Mrs. TAPPAN gave an interesting account of some of the Indian tribes in Mexico and California, who, she thought, had in one sense a higher idea of the capacity of woman than their more civilized brethren. The Navajos, on one occasion, when a United States Commission composed of General Sherman, General Terry, and other officers of the army, went to them to treat with them on behalf of the Government, refused to enter the officer"s quarters for the purpose of discussion or decision of their difficulties, unless their squaws were permitted to partic.i.p.ate in the deliberations, and the officers were obliged to allow the women to come in.
The evening session of the convention was called to order by LUCY STONE. Steinway Hall was filled with an earnest and interested a.s.sembly, numbering about a thousand persons.
Mrs. CHURCHILL, of Providence, R. I., was the first speaker. She spoke at some length, and a.s.serted the undoubted right of women to the suffrage. She referred to the fear which men entertained, or pretended to entertain, of women neglecting every other duty attaching to them simply because they should get suffrage. Men do not find voting so exceedingly incompatible with the other duties of life that they should have such fear of woman suffrage. Women are not asking for _bon-bons_ in this matter. They are demanding that which belongs to them. They are not children, nor idiots, and they ought to have the same right of action as is accorded to sane men.
The address of Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE was as follows: This mighty edifice of the ideal society has many mansions, whose doors open one after the other in the ruins of the ages. When Providence has removed the mysterious seal from one of these doors those who know the signs of the times gladly enter. And soon the halt and the lame and the blind hear of the new refuge, the new benefaction, and make haste to crowd its halls and parlors.
America itself was at first such a refuge. The derided Puritans rode there n.o.bly across the highway of the ocean. By and by it leaked out that civil and religious liberty had made a good thing of it, and then the Old World began to sneak over into the s.p.a.cious domain of the New. And now it comes with such a tide that we can scarcely build cities and railroads fast enough for its accommodation. America is to the nations a house of G.o.d--a divinely appointed city of refuge. Poorly have we administered that house of G.o.d, because we ourselves were undivine. But we have improved a little--we have learned some lessons--we have opened some doors. And every lesson that we have learned has shown us more and more of the grand but terrible labor which lies before us. What one should be, and know, and intend, in order to come up to the standard of an American, that is something which as yet puts most of us to the blush, not for being so much, but so little children of the New World; for this may the Old World deride us.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Julia Ward Howe.]
I can not see this New World as it ought to be, in my remotest vision, without many changes in what it is. Looking towards this great aim of building a Christian state, I see the position of woman as wrong and harmful. Wrong to herself since she is pushed one remove further from the divine than man--she, born of the same humanity and divinity with himself. Wrong to society since she, with special gifts and powers for its aid and advancement, is forcibly restrained to the functions which man deigns to allow her; her att.i.tude to law, labor and life being determined by him through the old principle of barbarism, the predominance of physical force.
Which shall I treat first, the wrong done to the individual or that done to society? I will start with the individual. And from the start I will say that the very instinct of secondariness, so often postulated as a reason for the social subjection of women, is, on the part of those who urge it, either an invention or an error. The instinct, as I understand it, is all the other way.
The little girl does not know in herself any inferiority to the boy. He can perhaps beat her, but while he may consider this a mark of superiority, she is too wise to accept it as such. In their lessons she flies where he walks. She cries for his floggings oftener than he can laugh at her failures. She needs less machinery than he to arrive at the same mental and moral results. Nature has given him a mental hammer, but it has given her a mental needle, and she has embroidered the rainbow before he has forged the thunder. How does he overtake her swift steps?
How tame and bind her fiery soul?
