursuit of his ambitious schemes, unchecked by their presence and counsel, permits to desolate and destroy all that is fair and beautiful in life and fill the world with weeping, lamentation, and woe. Woman begins to grow weary of her helpless and dependent position, and of being treated as if she were formed only to cultivate her affections, that they may flow in strong and deep currents merely to gratify the self-love of man.

She does not listen with delight, as she once did, when she hears her relations to her equal brother represented by the poetical figure of the trellis and creeping tendril, or of the oak and the gracefully clinging vine. No, she feels that she is, like him, an accountable being—that the Infinite Father has laid responsibilities upon her which may not be innocently transferred to another, but which, in her present ignorance, she is not prepared to meet. She is becoming rapidly imbued with the spirit of progress, and will not longer submit, without remonstrance, to the bondage of ancient dogmas and customs. In the retirement and seclusion of life, the stirring impulse of the times has reached even the heart of woman, and she feels the necessity of a more thorough culture and a wider field of usefulness. She sees the glaring injustice by which she has long been deprived of all fair opportunity to earn an independent livelihood, and thus, in too many instances, constrained to enter the marriage relation, as a choice of evils, to secure herself against the ills of impending poverty. The wrong she so deeply feels she is at length arousing herself to redress.

What, then, is the substance of our demand? I answer, we demand for woman equal freedom with her brother to raise her voice and exert her influence directly for the removal of all the evils that afflict the race; and that she be permitted to do this in the manner dictated by her own sense of propriety and justice. We ask for her educational advantages equal to those enjoyed by the other sex; that the richly endowed institutions which she has been taxed to establish and support, may be open alike to all her children. We claim for her the right to follow any honorable calling or profession for which she may be fitted by her intellectual training and capacity. We claim for her a fair opportunity to attain a position of pecuniary independence, and to this end that she receive for her labor a compensation equivalent to its recognized value when performed by the other sex.

These demands, we think, must be admitted to be essentially wise and just. We make them in no spirit of selfish antagonism to the other sex, but under a deep conviction that they are prompted by an enlightened regard for the highest welfare of the race. Some one has justly said that God has so linked the human family together that any violence done at one end of the chain is felt throughout its length. The true interests of the sexes are not antagonistic, but harmonious. There can be no just conflict between their respective rights and duties. For the coming of the day when this great truth shall be universally received, we must work and pray as we have opportunity. When that day shall arrive, it will be clearly perceived that in the true Harmonic Order "woman and her brother are pillars in the same temple and priests of the same worship."

The Secretary, SIDNEY PEIRCE, read the following letter from

SARAH M. GRIMKE.

When an insect emerges with struggles from its chrysalis state, how feeble are all its movements, how its wings hang powerless until the genial air has dried and strengthened them, how patiently the insect tries again and again to spread them, and visit the flowers which bloom around, till at last it enjoys the recompense of its labors in the nectar and the fragrance of the garden.

This illustrates the present condition of Woman. She is just emerging from the darkness and ignorance by which she has been shrouded. She looks forth from her chrysalis and sees the natural and intellectual world lying around her clothed in radiant beauty, and inviting her to enter and possess this magnificent inheritance. How came I, she asks, to be excluded from all these precious privileges? I will arise and go to my Father and say, "Father, permit me to share the labors of my brethren and partake of the fruits which they enjoy." "Go, my daughter," is the paternal response. "Be unto man, in an infinitely higher sense than heretofore, a help-meet." How is woman fulfilling her divine mission? Is she looking on the benefits she is commissioned to bestow on the human race, or is she keeping her eye on her own interests and seeking her own elevation, with little of that expansive benevolence, that philosophical foresight which seeks the development of all?

