ship out of the very sea itself. I think, that in the twenty years that have gone by, we have had the little, infinitesimally minute changes of the barometer; but the New York Legislature has risen a full inch in the moral barometer the last twelve months. [Applause.] It is a proof that the monsoon is coming that will lift the old conservative ship, carrying the idea that woman is a drudge and a slave, out of the waters, and dash her into fragments on the surface of our democratic sea. In a few years more, I do not know but we shall disband, and watch these women to the ballot-box, to see that they do their duty. [Applause.] You will have your State Constitution to change in five or six years. Use such meetings as these, and perhaps the Empire State will earn its title by inaugurating the great movement becoming democratic and Saxon civilization, by throwing open civil life to woman. I hope it may be so. Let us go out and labor that it shall be so.

Let me, in closing, show you by one single anecdote, how mean a thing a man can be. You have heard of Mrs. Norton, "the woman Byron," as critics call her, the grand-daughter of Sheridan, and the one on whose shoulders his mantle has rested, a genius by right of inheritance and by God's own gift. Perhaps you may remember that when the Tories wanted to break down the reform administration of Lord Melbourne, they brought her husband to feign to believe his wife unfaithful, and to sue her before a jury. He did so, brought an action, and an English jury said she was innocent; and his own counsel has since admitted in writing, under his own signature, that during the time he prosecuted that trial, the Honorable Mr. Norton (for so he is in the Herald's Book), confessed all the time that he did not believe a word against his wife, and knew she was in

nocent.

She is a writer; the profits of her books, by the law of England, belong to her husband. She has not lived with him- of course not, for she is a woman! since that trial; but the brute goes every six months to John Murray, and eats the profits of the brain of the wife whom he tried to disgrace. [Loud cries of "Shame, shame!"] And the law of England says it is right; the Orthodox pulpit says, "If you change it, it will be the pulling down of the stars and Saint Paul." I do not believe that the Honorable Mr. Norton is half as near to the mind of Saint Paul as the Honorable Mrs. Norton. I believe, therefore, in woman having the right to her brain, to her hands, to her toil, to her ballot. "The tools to him that can use them -" and let God settle the rest. If He made it just that we should have democratic institutions, then he made it just that everybody who is to suffer under the law should have a voice in making it; and if it is indelicate for women to vote, then let Him' stop making women [applause and laughter], because republicanism and such women are inconsistent. I say it reverently; and I only say it to show you the absurdity. Why, my dear man and woman, we are not to help God govern the world by telling lies! He can take care of it himself. If He made it just, you may be certain that He saw to it that it should be delicate; and you need not insert your little tiny roots of fastidious delicacy into the great giant rifts of God's world, they are only in the way. [Applause.]

WOMAN'S RIGHTS AND WOMAN'S

DUTIES.

L

Address delivered in New York City, May 10, 1866.

ADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I am very glad that all that will be required of me this morning, is to answer to the roll-call,- to say "Yes" to my name. You know you cannot have more than the whole of a subject. That is not possible. I have only had the pleasure of listening to the last address, by our friend Henry Ward Beecher; and I think if he had left a suggestion unmade, or any part of the field unexplored, I would have made an effort to supply the omission. But as I watched him step by step, it seemed to me that General Grant could not have covered his camp and his lines more effectually, from centre to outpost. Oliver Wendell Holmes said once that there was always a representative man who went out of every lecture-room at a certain period, at all seasons of the year, and in all parts of the country. The lyceum lecturers held a consultation to learn the cause, and Holmes, being a surgeon, performed an autopsy, and found that the reason was that the man's brain was full; and when he came to that state, he went out. I think you must all have come to that state. There is no speech left for us who follow to make; but I hope you will allow me a single suggestion.

I think our friend touched the very kernel of the whole subject when he reminded you that suffrage was not alone woman's right, but woman's duty. I believe that to confer the ballot will add but little to the influence of woman. I am interested in this question, because I wish to put recognized power where there already exists unrecognized influence. I think unrecognized influence is always dangerous. It acts under no adequate sense of responsibility. Society does not attempt to check it. It is unheeded and unwatched. Consequently it is always doubly liable to corruption.

I believe that to-day it may be said, more truly than of any other cause in our social philosophy, that woman rules the State. What made the Southern rebellion? Woman did not make it; but without the enthusiasm and the frenzy of women on its side, it never could have been made. What was the potent influence that almost tore the Republic asunder? Woman's. Yet that wide-spread, deep-anchored force had swayed the Southern mind for years, under no sense of civil responsibility, neither watched nor educated, never in the eye of day, never feeling that it was doing anything which needed to be summoned before the tribunal of conscience.

Our friend said that if woman could vote, she would shut up the groggeries of this city. She could shut them up to-day. Albany is nothing compared with fashion. What is the legislature compared with the ton that permeates society,- the throne that woman first founded, and has ever since filled? More than college, stronger than church, weightier than trade, more controlling than all put together, woman is its recognized queen. If she issued her edict to-day, unfaltering, unmixed, undoubting, there could nought but submission follow. A vote is a great thing; legislation is a large power, but money is a larger power. Why do not women make

There is nothing on the large, ugly, irreconcilable

money? They have the faculty. The brother comes into this city; no man knows his name; his purse is empty; his word would not be worth five dollars, and his opinion less; he lives here a dozen years, walks up and down Wall Street, and finally his name counts for millions. Why was it? He clutched at all the opportunities which society gave him; he made himself a force; he garnered around himself the influences of life and business connections. Why should not woman? Albany does not hinder her. statute-book to forbid. One fact of a woman worth ten millions by her own toil, would be worth quartos of statute-books. Why does she not make it? Because you do not let her; because it is reputable for a boy to go and make money, and it is not reputable for his sister; because fashion says to the girl that earns her own bread, "You are tabooed;" while fashion says to the boy that does not earn his own bread, "You are a poppinjay." The consequence is that one earns his own bread, and his place in the world's panorama besides; the other lacks it. Where is the remedy? You cannot be legislated into it. Nothing can help you up at Albany. No ballot-box will help you, except indirectly. Issue your edict.

The medical profession is full of prizes. The men that gain them occupy a large space before the world. Why does not woman obtain some of them? Why does she not clutch the largest culture and discipline, and gain the greatest prizes? If every woman said, "When I need, in extremest peril, the aid of science, I will take it only at a sister's hand," do you suppose there is a college in the broad United States that would dare to shut the doors of its opportunities against a woman? Not for an hour.

I want to urge it upon your attention that large as is