Now I confess that he has an accomplice greater than himself. The girl, coming upon the full consciousness of womanhood, comes also upon that of its opposite. The primal divine unity of the race makes itself felt in her dreamy bosom. She is but half of the ideal--the perfect human being--the other half is not yet hers; she must seek diligently till she find it. Do not laugh. The pilgrimage of Psyche is performed by every maiden soul; but love, the supreme G.o.d, in the little child is not always found. So far, so good. The woman often finds a mate; sometimes has quite a selection of mates offered her. If she finds the complement of her incomplete being, what more can she want? What wrong is done her? This simply. If her single life was incomplete, that of her partner without her was no less so. The need of marriage was equal with both. Nay, but for the aid of vices to which the male part of society give system and culture, the need of marriage on his part will be more imperative than on hers. Its natural burdens fall with fivefold force on her. She must bear the children. She must give the flower of her life to services full of weariness and of anguish. Now, however the matter may stand between man and woman, the State"s need of marriage is imperative. And as the State commands marriage, and as the woman contracts marriage as an obligation to the State, the State is bound by every sacred obligation of justice to render the contract an equal one. And here comes up again the barbaric element--the predominance of physical force. "Shall this softer, gentler, more fragile creature be the equal of the ruder, stouter man?" "Yes," says your Christianity, "She is a divine inst.i.tution, as you are; she desires the same culture, the same respect, the same authority." "No," says your barbarism, "I can oppress her, and I will. We won"t call it oppression, if you please. We"ll call it protection. I"ll keep her money, and her children, and her body, and her soul. I"ll keep them all for her.
She can ask me for what she wants. I shall always know whether it is best for her to have it or no."
Now, here it is true physical ascendency of the man which renders the a.s.sumption of this position possible. Great as this power is, he has taken pains to increase it by an immense array of aids and appliances. He has kept the woman ignorant of all the technologies of the world. Fatal renewal of the Hebrew myth, he has eaten of the tree of knowledge, has kept the fruit for himself. Society can not be governed without law and logic. The use of these the man has monopolized, encouraging in the woman the natural gifts and accomplishments which give him most delight--dress and dance, and the sweet voice and graceful manner, and, above all the ready acquiescence in his sovereign pleasure. But let her ask him for the methods by which she may a.n.a.lyze his actions and his intuitions, and he says, "No." No college door shall open for her, no nursery of law, medicine or theology. Philosophy, the science of sciences--which Dictrina taught to Socrates, who teaches it to the world to-day--that would give her the key to all the rest. She may get it, if she can.
We have brought our theoretical woman up to the period of marriage and maternity. Here the intensity of personal feeling and interest monopolize her. Her nursery is full of pains and pleasures, but its delights predominate, and though she will need more than ever the help of outside culture and sympathy, she is yet tied by her affections even more than by her duties to a centre of feeling too intense to generate a wide circle. Here, too, the enforced inequality of inst.i.tutions pursues her. The children, born at such cost of suffering, are not hers in the eye of the law. The right to them which nature puts primarily in the mother, society has long vested almost absolutely in the father.
In case of any difference between them he will say, "I am the father--my will must be obeyed." And what he will say in private the law will say in public. Mrs. Stone records a piteous case in which an unborn child was willed by its dying father to relatives in a foreign country in which the widowed mother suffered the pains of childbirth, that other hearts than hers might be gladdened by her dearly-bought treasure. This young woman was described as in a maze of bewilderment at the presence on the statute-book of a law so miraculously wicked. We all hope that in such laws there comes a great deal of dead letter, but the dead letter itself stinks and is corrupt. The book of justice should be purged of such unhallowed corpses.
In the nursery the mother is called upon to set forward the same injustice which presided over her own education. "Preaching down a daughter"s heart," the beautiful phrase of Tennyson, becomes the duty of every woman who finds in her daughter saliency of intellect and individuality of will. Mediocrity is the standard!
"Seek not, my child, to go beyond it. Thou hast thy little allotments. The French must be thy cla.s.sics, the house accounts thy mathematics. Patchwork, cooking, and sweeping thy mechanics; dress and embroidery thy fine arts. See how small the spheres. Do not venture outside of it, nor teach thy daughters, when thou shalt have such to do so."
And so we women, from generation to generation, are drilled to be the apes of an artificial standard, made for us and imposed upon us by an outsider; a being who, in this att.i.tude, becomes our natural enemy.
Mrs. LUCY STONE said: There have always been good and able men ready to second us, and to say their best words for our cause.