Woman is now in the transition state, a glorious mission is before her, a glorious destiny awaits her. To fulfill that mission, to be worthy of that destiny, she must patiently wait and quietly hope, blessing those who scorn and deride her feeble and often unsuccessful efforts, to free herself from her entanglements. She must expect many failures in her attempts to emancipate herself from the thralldom of public opinion. Those who have long held the reins of power and the rank of superiority, naturally look with distrust on a movement which threatens to overturn long established customs and transform the baby and the toy into an intellectual being, desiring equal rights with themselves and asserting her claim to all the immunities they enjoy. Woman must be willing to see herself as she is, the slave of fashion, assuming all the Proteus forms she invents, without reference to health or convenience. She must remember how few of us give evidence of sufficient development to warrant our claims; and whilst we feel a divine impulse to proceed in achieving the enlargement of woman, whilst we hear a voice saying, "Ye have compassed this mountain long enough; speak to the people that they go forward," let us not be dismayed at the hindrances we shall encounter from those whom we are laboring to release from the swaddling bands of infancy, or the grave-clothes of superstition, time-honored opinion and crushing circumstances. We are now in a perilous and difficult position. We feel all the inconveniences of our past condition, all the disadvantages and uneasiness of the one we are constrained to occupy, and see in bold relief all the advantages which a change will yield us. But let us remember that our transition state, although replete with temptations and suffering, is necessary to our improvement; we need it to strengthen us and enable us to bear hardships as good soldiers of truth.

To regard any state of society as fixed, is to regard it as the ultimate good, as the best condition to which we can attain. But when man has progressed, when his morality and his religion have assumed a higher tone, it is impossible to perpetuate his childhood, or to give permanence to institutions and opinions whose days are numbered. When reform has truth for its basis and is instinct with the life of progression, no power can dress it in the habiliments of the grave, and bury it out of sight, either in the Potter's-field or under the magnificent mausoleum. There is nothing so precious to man as progress; he has defended it with his heart's best blood, and according to his development has aided it, although sometimes in his blindness he has scattered fire and sword, destruction and misery around, in endeavoring to force mankind to adopt the truths he thought essential to progress. "Woman has come on the stage," says Horace Mann, "6,000 years after man, to profit by his misdeeds and correct his errors." Until now, the world was not prepared to receive, in full measure, the hallowed influence which woman is designed to shed. Her holy mission is to bring peace on earth and good-will to man. She does not ask for irresponsible power; she has seen that from the earliest records of the human race the possession of such power is fraught with danger, that it has always made tyrants. She feels Divinity stirring within her, and its irrepressible aspirings can not, should not be controlled. Mankind have always rejected the means appointed by Infinite Wisdom to assist their upward flight. Let us then go calmly forward, alike regardless of the scorn and ridicule of the shallow, the grave denunciations of the bigot, or the weighty counsel of the narrow-minded and selfish, who would point out the exact position fitted for us to occupy, and with seeming condescension invite us to fill some posts of honor and profit, while they undertake to confine us within their bounds, leaving nothing to our good sense, intelligence, intuitive desires, and aspiring hopes. The truth is, "It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." God alone is competent to do this, and in the present movement His power, wisdom, and will, are so conspicuous, that it will be well to set no bounds to His work, but let it have free course, expecting that contradictions and inconsistencies will mar it, but believing that those contradictions will cease, those inconsistencies disappear, and the perfected human being be developed.

If we adopt as our watchword the language of Margaret Fuller, we can not but overcome all obstacles, outlive all opposition: "Give me Truth. Cheat me by no illusion. Oh, the granting of this prayer is sometimes terrible; I walk over the burning plowshares and they sear my feet—yet nothing but Truth will do."

SARAH M. GRIMKE

LUCRETIA MOTT addressed the Convention, briefly referring to the importance of the movement and expressing her gratification on seeing the response given to the call, by the great number of persons assembled. She saw before her not only a large delegation from the immediate vicinity, but a goodly number from other and distant States.

