Church; it will not save the State. The Church cut short her power, and limited her influence much more than literature has done; and her marvellous effect is better seen in the literary republic than in the religious. Both show the almost immeasurable and inexpressible potency of the presence of this element of public opinion mingling with ours. But the largest symbol of what woman can do, is her own exclusive sphere, and that is fashion, in society, omnipotent.

I do not blame men when I meet them full of prejudice against this movement. I do not feel by any means that keen agony of interest in this question that I did in the Slavery Question. I do not feel even that intense interest that I did in the Temperance cause, because the drunkard asked us to help him in the effort to rise upon his feet; but here is woman, educated, influential, walking up and down the highways of society, wielding enormous influence, corrupting the channels of politics to-day. The keenest observer of French politics and French society, Tocqueville, says in one of the most suggestive and most remarkable of all his letters, that he ascribes the treachery of some of the first leaders. in the reform movements in France, to the influence of wives and daughters upon husbands and brothers, inducing them to use the positions which the men would have used for principle for their own private advancement or the comfort of the family. "Yes," said he, concluding his letter, "it is the mothers and daughters of France that have wrecked some of our noblest movements to help the millions."

Unrecognized influence which ought to be turned into acknowledged power, exercised in the light of day, educated, held to a strict responsibility, rebuked, criticised, held up to scorn, caricatured, visited with well-deserved sarcasm, made to feel that the vice and corruption of party

and society are not by any means exclusively man's fault,

rests upon no serious or earnest difference of opinion, but upon shades of fashion, delicacy of taste, fastidious sensibility, and other absurdities, and to that we offer up, day by day, the virtue of society. Lucretia Mott, at the very first Woman's Rights Convention assembled in this country some eighteen years ago, bade us remember that it would not be men that would be our greatest obstacles; that it would not be the law-book; but that we were launching a cause which would find in the besotted opposition of its own victims its deadliest foe. [Applause.] That has not ceased to be true to-day.

Remember also that the moment you issue your command every medical college will be open. The moment you take off your ban every avenue of trade will be trodden by women. The moment you make known your purpose the statute-book will record your verdict. Wives and daughters, you are able in these matters to dictate the policy of your fathers and husbands.

In Massachusetts, we owe one of the first steps toward the recognition of woman's right to property to the selfishness of fathers, about to leave their daughters dowered with large wealth, and unwilling to trust it to the chances of their husbands' character. They were always anxious to put it into the hands of trustees, and they found that men were very much averse, even when bidden by the strongest friendship, to undertake a long trust on account of its dangers and responsibility. The fathers themselves selected the most conservative lawyer at the Suffolk bar to draw the statute, than which we could not have imagined a better, which secured to wealthy women the control of their inherited property, even if they were married.

Again, it was the bank interest of the savings-bank

of the Commonwealth, that secured to laboring women their wages. These causes co-operated before the public opinion of women themselves demanded the changes. Laggard, and lacking her promptings, the cause that we advocate came up behind the selfish elements of society. But if, instead of this, the working women or heiresses had dictated their wants, the changes could have been made; and so they can to-day.

I do not ignore the power of woman; it is too great. I want it lessened. I am not going to give the sex any more influence; I am going to diminish it. Her influence is hidden and all but omnipotent. Uneducated and irresponsible, it is terrible. I want it dragged to the light of day; I want it measured and labelled; I want it counted and criticised; I want it educated and put on record; I want to be able to find it and indict it, which I cannot do to-day. In order to do that, let us trace home the evil to its very source. Let woman know that nobody stops her but herself. She ties her own limbs; she corrupts her own sisters; she demoralizes civilization, and then folds her arms, and calls it "religion" [applause], or steps back, and christens it "taste." Do you suppose that the tenants of a thousand pulpits could avail to shut woman out from making her own opportunity, if the women of the Empire State determined that it should be. Find me the motive, and I will guarantee the ministers to make it commensurate with the Scriptures. Find me the popular habit, and I will find you the clergy to give it anchorage in the New Testament.

THE EIGHT-HOUR MOVEMENT.

IT

Address in Faneuil Hall, November 2, 1865.

T is twenty-nine years this month since I first stood on the platform of Faneuil Hall to address an audience of the citizens of Boston. I felt then that I was speaking for the cause of the laboring men, and if tonight I should make the last speech of my life, I would be glad that it should be in the same strain,- for laboring men and their rights.

The labor of these twenty-nine years has been in behalf of a race bought and sold. The South did not rest their system wholly on this claim to own their laborers; but according to Chancellor Harper, Alexander H. Stevens, Governor Pickens, and John C. Calhoun, asserted that the laborer must necessarily be owned by capitalists or individuals. That struggle for the ownership of labor is now somewhat near its end; and we fitly commence a struggle to define and to arrange the true relations of capital and labor. To-day one of your sons is born. He lies in his cradle as the child of a man without means, with a little education, and with less leisure. The favored child of the capitalist is borne up by every circumstance, as on the eagle's wings. The problem of to-day is how to make the chances of the two as equal as possible; and before this movement stops, every child born in America must have an equal chance in life.

In this final arrangement, every man will combine in his own person the laborer and the capitalist. There cannot be any conflict between labor and capital. What makes our lives easier than those of our ancestors? They are so because six generations of workmen have made Massachusetts a great treasure-house of capital. When our fathers landed here, Massachusetts was a wilderness. Forests have been removed, roads built, cities raised by capital or aggregated labor. Capital and labor are only the two arms of a pair of scissors, useless when separate, and only when fastened together cutting everything before them.

What, then, do we come here for? To find out the true relation between capital and labor, to make the laborer more comfortable, and a more worthy citizen. Where the government rests on the people, its administrators are bound to give time to the laborers to understand the theory of government. When shut up an excessive number of hours in labor, the workman comes out but the fag-end of a man, without brain to think of such subjects. Now, therefore, it is a fair division to give him eight hours for labor, eight hours for sleep, and eight hours for his own, his own to use as he pleases. [Applause.] I shall not be the first to say, "You shall not have it unless you come under bonds to use it well." It is none of my business to say what he shall do with what is his own. I shall not say to the millionnaire, "We will defend you in the possession of your stocks and bonds, if you will use them well." I may argue with him, and shall, to use his wealth properly; but my first object shall be to give it to him, because it belongs to him. It has been argued that the negro would not work if his freedom was given to him. I have answered, his freedom belongs to him, and he is responsible for its use.

The present effort is to give the laborer more leisure,