Among the first of these is Mr. George William Curtis, whom I have now the pleasure to introduce.
_Ladies and Gentlemen:_--It is pleasant to see this large a.s.sembly, and this generous spirit, for it is by precisely such meetings as this that public opinion is first awakened, and public action is at last secured. Our question is essentially an American question. It is a demand for equal rights, and will therefore be heard. Whenever a free and intelligent people asks any question involving human rights or liberty or development, it will ask louder and louder until it is answered. The conscience of this nation sits in the way like a sphinx, proposing its riddle of true democracy. Presidents and parties, conventions, caucuses, and candidates, failing to guess it, are remorselessly consumed. Forty years ago that conscience asked, "Do men have fair play in this country?" A burst of contemptuous laughter was the reply. Louder and louder grew that question, until it was one great thunderburst, absorbing all other questions; and then the country saw that its very life was bound up in the answer; and, springing to its feet, alive in every nerve, with one hand it snapped the slave"s chain, and with the other welded the Union into a Nation--the pledge of equal liberty.
That same conscience sits in the way to-day. It asks another question, "Do women have fair play in this country?" As before, a sneer or a smile of derision may ripple from one end of the land to the other; but that question will swell louder and louder, until it is answered by the ballot in the hands of every citizen, and by the perfect vindication of the fundamental principle, that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." By its very nature, however, the progress of this reform will differ from every other political movement. Behind every demand for the enlargement of the suffrage, hitherto there was always a threat. It involved possible anarchy and blood. But this reform hides no menace. It lies wholly in the sphere of reason. It is a demand for justice, as the best political policy; an appeal for equality of rights among citizens as the best security of the common welfare. It is a plea for the introduction of all the mental and moral forces of society into the work of government. It is an a.s.sertion that in the regulation of society, no cla.s.s and no interest can be safely spared from a direct responsibility. It encounters, indeed, the most ancient traditions, the most subtle sophistry of men"s pa.s.sions and prejudices. But there was never any great wrong righted that was not intrenched in sophistry--that did not plead an immemorial antiquity, and what it called the universal consent and "instinct" of mankind.
I say that the movement is a plea for justice, and I a.s.sert that the equal rights of women, not as citizens, but as human beings, have never been acknowledged. There is no audacity so insolent, no tyranny so wanton, no inhumanity so revolting, as the spirit which says to any human being, or to any cla.s.s of human beings, "You shall be developed just as far as we choose, and as fast as we choose, and your mental and moral life shall be subject to our pleasure!"
Edward Lear, the artist, traveling in Greece, says that "he was one day jogging along with an Albanian peasant, who said to him, "Women are really better than donkeys for carrying burdens, but not so good as mules."" This was the honest opinion of barbarism--the honest feeling of Greece to-day.
You say that the peasant was uncivilized. Very well. Go back to the age of Pericles; it is the high noon of Greek civilization.
It is Athens--"the eye of Greece--the mother of art." There stands the great orator--himself incarnate Greece--speaking the oration over the Peloponnesian dead. "The greatest glory of woman," he said, "is to be the least talked of among men;" so said Pericles, when he lived. Had Pericles lived to-day he would have agreed that to be talked of among men as Miss Martineau and Florence Nightingale are, as Mrs. Somerville and Maria Mitch.e.l.l are, is as great a glory as to be the mother of the Gracchi.
Women in Greece, the mothers of Greece, were an inferior and degraded cla.s.s. And Grote sums up their whole condition when he says, "Every thing which concerned their lives, their happiness, or their rights, was determined for them by male relatives, and they seem to have been dest.i.tute of all mental culture and refinement."
These were the old Greeks. Will you have Rome? The chief monument of Roman civilization is its law--which underlies our own; and Buckle quotes the great commentator on that law as saying that it was the distinction of the Roman law that it treated women not as persons, but as things. Or go to the most ancient civilization; to China, which was old when Greece and Rome were young. The famous French Jesuit missionary, Abbe Huc, mentions one of the most tragical facts recorded--that there is in China a cla.s.s of women who hold that if they are only true to certain bonds during this life, they shall, as a reward, change their form after death and return to earth as men. This distinguished traveler also says that he was one day talking with a certain Master Ting, a very shrewd Chinaman, whom he was endeavoring to convert. "But," said Ting, "what is the special object of your preaching Christianity?" "Why, to convert you, and save your soul," said the Abbe. "Well, then, why do you try to convert the women?"
asked Master Ting. "To save their souls," said the missionary.