The movement for the enfranchisement of woman is indeed making rapid progress. Since the first Convention held at Seneca Falls, in 1848, where a few women assembled, and notwithstanding their ignorance of the parliamentary modes of conducting business, promulgated these principles, which took deep root, and are already producing important results. Other large Conventions have been held in different places, which have done much toward disseminating the great principles of equality between the sexes; and a spirit of earnest inquiry has been aroused. She referred to the fact that the agitation commenced in those States most distinguished for intellectual and moral culture, while we in Pennsylvania are ready to embrace their views on this subject; and trusted that the Convention now assembled, would be neither less interesting nor less efficient than those that have been already held.

Mrs. CLARINA HOWARD NICHOLS, of Brattleboro, Vermont, spoke briefly on the absurdity of the popular idea of woman's sphere. She thought the sphere of sex could only be determined by capacity and moral obligation. She had once thought politics necessarily too degrading for woman, but she had changed her views. The science of government, it is said, is of divine origin; a participation in its administration can not then necessarily involve anything to deteriorate from the true dignity of woman. The world's interests have never yet been fully represented. The propriety of woman voting had been to her a stumbling-block; the idea was repelling. She was not yet allowed to vote, but she had ceased to consent to the arrangement which deprived her of that right, and therefore experienced a freedom of spirit which she had not known before. The idea that woman could not go to the ballot-box without a sacrifice of her delicacy was absurd. Women were allowed to vote in church matters unquestioned. They can hold railroad stock, bank stock, and stock of other corporations, where their influence is in proportion to the amount held.

But we are not called upon to maintain the position of the propriety or expediency of women voting. The question is, Shall they have the right so to do?—the propriety should be left to themselves. Woman can now travel alone securely, where formerly it was considered a risk. She can deposit her vote with men, with as much propriety as she can ride with them in railroad cars, on steamboats, etc. She came all the way from the Green Mountains without any male attendant; she traveled with members of Congress and delegates to the Baltimore Convention, and not a "bear" among them offered her the least indignity.

ERNESTINE L. ROSE quoted the testimony of Horace Mann,[67] that our Legislatures were "bear gardens, our representatives too rude and rough for woman's association, hence the impropriety and indelicacy of her mingling in politics." But we are told it is woman's province to soothe the angry passions and calm the belligerent feelings of man, and if what Horace Mann says is true, where can we find a riper harvest awaiting us than in the halls of legislation!

Harriet K. Hunt then read an address upon the medical education of women; on concluding, she offered the following resolutions:

1st. Resolved, That the present position of medical organizations, precluding women from the same educational advantages with men, under pretext of delicacy, virtually acknowledges the impropriety of his being her medical attendant.

2d. Resolved, That we will do all in our power to sustain those women who, from a conviction of duty, enter the medical profession, in their efforts to overcome the evils that have accumulated in their path, and in attacking the strongholds of vice.

3d. Resolved, That the past actions and present indications of our medical schools should not affect us at all; and notwithstanding Geneva and Cleveland Medical Colleges closed their doors after graduating one woman each, and Harvard, through the false delicacy of the students, declared it inexpedient to receive one who had been in successful practice many years, we would still earnestly follow in peace and love where duty points, and leave the verdict to an enlightened public sentiment.

The address of Dr. Hunt called out a discussion on the importance of a thorough medical training for women in all departments of science belonging to that profession.

Mrs. NICHOLS spoke earnestly of the imperfect education of woman. With no knowledge of the laws of health, she has no means of obtaining the required information. Men hold the purse even when it is filled by the labor of both. They close the college doors, though we have helped to build and endow them. And at what a fearful cost of life and health are we thus wronged. Does it cost too much to educate the future mothers of this nation in the science of life? Who can estimate how much greater are the expenses incurred by our ignorant violation of the laws of health?

FRANCES DANA GAGE, of Ohio, spoke of the high scholarship and very successful examinations of those women who had been admitted into the medical colleges, far surpassing the young men in their recitations and general intelligence. So long as the lives of children are conceded to be in the hands of their mothers, it is of vital consequence to the race that women be thoroughly educated for the medical profession.

