not expand under bolts and bars; and yet, amid all blighting, crushing circumstances—confined within the narrowest possible limits, trampled upon by prejudice and injustice, from her education and position forced to occupy herself almost exclusively with the most trivial affairs—in spite of all these difficulties, her intellect is as good as his. The few bright meteors in man's intellectual horizon could well be matched by woman, were she allowed to occupy the same elevated position. There is no need of naming the De Staëls, the Rolands, the Somervilles, the Wollstonecrofts, the Sigourneys, the Wrights, the Martineaus, the Hemanses, the Fullers, Jagellos, and many more of modern as well as ancient times, to prove her mental powers, her patriotism, her self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of humanity, and the eloquence that gushes from her pen, or from her tongue. These things are too well known to require repetition. And do you ask for fortitude, energy, and perseverance? Then look at woman under suffering, reverse of fortune, and affliction, when the strength and power of man have sunk to the lowest ebb, when his mind is overwhelmed by the dark waters of despair. She, like the tender ivy plant bent yet unbroken by the storms of life, not only upholds her own hopeful courage, but clings around the tempest-fallen oak, to speak hope to his faltering spirit, and shelter him from the returning blast of the storm.
In looking over the speeches of Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, Clarina Howard Nichols, Antoinette Brown, and Lucy Stone, and the well-digested reports by Paulina Wright Davis on Education, Abby Price on Industry, and William Henry Channing on the Social Relations, comprising the whole range of woman's rights and duties, we feel that the report of one of these meetings settles the question of woman's capacity to reason. At every session of this two days' Convention Brinley Hall was so crowded at an early hour that hundreds were unable to gain admittance. Accordingly, the last evening it was proposed to adjourn to the City Hall; and even that spacious auditorium was crowded long before the hour for assembling. It may be said with truth, that in the whole history of the woman suffrage movement there never was at one time more able and eloquent men and women on our platform, and represented by letter there, than in these Worcester Conventions, which called out numerous complimentary comments and editorial notices, notably the following:
[From the New York Christian Inquirer, Rev. Henry Bellows, D.D., editor.]
THE WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION AT WORCESTER.
We have read the report of the proceedings of this Convention with lively interest and general satisfaction. We confess ourselves to be much surprised at the prevailing good sense, propriety, and moral elevation of the meeting. No candid reader can deny the existence of singular ability, honest and pure aims, eloquent and forcible advocacy, and a startling power in the reports and speeches of this Convention. For good, or for evil, it seems to us to be the most important meeting since that held in the cabin of the Mayflower. That meeting recognized the social and political equality of one-half the human race; this asserts the social and political equality of the other half, and of the whole. Imagine the difference which it would have made in our Declaration of Independence, to have inserted "and women" in the first clause of the self-evident truths it asserts: "that all men and women are created equal." This Convention declares this to be the true interpretation of the Declaration, and at any rate, designs to amend the popular reading of the instrument to this effect. Nor is it a theoretical change which is aimed at. No more practical or tremendous revolution was ever sought in society, than that which this Woman's Rights Convention inaugurates. To emancipate half the human race from its present position of dependence on the other half; to abolish every distinction between the sexes that can be abolished, or which is maintained by statute or conventional usage; to throw open all the employments of society with equal freedom to men and women; to allow no difference whatsoever, in the eye of the law, in their duties or their rights, this, we submit, is a reform, surpassing, in pregnancy of purpose and potential results, any other now upon the platform, if it do not outweigh Magna Charta and our Declaration themselves.
We very well recollect the scorn with which the annual procession of the first Abolitionists was greeted in Boston, some thirty years ago. The children had no conception of the "Bobolition Society," but as of a set of persons making themselves ridiculous for the amusement of the public; but that "Bobolition Society" has shaken the Union to its center, and filled the world with sympathy and concern. The Woman's Rights Convention is in like manner a thing for honest scorn to point its finger at; but a few years may prove that we pointed the finger, not at an illuminated balloon, but at the rising sun.
We have no hesitation in acknowledging ourselves to be among those who have regarded this movement with decided distrust and distaste. If we have been more free than others to express this disgust, we have perhaps rendered some service, by representing a common sentiment with which this reform has to contend. We would be among the first to acknowledge that our objections have not grown out of any deliberate consideration of the principles involved in the question. They have been founded on instinctive aversion, on an habitual respect for public sentiment, on an irresistible feeling of the ludicrousness of the proposed reform in its details. Certainly social instinct has its proper place in the judgments we pass on the manners of both sexes. What is offensive to good taste—meaning by good taste, the taste of the most educated and refined people—has the burden of proof resting upon it when it claims respect and attention. But we should be the last to assert that questions of right and rights have no appeal from the bar of conventional taste to that of reason.
And however it may have been at the outset, we think the Woman's Rights question has now made good its title to be heard in the superior court. The principles involved in this great question we can not now discuss; but we have a few thoughts upon the attitude of the reformer toward society, which we would respectfully commend to attention. If the female sex is injured in its present position, it is an injury growing out of universal mistake; an honest error, in which the sexes have conspired, without intentional injustice on one side, or feeling of wrong on the other. Indeed, we could not admit that there had been thus far any wrong or mistake at all, except in details. Mankind have hitherto found the natural functions of the two sexes marking out different spheres for them. Thus far, as we think, the circumstances of the world have compelled a marked division of labor, and a marked difference of culture and political position between the sexes.
The facts of superior bodily strength on the masculine side, and of maternity on the feminine side, small as they are now made to appear, are very great and decisive facts in themselves, and have necessarily governed the organization of society. It is between the sexes, as between the races, the strongest rules; and it has hitherto been supposed to be of service to the common interest of society, that this rule should be legalized and embodied in the social customs of every community. As a fact, woman, by her bodily weakness and her maternal office, was from the first, a comparatively private and domestic creature; her education, from circumstances, was totally different, her interests were different, the sources of her happiness different from man's, and as a fact, all these things, though with important modifications, have continued to be so to this day. The fact has seemed to the world a final one. It has been thought that in her present position, she was in her best position relative to man, which her nature or organization admitted of. That she is man's inferior in respect to all offices and duties requiring great bodily powers, or great moral courage, or great intellectual effort, has been almost universally supposed,—honestly thought too, and without the least disposition to deny her equality, on this account, in the scale of humanity.
For in respect to moral sensibility, affections, manners, tastes, and the passive virtues, woman has long been honestly felt to be the superior of man. The political disfranchisement of women, and their seclusion from publicity, have grown out of sincere convictions that their nature and happiness demanded from man an exemption from the cares, and a protection from the perils of the out-of-door world. Mankind, in both its parts, may have been utterly mistaken in this judgment; but it has been nearly universal, and thoroughly sincere,—based thus far, we think, upon staring facts and compulsory circumstances.
In starting a radical reform upon this subject, it is expedient that it should be put, not on the basis of old grievances, but upon the ground