"But women have no souls," said Master Ting; "you can"t expect to make Christians of women,"--and he was so delighted with the idea that he went out shouting, "Hi! hi! now I shall go home and tell my wife she has a soul, and I guess she will laugh as loudly as I do!"
Such were the three old civilizations. Do you think we can disembarra.s.s ourselves of history? Our civilization grows upon roots that spring from the remotest past; and our life, proud as we are of it, is bound up with that of Greece and Rome. Do you think the spirit of our society is wholly different? Let us see.
It was my good fortune, only a few weeks ago, to be invited to address the students of Va.s.sar College at Poughkeepsie; which you will remember is devoted exclusively to the higher education of women. As I stood in those ample halls, and thought of that studious household, of the observatory and its occupants, it seemed to me that, like the German naturalist, who, wandering in the valley of the Amazon, came suddenly upon the _Victoria Regia_, so there, in the valley of the Hudson, I had come upon one of the finest flowers of our civilization. But in the midst of my enthusiasm I was told by the President that this was the first fully endowed college for women in the world; and from that moment I was alarmed. From behind every door, every tree, I expected to see good Master Ting springing out with his "Hi! hi!
you laugh at us Chinese barbarians; you call yourselves in America the head of civilization; you claim that the glory of your civilization is your estimate of women; you sneer at us Chinese for belittling women"s souls and squeezing their feet.
Who belittle their capacities? Who squeeze their minds?" We must confess it. The old theory of the subservience of women still taints our civilization.
You open your morning paper and read that on the previous evening there was a meeting of intelligent and experienced women, with some that were not so, which is true of all general meetings of men and women; and these persons demanded the same liberty of choice, and an equal opportunity with all other members of society. But the report of the meeting is received with a shout of derisive laughter that echoes through the press and through private conversation. Gulliver did not take the Lilliputians on his hands and look at them with more utter contempt than the political cla.s.s of this country, to which the men in this hall belong, take up these women and look at them with infinite, amused disdain. But in the very next column of the same morning paper we find another report, describing a public dinner, at which men only were present. And we read that after the great orators had made their great speeches, in the course of which they complimented woman so prettily, to the delight of the few privileged ladies who stood behind the screens, or looked over the balcony, or peeped in through the cracks of the windows and doors; and when the great orators had retired with the President, amid universal applause, the first Vice-President took the head of the table and punch was brought in. And well toward morning, when the "army" and "navy" and the "press" and the "Common Council" had been toasted and drank, with three times three, and Richard Swiveller, Esq., had sung his celebrated song, "Queen of my soul!" the last regular toast was proposed--"Woman--heaven"s last, best gift to man," which was received with tumultuous enthusiasm, the whole company rising and cheering, the band playing "Will ye come to Kelvin Grove, bonnie la.s.sie, O?" and in response to a unanimous call, some gallant and chivalric editor replied in a strain of pathetic and humorous eloquence, during which many of the company were observed to shed tears or laugh, or embrace their neighbors; after which those of the company who were able rose from the table, and hallooing, "We won"t go home till morning!" they hiccoughed their way home. This report is not read with great derision or laughter. It is not felt that by this performance women have been insulted and degraded.