Mrs. ROSE said: These are mighty questions. When our little ones are removed by death from our care and affection, we feel most keenly our ignorance, and long to know something of those immutable laws of life and health we have so long violated. Woman should at least know enough to be physician to herself and children, but she is denied the advantages granted to man for obtaining knowledge of these things more necessary if possible to her than to him.

The idea of a female doctor is ridiculed. But what is she worth as a nurse of the sick without a knowledge of the art of healing? Why am I in the prime of life in such feeble health? In my country, the laws of life are, comparatively speaking, kept in a nutshell. The girl must not exercise; it is not fashionable. She must not be seen in active life; it is not feminine. The boy may run, the girl must creep. It is to discuss all these grave inequalities that we have assembled here, and I trust the influence of this Convention may be felt in opening to woman all honest and honorable means of self-support and self-development, and in removing all the legal shackles that block her pathway through life.

EVA PUGH said: The degradation of one sex is the degradation of the other. This question is universal, affecting all alike. No fact is better established than that the character of the parent is inherited by the child. Can noble men be born of infirm women? Who are the mothers of great men? Women of mind, of thought, of independence; not women degraded by man's tyranny, laboring in prescribed limits, thinking other people's thoughts, and echoing their opinions. This question of woman's rights affects the whole human race. We know from sad experience that man can not rise while woman is degraded.

Mrs. MOTT spoke of the great change in public sentiment within her recollection in regard to the so-called sphere of woman. Twenty years ago people wondered how a modest girl could attend lectures on Botany; but modest girls did attend them and other places frequented only by men, and the result was not a loss of delicacy, but a higher and nobler development; a true modesty.

JOSEPH A. DUGDALE made a few remarks on the injustice of the laws by which happy households are often broken up on the death of the husband and father. He said there remained one way in which this great evil could be avoided even while the law remains unchanged, and that was by a will of the husband conveying the whole property of their joint industry and economy to the wife, in the event of his death. He urged this as the duty of every husband and father. He closed his remarks with the following extract from the will of Martin Luther, proving that other errors than those of the Church, were deemed by the great reformer of sufficient magnitude to awaken his earnest opposition:

MARTIN LUTHER'S WILL.

"This is all I am worth, and I give it all to my wife for the following reasons:

"1. Because she has always conducted herself toward me lovingly, worthily, and beautifully, like a pious, faithful, and noble wife; and by the rich blessings of God, she has borne and brought up five living children, who yet live, and God grant they may long live.

"2. Because she will take upon herself and pay the debts which I owe and may not be able to pay during my life, which, so far as I can estimate, may amount to about 450 florins, or perhaps a little more.

"3. But most of all, because I will not have her dependent on the children, but the children on her; that they may hold her in honor, and submit themselves to her as God has commanded. For I see well and observe, how the devil, by wicked and envious mouths, heats and excites children, even though they be pious, against this command; especially when the mothers are widows, and the sons get wives, and the daughters get husbands, and again socrus murum, nurus socrum. For I hold that the mother will be the best guardian for her own children, and will use what little property and goods she may have, not for their disadvantage and injury, but for their good and improvement, since they are her own flesh and blood, and she carried them under her heart.

"And if, after my death, she should find it necessary or desirable to marry again (for I can not pretend to set limits to the will or providence of God), yet I trust and herewith express my confidence that she will conduct herself toward our mutual children as becometh a mother, and will faithfully impart to them property, and do whatever else is right.

"And herewith I humbly pray my most gracious lord, his grace Duke John Frederick, elector of Saxony, graciously to guard and protect the above-named gifts and property.

"I also entreat all my good friends to be witnesses for my dear Catey, and help to defend her should any good-for-nothing mouth reprove and slander her, as if she had secretly some personal property of which she would defraud the poor children. For I testify there is no personal property except the plate and jewelry enumerated above.

