of more "dare-devil independence" before "the women of this country? than Jane G. Swisshelm, and if it is proving their ruin she has much to answer for. But we are not prepared to believe her assertion, and we can not think her a ruined woman, notwithstanding her many years of "dare-devil independence." The writer has known her long, has engaged in many a pen-tilt with her, but has never met her personally. She regards her as an able, outspoken defender of the wronged and oppressed, a fearless advocate of the right as she sees it, and an "independent dare-devil"" writer on whatever subject she deems worthy of her pen.
CHAPTER XIV.
new york.
NEW YORK STATE TEMPERANCE CONVENTION, ROCHESTER,
APRIL 2, 21, 1852.
Letter from Frances Dana Gage.
My Dear Miss Anthony: — Yours of March 22d, asking of me words of counsel and encouragement for the friends of temperance, who are to meet at Rochester on the 20th inst., is before me. Need I tell you how earnestly my heart responds to that request, and with what joy I hail every demonstration on the part of woman that evidences an awakening energy in her mind, to the great duties and responsibilities of her being!
If we examine the statistics of crime in the United States, we shall find that a very large proportion of the criminals of our land are the victims of intemperance. The records of poverty, shame, and degradation furnish the same evidence against the traffic and use of ardent spirits. Examine those same Statistics, and another great truth stares us in the face — that nine-tenths of all the manufacturers of ardent spirits, of all the drinkers of ardent spirits, and of all the criminals made by ardent spirits, are men. But we find, too, in our search, a fact equally interesting to us, that the greatest sufferers from all this crime and shame and wrong, are women. Is it not meet, then, that women should lay aside the dependent inactivity which has hitherto held them powerless, and give their strength to the cause of reform which is now agitating the minds of the people?
What is woman? The answer is returned to me in tones that shake my very soul. She is the mother of mankind! The living providence, under God, who gives to every human being its mental, moral, and physical organism — who stamps upon every human heart her seal for good or for evil! Who then, but she, should cry aloud, and spare not, when the children she has borne — forgetting their allegiance to her and their duty to themselves, have assumed the power to rule over her, shutting her out from their counsels, and surrounding her, without her own consent, with circumstances which lead to misery and death; and, in their pride and strength, trampling upon justice, love, and mercy, withering her heart by violence and oppression, and yet compelling her, in her dependence as a wife, to perpetuate in her offspring their own depraved appetites and disorganized faculties?
It will not be denied that woman in all past ages has been made, by both law and custom, the inferior of her own children. Man has assumed to himself the power of being "lord of creation"; yet what has he done for his kind? Look at the present state of society and receive your answer! He has filled the world with madness, with oppression and wrong; he has allowed snares to be laid at every turn, to entangle the feet of our children, and lead them away into vice and crime. He has legalized the causes which fill the jails, the penitentiaries, the houses of correction, the poorhouses, and asylums with the blood of our hearts, even our children, and our children's children. There is pot a drunkard in the land, not a criminal that has been made by strong drink, but is the