Here, at this moment, in this audience, I have no doubt there is many a man who is exclaiming with fervor--"Home, the heaven-appointed sphere of woman." Very well. I don"t deny it, but how do you know it? How can you know it? There is but one law by which any sphere can be determined, and that is perfect liberty of development. I look into history and the society around me, and I see that the position of women which is most agreeable upon the whole to men is that which they call the "heaven-appointed sphere" of woman. It may or may not be so; all that I can see thus far is that men choose to have it so. A gentleman remarks that it is a beautiful ordinance of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines. And when I say, "Is it so?" he takes me into his garden, and shows me a poor, tortured pear-tree, trained upon a trellis. Then I see that it is the beautiful design of Providence that pear-trees should grow like vines, precisely as Providence ordains that Chinese women shall have small feet; and that the powdered sugar we buy at the grocer"s shall be half ground rice. These philosophers might as wisely inform us that Providence ordains Christian saints to be chops and steaks; and then point us to St. Lawrence upon his gridiron.
Has nature ordained that the lark shall rise fluttering and singing to the sun in the spring? But how should we ever know it, if he were prisoned in a cage with wires of gold never so delicate, or tied with a silken string however slight and soft?
Is it the nature of flowers to open to the south wind? How could we know it but that, unconstrained by art, their winking eyes respond to that soft breath? In like manner, what determines the sphere of any morally responsible being, but perfect liberty of choice and liberty of development? Take those away, and you have taken away the possibility of determining the sphere. How do I know my sphere as a man, but by repelling everything that would arbitrarily restrict my choice? How can you know yours as women, but by obedience to the same law?
It is not the business of either s.e.x to theorize about the sphere of the other. It is the duty of each to secure the liberty of both. Give women, for instance, every opportunity of education that men have. If there are some branches of knowledge improper for them to acquire--some which are in their nature unwomanly--they will know it a thousandfold better than men. And if, having opened the college, there be some woman in whom the love of learning extinguishes all other love, then the heaven-appointed sphere of that woman is not the nursery. It may be the laboratory, the library, the observatory; it may be the platform or the Senate. And if it be either of these, shall we say that education has unsphered and uns.e.xed her? On the contrary, it has enabled that woman to ascertain so far exactly what G.o.d meant her to do.
The woman"s rights movement is the simple claim, that the same opportunity and liberty that a man has in civilized society shall be extended to the woman who stands at his side--equal or unequal in special powers, but an equal member of society. She must prove her power as he proves his.
And so when Joan of Arc follows G.o.d and leads the army; when the Maid of Saragossa loads and fires the cannon; when Mrs. Stowe makes her pen the heaven-appealing tongue of an outraged race; when Grace Darling and Ida Lewis, pulling their boats through the pitiless waves, save fellow-creatures from drowning; when Mrs.
Patten, the captain"s wife, at sea--her husband lying helplessly ill in his cabin--puts everybody aside, and herself steers the ship to port, do you ask me whether these are not exceptional women? I am a man and you are women; but Florence Nightingale, demanding supplies for the sick soldiers in the Crimea, and when they are delayed by red tape, ordering a file of soldiers to break down the doors and bring them, which they do--for the brave love bravery--seems to me quite as womanly as the loveliest girl in the land, dancing at the gayest ball in a dress of which the embroidery is the pinched lines of starvation in another girl"s face. Jenny Lind enchanting the heart of a nation; Anna d.i.c.kinson pleading for the equal liberty of her s.e.x; Lucretia Mott, publicly bearing her testimony against the sin of slavery, are doing what G.o.d, by His great gifts of eloquence and song, appointed them to do. And whatever generous and n.o.ble duty, either in a private or a public sphere, G.o.d gives any woman the will and the power to do, that, and that only, for her, is feminine.
But have women, then, no sphere as women? Undoubtedly they have, as men have a sphere as men. If a woman is a mother, G.o.d gives her certain affections, and cares springing from them, which we may be very sure she will not forget, and to which, just in the degree that she is a true woman, she will be fondly faithful. We need not think that it is necessary to fence her in, nor to suppose that she would try to evade these duties and responsibilities, if perfect liberty were given her. As Sydney Smith said of education, we need not fear that if girls study Greek and mathematics, mothers will desert their infants for quadratic equations, or verbs in _mi_.
But the sphere of the family is not the sole sphere either of men or women. They are not only parents, they are human beings, with genius, talents, aspirations, ambition. They are also members of the State, and from the very equality of the parental function which perpetuates the State, they are equally interested in its welfare.