"Finally, I beg, since in this will or testament I have not used legal forms or words (and thereto I have my reasons), that every one may let me be the person that I am in truth, namely, openly and known both in heaven and earth, and in hell, and let me have respect and authority enough so that I may be trusted and believed more than any lawyer. For so God the Father of all mercies hath entrusted to me, a poor, miserable, condemned sinner, the Gospel of His dear Son, and therein thus far I have behaved and conducted myself truly and faithfully, and it has made much progress in the world through me, and I am honored as a teacher of truth, notwithstanding the curse of the Pope and the wrath of emperors, kings, princes, priests, and all kinds of devils; much rather then let me be believed in this little matter, especially as here in my hand which is very well known; and I hope it may be enough, when it can be said and proved that this is the serious and deliberate desire of Dr. Martin Luther (who is God's lawyer and witness of His Gospel) to be proved by his own hand and seal, Sept. 16, 1542."

LUCRETIA MOTT (see 8th resolution) thought it important that we should not disclaim the antagonism that woman's present position rendered it necessary she should assume. Too long had wrongs and oppressions existed without an acknowledged wrong-doer and oppressor. It was not until the slaveholder was told, "thou art the man," that a healthful agitation was brought about. Woman is told that the fault is in herself, in too willingly submitting to her inferior condition; but, like the slave, she is pressed down by laws in the making of which she has had no voice, and crushed by customs that have grown out of such laws. She can not rise, therefore, while thus trampled in the dust. The oppressor does not see himself in that light until the oppressed cry for deliverance.

In commenting on the will just read, she further said:

The extract from Luther's will which has been read, while it gives evidence of the appreciation of the services of his wife, to a certain extent, and manifests a generous disposition to reward her as a faithful wife, still only proves the degrading relation she bore to her husband. There is no recognition of her equal right to their joint earnings. While the wife is obliged to accept as a gift that which in justice belongs to her, however generous the boon, she is but an inferior dependent.

The law of our State and of New York, has within a few years been so amended that the wife has some control over a part of her property. Much yet remains to be done; and if woman "contend earnestly" for the right, man will co-operate with her in adjusting all her claims. We have only to look back a few years, to satisfy ourselves that the demands already made are met in a disposition to redress the grievances. When a delegation of women to the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840, could find no favor in London, what were the reasons assigned for the exclusion? Not that the right of representation was not as much woman's as man's, but that "they would be ridiculed in the morning papers."

Daniel O'Connell felt the injustice done to those delegates, and in a letter on the subject to me, expressed his deep regret, that owing to business engagements, he was not able to attend the Convention and take part in the discussion.[68]

Dr. Bowring advocated the admission of the delegates at that time; and afterward in a letter to this country, said: "How often have I regretted that the woman's question, to me of singular interest, was launched with so little preparation, so little knowledge of the manner in which it had been entangled, by the fears of some and the follies of others! But, bear up! for the coming of those women will form an era in the future history of philanthropic daring. They made a deep, if not a wide impression; and have created apostles, if as yet they have not multitudes of followers. The experiment was well worth making. It honored America—it will instruct England. If in some matters of high civilization you are behind us, in this matter of courageous benevolence how far are you before us!"

Since that time women have fairly entered the field as students of medicine and as physicians, as editors and lecturers, engaged in schools of design, and in the taking of daguerres, as well as in some other works of art, and in holding Conventions in several of the States of our Union for the advocacy of our entire claims. A National Society has been formed; and the proceedings of these Conventions and Society meetings have been fairly reported, and have received favorable notices in many of the papers of this country, as well as in the Westminster Review in England.

