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slavery society, solely because a woman was permitted to serve on a committee. Mr. Johnson said that he had always had a profound belief in the triumph of the anti-slavery cause. So also did he believe in the success of the woman suffrage movement.

Mrs. Hazlett, of Michigan, was the next speaker. God, she said, says to America to-day, take now the next step in the path of national progress; then come and take thy place as the highest nation of the earth. Will America obey heaven's voice, or does republicanism exist only in name? Men of America! let the stars and stripes wave over a land true to its principles. It is not because we want to usurp power that we want the ballot. We want justice, for the sake of liberty. But, above all, gentlemen, we hold the welfare of this country our birthright as well as yours. We wish the vote because it is our right and our duty to have it. We have duties in life, in society, in the church—duties to ourselves and to our families which can not be discharged without the ballot.

When the Convention re-assembled, Mrs. Celia Burleigh, in the absence of the President, took the chair.

Miss Catherine E. Beecher, who was now introduced, requested the Secretary, Mr. Blackwell, to read a paper which she had written, containing her objections to woman suffrage, to which objections Mrs. Cutler, of Ohio, would reply. Mr. Blackwell read the following:

I will first state to what I am not opposed. And, first, I am not opposed to women speaking in public to any who are willing to hear, nor do I object to women's preaching, sanctioned as it is by a prophetic apostle—as one of the millennial results. It is true that no women were appointed among the first twelve, or the seventy disciples sent out by the Lord, nor were women appointed to be apostles or bishops or elders. But they were not forbidden to teach or preach, except in places where it violated a custom that made a woman appear as one of a base and degraded class if she thus violated custom.

Nor am I opposed to a woman earning her own independence in any lawful calling, and wish many more were open to her which are now closed.

Nor am I opposed to the agitation and organization of women, as women, to set forth the wrongs suffered by great multitudes of our sex, which are multiform and most humiliating. Nor am I opposed to women's undertaking to govern both boys and men—they always have done it, and always will. The most absolute and cruel tyrants I have ever known were selfish, obstinate, unreasonable women to whom were chained men of delicacy, honor, and piety, whose only alternatives were helpless submission, or ceaseless and disgraceful broils.

Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights with men. I rather claim that they have the sacred, superior rights that God and good men accord to the weak and defenseless, by which they have the easiest work, the most safe and comfortable places, and the largest share of all the most agreeable and desirable enjoyments of this life. My main objection to the woman suffrage organizations is mainly this, that a wrong mode is employed to gain a right object.

The "right object" sought is to remedy the wrongs and relieve the sufferings of great multitudes of our sex. The "wrong mode" is that which aims to enforce by law instead of by love. It is one which assumes that man is the author and abetter of all these wrongs, and that he must be restrained and regulated by constitutions and laws, as the chief and most trustworthy method.

In opposition to this, I hold that the fault is as much, or more, with women than with men, inasmuch as that we have all the power we need to remedy all wrongs and sufferings complained of, and yet we do not use it for that end. It is my deep conviction that all reasonable and conscientious men of our age, and especially of our country, are not only willing, but anxious to provide for the best good of our sex, and that they will