Is it said that she influences the man now? Very well; do you object to that? And if not, is there any reason why she should not do directly what she does indirectly? If it is proper that her opinion should influence a man"s vote, is there any good reason why it should not be independently expressed? Or is it said that she is represented by men? Excuse me; I belong to a country which said, with James Otis in the forum, and with George Washington in the field, that there is no such thing as virtual representation. The guarantee of equal opportunity in modern society is the ballot. It may be a clumsy contrivance, but it is the best we have yet found. In our system a man without a vote is but half a man. So long as women are forbidden political equality, the laws and feelings of society will be unjust to them.
I have no more superst.i.tious notions about the ballot than about any other method of social improvement and progress. But all experience shows that my neighbor"s ballot is no protection for me. We see that voters may be bribed, dazzled, coerced; and, where there is practically universal suffrage among men, we often see, indeed, corruption, waste, and bad laws. But we nowhere see that those who once have the ballot are willing to relinquish it, and many of those who most warmly oppose the voting of women also most earnestly advocate the unconditional restoration of political rights to the guiltiest of the late rebel leaders, because they know that to deprive them of the ballot places them at a terrible disadvantage. If then it is what I may call an American political instinct, that any cla.s.s of men which monopolizes the political power will be unjust to other cla.s.ses of men, how much truer is it that one s.e.x as a cla.s.s will be unjust to the other.
I know, as every man knows, many a woman of the n.o.blest character, of the highest intelligence, of the purest purpose, the owner of property, the mother of children, devoted to her family and to all her duties, and for that reason profoundly interested in public affairs. And when this woman says to me, "You are one of the governing cla.s.s. Your Government is founded upon the principle of expressed consent of all as the best security of all. I have as much stake in it as you--perhaps more than you, because I am a parent--and wish more than many of my neighbors to express my opinion and a.s.sert my influence by a ballot. I am a better judge than you or any man can be of my own responsibilities and powers. I am willing to bear my equal share of every burden of the Government in such manner as we shall all equally decide to be best. By what right, then, except that of mere force, do you deny me a voice in the laws which I am forced to obey?" What shall I say? What can I say? Shall I tell her that she is "owned" by some living man, or is some dead man"s "relict," as the old phrase was? Shall I tell her that she ought to be ashamed of herself for wishing to be uns.e.xed; that G.o.d has given her the nursery, the ball-room, the opera, and that, if these fail, He has graciously provided the kitchen, the wash-tub, and the needle? Or shall I tell her that she is a lute, a moonbeam, a rosebud; and touch my guitar, and weave flowers in her hair, and sing:
"Gay without toil and lovely without art, They spring to cheer the sense and glad the heart; Nor blush, my fair, to own you copy these, Your best, your sweetest empire is to please"?
No, no. At least, I will not insult her. I can say nothing. I hang my head before that woman, as when in foreign lands I was asked, "You are an American. That is the nation that forever boasts of the equal liberty of all its citizens, and is the only great nation in the world that traffics in human flesh!"
The very moment women pa.s.sed out of the degradation of the Greek household and the contempt of the Roman law, they began their long and slow ascent through prejudice, sophistry, and pa.s.sion to their perfect equality of choice and opportunity as human beings; and the a.s.sertion that when a majority of women ask for equal political rights they will be granted, is a confession that there is no conclusive reason against their sharing them. And if that be so, how can their admission rightfully depend upon the majority? Why should the woman who does not care to vote prevent the voting of her neighbor who does? Why should a hundred fools who are content to be dolls and do what Mrs. Grundy expects, prejudice the choice of a single one who wishes to be a woman and do what her conscience requires? You tell me that the great ma.s.s of women are uninterested, indifferent, and, upon the whole, hostile to the movement. You say what of course you can not know, but even if it were so, what then? There are some of the n.o.blest and best of women, both in this country and in England, who are not indifferent. They are the women who have thought for themselves upon the subject. The others (the great mult.i.tude) are those who have not thought at all; who have acquiesced in the old order, and who have accepted the prejudices of men. Shall their unthinking acquiescence or the intelligent wish of their thoughtful sisters decide the question?
