Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/1040

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Religious Persecutions.
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movement "that the rulers in the old world could securely guard their subjects from those inflammable mottoes to which from long use we are so indifferent. She continued to sow the seeds of rebellion as she had opportunity, in Germany, France, Switzerland and Italy. It is well for us that she did not experiment in Russia, or we should now be mourning her loss as an exile in Siberia. At all points of interest books are kept for visitors to register their names; Miss Anthony uniformly added some of our Pilgrim Fathers' heroic ejaculations in their struggle for liberty, which friends visiting the same places afterwards informed us were carefully crossed out so as to be quite illegible. But we may hope for their restoration in the near future and that they may yet do an effective work. Thus circumscribed with her pen and not being able to speak a foreign language, happily no rebellions were fomented by her rapid transit through their borders.

My sense of justice was severely tried with all I heard of the persecutions of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Bradlaugh for their publications on the right and duty of parents to limit population. Who can contemplate the sad condition of multitudes of young children in the old world whose fate is to be brought up in ignorance and vice—a swarming, seething mass whom nobody owns—without seeing the need of free discussion of the philosophical principles that underlie these tangled social problems. The trials of Foote and Ramsey, too, for blasphemy, seemed unworthy a great nation in the nineteenth century. Think of well-educated men of good moral standing, thrown into prison in solitary confinement for speaking lightly of the Hebrew idea of Jehovah and the New Testament account of the birth of Jesus! Our Protestant clergy never hesitate to make the dogmas and superstitions of the Catholic church seem as absurd as possible, and why should not those who imagine they have outgrown Protestant superstitions make them equally ridiculous? Whatever is true can stand investigation and ridicule.

The last of April, when the wild-flowers were in their glory, Mrs. Mellen and her lovely daughter, Daisy, came down to Basingstoke to enjoy its beauty. As Mrs. Mellen had known Charles Kingsley and entertained him at her residence in Colorado, she felt a desire to see his former home. Accordingly, one bright morning Mr. Blatch drove us through Stralfieldsage over the grounds of the Duke of Wellington, well stocked with fine