we are not the lifeless staves of a barrel which can be held together only by the iron hoops of an artificial organization.
The present aspect of organizations, whether in Church, or State, or society at large, foretokens dissolution. The wrinkles and totterings of age are on them. The power of organization has been deemed necessary only because the power of Truth has not been appreciated, and just in proportion as we reverence the individual, and trust the unaided potency of Truth, we shall find it useless. What organization in the world's history has not encumbered the unfettered action of those who created it? Indeed, has not been used as an engine of oppression.
The importance of this question can hardly be duly magnified. How few organizations have ever had the power which this is destined to wield! The prayers and sympathies of the ripest and richest minds will be ours. Vast is the influence which true-hearted women will exert in the coming age. It is a beautiful coincidence, that just as the old epochs of despotism and slavery, Priest-craft and Political intrigue are dying out, just as the spiritual part of man is rising into the ascendency, Woman's Rights are being canvassed and conceded, so that when she becomes his partner in office, higher and holier principles of action will form the basis of Governmental administration.
The reading of Mrs. Weld's letter was followed by a spirited discussion, resulting in the continuance of the Central Committee, composed of representative men and women of the several States, which was the only form of National Organization until after the war.
Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Davis did not like to be bound by a Constitution longer than during the sessions of the Convention. Both recommended the formation of State Societies.
Dr. Harrior K. Hunt spoke as a physician in deeming spontaneity as a law of nature.
Ernestine L. Rose declared organizations to be like Chinese bandages. In political, moral, and religious bodies they hindered the growth of men; they were incubi; she herself had cut loose from an organization into which she had been born;[1] she knew what it had cost her, and having bought that little freedom for what was dearer to her than life itself, she prized it too highly to ever put herself in the same shackles again.
Lucy Stone said, that like a burnt child that dreads the fire, they had all been in permanent organizations, and therefore dread them. She herself had had enough of thumb-screws and soul screws ever to wish to be placed under them again. The present duty is agitation.
Rev. Samuel J. May deemed a system of action and co-operation all that was needed. There is probably n"t one woman in a thousand, not one in ten thousand who has well considered the disabilities, literary, pecuniary, social, politi-
- ↑ The Jewish.