We can be patient. Our fathers won their independence of England by the logic of English ideas. We will persuade America by the eloquence of American principles. In one of the fierce Western battles among the mountains, General Thomas was watching a body of his troops painfully pushing their way up a steep hill against a withering fire. Victory seemed impossible, and the General--even he a rock of valor and patriotism--exclaimed, "They can"t do it; they"ll never reach the top!" His chief-of-staff, watching the struggle with equal earnestness, placed his hand on his commander"s arm and said softly, "Time, time, General; give them time;" and presently the moist eyes of the brave leader saw his soldiers victorious upon the summit. They were American soldiers. So are we. They were fighting our American battle. So are we. They were climbing a precipice. So are we. The great heart of their General gave them time and they conquered. The great heart of our country will give us time and we shall triumph.
Mrs. LUCY STONE then introduced Hon. George W. Julian, member of Congress from Indiana. "His name," she said, "will always be held in grateful remembrance by good women as the author of the XVI.
Amendment."
Mr. JULIAN said that, as a thorough-going radical in politics and a sincere believer in democracy as a principle, he could not see how he was to argue the question of woman suffrage, even if he had the time. Woman"s rights, to his mind, rested upon precisely the same grounds upon which men"s rights rest; and to argue the question of woman"s rights is to argue the question of human rights. Subscribing as he did to the great primal truth of the sacredness of human rights, the same logic which held him to that compelled him--it is inexorable logic--to stand by the legitimate results to which it leads. The issue was between aristocracy and privilege on one side, and democracy and equality of inherent right on the other. Speaking of the XVI. Amendment, he said: "Believing as I do in democracy in the large and proper and full sense of the term, and being unwilling to write myself down a hypocrite or liar by refusing to women equal partic.i.p.ation in rights which I insist upon for myself as a citizen of the United States, I thought it was my duty to introduce into the Congress of the United States a XVI. Amendment to the Const.i.tution proposing to give to one half of our citizens who are to-day disfranchised a voice in the system of laws and government by which the other half of the citizens now govern them. Should it succeed, you will have a true and real democracy in this land; a Government emphatically of the people, for the people, and by the people.
Mrs. CELIA BURLEIGH was then introduced, and said: Ladies and gentlemen, I am not generally in favor of compromises, but I come before you to-night to propose a compromise. I had written a speech for the occasion, and--a--I a.s.sure you it was a very good speech. As I am compa.s.sionate, however, if you will take my word for it that it is a very good speech I will not inflict it upon you.
These remarks brought such thunders of applause, that in response to the manifest desire of the audience, Mrs. Burleigh again came forward, and delivered a highly interesting and eloquent address upon the general subject of woman"s improvement, under the epigrammatic t.i.tle of "Woman"s Right to be a Woman." An extract or two will show the spirit with which she treats the question.
"I appeal to every true man before me if he has not looked into the faces of well-dressed men so sensual and brutal in their expression, that he would sooner a hundredfold see a sister or daughter laid in her grave than entrusted to the guardianship of such a man. Will you not give to every woman the power to maintain the integrity of her womanhood--the ownership of herself? What means the right of the drunkard"s wife to be a woman? It means the power to protect herself from his drunken hate and his more frightful drunken love. It means that she be armed with a vote to repress the horrid traffic that has made her husband a brute, or, failing to save him, that she escape with untarnished honor from his polluting arms. What signifies the right to be a woman to her who must endure the daily contact of a social villain, if it be not to have all human virtue as her ally when she snaps the tie that binds her to him, and vindicates the Divine validity of marriage by breaking the fetters of the fatal sham? What is involved in the right of the Magdalen to be a woman redeemed and disenthralled from the bondage of sin? What but the entire reconstruction of society with purity for a law and charity for the executive; with more of the divine mother in man, more of manly courage and self-respecting dignity in woman; in both more reverence for humanity and a more abiding faith in the indestructible possibilities of good in every human soul."
The Convention then adjourned _sine die_.