FRANCES D. GAGE said that allusion had been made in the address to the popular sentiment, that men are what their mothers made them. She repelled this sentiment as an indignity to her sex. What mother, she asked, ever taught her son to drink rum, gamble, swear, smoke, and chew tobacco? The truth was, that the boy was virtually taught to regard his mother as inferior, and that it was not manly to follow her instructions. When he left the hearth-stone he was beyond her reach. He found men, and those, too, in elevated stations, addicted to vulgar and vicious practices, and he was liable, in forgetfulness of all that his mother had taught him, to fall into such habits himself. Men allowed grog-shops to be set up on the street corners, and permitted gambling-houses to exist, to tempt the boy from the path of virtue; and when the mothers asked for the abatement of these evils, they were told to keep in their sphere. In the town where she resided (McConnellsville, Morgan Co., Ohio), the women sent a large petition to the court asking that grog-shops might not be licensed. The judge thereupon remarked that "woman's place was in the nursery and the parlor, and that when she interfered with public affairs, or set herself up as an instructor of the courts, she was out of her sphere." Thus men perpetuate institutions which undermine the influence of the mothers, and corrupt the morals of the sons. The boys were, therefore, in many cases, what men made them. True, there were some cases in which the mother, by superior power, shaped the destiny of her sons, in spite of adverse influences. Such cases were not the rule, but the exception. Mothers, generally, could not exert their full influence over their sons, unless they were permitted to stand by them as the equals of their fathers in all relations of life.

The following address, written by Ann Preston, and adopted as an exposition of the principles and purposes of the Convention, was impressively read by the author:

ANN PRESTON'S ADDRESS.

The question is repeatedly asked by those who have thought but little upon the subject of woman's position in society, "What does woman want more than she possesses already? Is she not beloved, honored, guarded, cherished? Wherein are her rights infringed, or her liberties curtailed?"

Glowing pictures have been drawn of the fitness of the present relations of society, and of the beauty of woman's dependence upon the protecting love of man, and frightful visions have been evoked of the confusion and perversion of nature which would occur if the doctrine of the equal rights of man and woman was once admitted.

The idea seems to prevail that movements for the elevation of woman arise, not from the legitimate wants of society, but from the vague restlessness of unquiet spirits; not from the serene dictates of wisdom, but from the headlong impulses of fanaticism.

We came not here to argue the question of the relative strength of intellect in man and woman; for the reform which we advocate depends not upon its settlement. We place not the interests of woman in antagonism to those of her brother, for

"The woman's cause is man's: They rise or sink together, Dwarfed or God-like, bond or free."

We maintain not that woman should lose any of that refinement and delicacy of spirit which, as a celestial halo, ever encircles the pure in heart. We contend not that she shall become noisy and dictatorial, and abjure the quiet graces of life. We claim not that she, any more than her brother, should engage in any vocation or appear in any situation to which her nature and abilities are not fitted. But we ask for her, as for man, equality before the law, and freedom to exercise all her powers and faculties under the direction of her own judgment and volition.

When a woman dies, leaving behind her a husband and children, no appraisers come into the desolated home to examine the effects; the father is the guardian of his offspring; the family relation is not invaded by law. But when a man dies the case is entirely different; in the hour of the widow's deep distress strangers come into the house to take an inventory of the effects, strangers are appointed to be the guardians of her children, and she, their natural care-taker, thenceforth has no legal direction of their interests; strangers decide upon the propriety of the sale of the property—earned, perhaps, by her own and her husband's mutual efforts—and her interest in the estate is coolly designated as the "widow's incumbrance!" In the extremity of her bereavement there is piled upon her, not only the dread of separation from her children, but that of being sent homeless from the spot where every object has been consecrated by her tenderest affections.

Nor is the practical working of this law better than its theory; all over the country there are widows who have been made doubly desolate by its provisions—widows separated from their children, who, if they had had the disposal of their own and their husbands' mutual property, might have retrieved their circumstances, and kept the household band together. We ask for such change in public sentiment as shall procure the repeal of this oppressive law.

We ask that woman shall have free access to vocations of profit and honor, the means of earning a livelihood and independence for herself! As a general rule, profitable employments are not considered open to woman, nor are her business capabilities encouraged and developed by systematic training. Gloomy must be the feelings of the father of a family of young daughters, when he is about to bid farewell to the world, if he is leaving them without the means of pecuniary support. Their brothers may go out into society and gain position and competency; but for them there is but little choice of employment, and, too often, they are left with repressed and crippled energies to pine and chafe under the bitter sense of poverty and dependence.

