hunger and every form of personal discomfort rather than surrender to the enemy. What women have done in the past they would willingly do again in the future in like circumstances. They are everywhere as patriotic as men, and as willing to make sacrifices for their country.
But their relations to the government in war are of necessity widely unlike. If men as good citizens are bound to peril their lives and to endure hardships to aid the country in its hour of need, yet women peril their lives and devote their time and energy in giving to the country all its citizens, whether for peace or war. And if the liberties of the nation were in real peril, they would freely devote their all for its salvation. In any just warfare it is fitting that the young men should first march to battle, and if all these were swept away, then the old men and the old women might fitly go out together side by side, and, last of all, the young mothers, leaving their little children to the very aged and to the sick, should be and would be ready in their turn to go also, if need be, even to the battle-field rather than suffer the overthrow of a righteous government. But woman's relations to war are intrinsically unlike man's. Her natural attitude toward law and order and toward all public interests must always differ from his. Women would never be the producers of wealth to the same extent with men. The time devoted by the one class to earning money would be given by the other to rearing children. Yes, this question touches too many vital interests ever to be settled till it is settled right. We mean to live, to keep well and strong, and to continue to trouble the whole country until it is settled and settled to stay. There can be no rest from agitation till this is done.
Lucy Stone spoke particularly of the need of using the opportunity the Centennial gives, to show that, if it was wrong for George III. to govern the colonies a hundred years ago without their consent, it is just as wrong now to govern women without their consent; that if taxation without representation was tyranny then it is tyranny now, and no less tyranny because it is done to women than if it were done to men; that the usurpation of the rights of women is as high-handed a crime as was the usurpation of the rights of the colonists by the British Parliament, and will be so regarded a hundred years hence. She claimed that this occasion ought to be used to show men that the deeds of their ancestors, of which they are so proud, are worthy of their own imitation; she urged women to refrain from joining in the Centennial, and to show no more respect for the power which governs them without their consent, than did their brave ancestors a century ago.
The President said—I understand there is among the audience the famous Democrat of England, Charles Bradlaugh, and I will call upon him to say a few words.
Mr. Bradlaugh at once came forward from the rear of the hall, where he had been sitting, and mounting the platform, said: I only came forward in obedience to a call which it would be impertinence to refuse here to-night. I came to be a listener and with no sort of intention of making any speech at all, and the only right I should have upon this platform is, that for the last twenty-five years of my short life I have pleaded for those rights which you plead for to-night. The woman question is no American question, no national question; it is a question for the whole world, and the