Their pursuits are to be determined, not by their inclination, judgment, and ability, as are those of man, but by the popular estimate of what is proper and becoming. In Turkey public delicacy is outraged if a woman appears unveiled beyond the walls of the harem; in America a sentiment no less arbitrary presumes to mark out for her the precise boundaries of womanly propriety; and she who ventures to step beyond them, must do it at the peril of encountering low sneers, coarse allusions, and the withering imputation of want of feminine delicacy.

Even for the same services woman generally receives less than man. The whole tendency of our customs, habits, and teaching, is to make her dependent—dependent in outward circumstances, dependent in spirit.

As a consequence of her fewer resources, marriage has been to her the great means of securing position in society. Thus it is that this relation—which should ever be a "holy sacrament," the unbiased and generous election of the free and self-sustained being—too often is degraded into a mean acceptance of a shelter from neglect and poverty! We ask that woman shall be trained to unfold her whole nature; to exercise all her powers and faculties.

It is said that the domestic circle is the peculiar province of woman; that "men are what mothers make them." But how can that woman who does not live for self-culture and self-development, who has herself no exalted objects in life, imbue her children with lofty aspirations, or train her sons to a free and glorious manhood? She best can fulfill the duties of wife and mother, who is fitted for other and varied usefulness.

The being who lives for one relation only can not possess the power and scope which are required for the highest excellence even in that one. If the whole body is left without exercise, one arm does not become strong; if the tree is stunted in its growth, one branch does not shoot into surpassing luxuriance.

That woman whose habits and mental training enable her to assist and sustain her husband in seasons of difficulty, and whose children rely on her as a wise counselor, commands a life-long reverence far deeper and dearer than can be secured by transient accomplishments, or the most refined and delicate imbecility! All women are not wives and mothers, but all have spirits needing development, powers that grow with their exercise.

Those who are best acquainted with the state of society know that there is, at this time, a vast amount of unhappiness among women for want of free outlets to their powers; that thousands are yearning for fuller development, and a wider field of usefulness. The same energies which in man find vent in the professions, and in the thousand forms of business and study, must find an ennobling channel in woman, else they will be frittered away in trifles, or turned into instruments to prey upon their possessor.

To follow the empty round of fashion, to retail gossip and scandal, to be an ornament in the parlor or a mere drudge in the kitchen, to live as an appendage to any human being, does not fill up nor satisfy the capacities of a soul awakened to a sense of its true wants, and the far-reaching and mighty interests which cluster around its existence.

We protest against the tyranny of that public sentiment which assigns any arbitrary sphere to woman. God has made the happiness and development of His creatures to depend upon the free exercise of their powers and faculties. Freedom is the law of beauty, written by His fingers upon the human mind, and the only condition upon which it can attain to its fall stature, and expand in its natural and beautiful proportions.

It is recognized, in reference to man, that his judgment, opportunities, and abilities are the proper measure of his sphere. "The tools to him who can use them." But the same principles are not trusted in their application to woman, lest, forsooth, she should lose her feminine characteristics, and, like the lost Pleiad, forsake her native sphere!

It seems to be forgotten that the laws of nature will not be suspended; that the human mind, when released from pressure, like water, must find its own level; that woman can not, if she would, cast away her nature and instincts; that it is only when we are left free to obey the inward attractions of our being that we fall into our natural places, and move in our God-appointed orbits.

We ask that none shall dare to come in between woman and her Maker, and with unhallowed hands attempt to plant their shallow posts and draw their flimsy cords around the Heaven-wide sphere of an immortal spirit! We maintain that God has not so failed in His adaptations as to give powers to be wasted, talents to be wrapped in a napkin; and that the possession of faculties and capabilities is the warrant of nature, the command of the All-Wise for their culture and exercise.

We believe that the woman who is obeying the convictions of her own soul, and whose ability is commensurate with her employment, is ever in her own true sphere; whether in her quiet home she is training her children to nobleness and virtue, or is standing as a physician by the bed of sickness and sorrow; whether, with Elizabeth Fry, she is preaching the gospel of glad tidings to the sad dwellers in prison, or like the Italian, Lauri Bassi, is filling a professor's chair and expounding philosophy to admiring and instructed listeners.

While we demand for woman a more complete physical, intellectual, and moral education, as the means of strengthening and beautifying her own nature, and of ennobling the whole race, we also ask for a more elevated standard of excellence and moral purity in man; and we maintain that if there is any place of resort or employment in society, which necessarily would sully the delicacy of woman's spirit, in that, man also must be contaminated and degraded. Woman indeed should wear about her, wherever she moves, the protecting investment of innocence and purity; but not less is it requisite that he, who is the companion of her life, should guard his spirit with the same sacred and beautiful covering.

We believe that woman, as an accountable being, can not innocently merge her individuality in that of her brother, or accept from him the limitations of her sphere. In all life's great extremities she also is thrown upon her inward resources, and stands alone. Man can not step in between her and the "accusing angel" of her own conscience; alone in the solitude of her spirit she must wrestle with her own sorrows; none can walk for her "the valley of the shadow of death!" When her brother shall be able to settle for her accountabilities, and "give to God a ransom for her soul," then, and not till then, may she rightly commit to him the direction of her powers and activities.

We ask, in fine, for the application of the fundamental principles of Christianity and republicanism to this, as to all other questions of vital importance; and appealing to all who desire the progression and happiness of the whole race, we ask them, as magnanimous men and true women, to examine this subject in the spirit of a generous and candid investigation.

RUSH PLUMLY said: Although institutions which recognize all the rights of all classes of the people, and allow scope for the growth and activity of every faculty, must, in their very nature, increase in power and permanence; yet, compared with the duration of things, the oldest nations and the best founded governments have had but an ephemeral existence, appearing, maturing, and decaying with startling rapidity and endless succession.

No form has been exempt from this national mortality. Theocracies, oligarchies, monarchies, despotisms, republics, have arisen, flourished, and vanished into history or tradition. So inevitable does the successive ruin appear, that we have incorporated into our religious faith the idea that limitation, conflict, and decay, rather than expansion, permanence, and peace, are inherent in all human governments, and, in despair man postpones his hope of national, as well as of individual stability and happiness, to some future existence.

For results so certain and so universal among all people, in every age, there must be some profound and radical cause which religion and philosophy have not discovered, or for which they have proposed no remedy. It is not sufficient to say that these are consequences of human imperfection; that we know; but whence arises the imperfection? It does not satisfy us to assert that they proceed from the depravity of man; how came he depraved? Nor is it more consoling to declare that all human institutions must change and perish. Why must they? Human institutions, if founded upon eternal principles, become divine, and may be immortal; it is not the human, but the inhuman institutions which perish; not humanity, but inhumanity which fills the earth with strife and blood.

No! there is behind and below all these imaginary causes, a real cause for the degeneracy of the race. It may be traced to the long continued disregard of the laws of God in relation to woman, and the retribution is worked out physiologically upon the whole nature of man, reaching every tissue of his body and every faculty of his mind.

It is a law of God, well understood, that whenever and wherever any community forcibly depresses any class of its people below the general level, it not only injures and degrades that class, but is itself injured, degraded, and deranged in exact proportion to the wrong it perpetrates. Whenever we crowd any portion of our fellow-beings into an abyss of ignorance and servitude, we are drawn irresistibly, by their weight, to the brink of the same gulf.

If this be the inevitable result of the oppression of an individual, or a class, how much more forcibly must it apply when one-half the world, the "mothers of the living," are made subject to systematic deprivation of rights and tyrannous restriction in the exercise of high and noble faculties.

I do not propose to detail the disabilities under which woman suffers. They have been ably depicted by women in this meeting. But I wish to indicate the breadth and basis of this reform, for the consideration of those people who suppose it to be a fractional and transient movement.