longer shared by any of the
male sex, it constitutes every woman the inferior of every
man.--JOHN STUART MILL.

It is this thought, so clearly seen and concisely stated by this
distinguished English philosopher and statesman, that I have
endeavored to press on the hearts of American reformers for the
last four years. I have seen and felt, with a vividness and
intensity that no words could express, the far-reaching
consequences of this degradation of one-half the citizens of the
republic, on the government, the Saxon race, and woman herself,
in all her political, religious, and social relations. It is
sufficiently humiliating to a proud woman to be reminded ever and
anon in the polite world that she's a political nonentity; to
have the fact gracefully mourned over, or wittily laughed at, in
classic words and cultured voice by one's superiors in knowledge,
wisdom and power; but to hear the rights of woman scorned in
foreign tongue and native gibberish by everything in manhood's
form, is enough to fire the souls of those who think and feel,
and rouse the most lethargic into action.

If, with weak and vacillating words and stammering tongue, our
bravest men to-day say freedom to woman, what can we hope when
the millions educated in despotism, ignorant of the philosophy of
true government, religion and social life, shall be our judges
and rulers? As you go down in the scale of manhood, the idea
strengthens at every step, that woman was created for no higher
purpose than to gratify the lust of man. Every daily paper
heralds some rape on flying, hunted girls; and the pitying eyes
of angels see the holocaust of womanhood no journal ever notes.
In thought I trace the slender threads that link these hideous,
overt acts to creeds and codes that make an aristocracy of sex.
When a mighty nation, with a scratch of the pen, frames the base
ideas of the lower orders into constitutions and statute laws,
and declares every serf, peasant and slave the rightful
sovereigns of all womankind, they not only degrade every woman in
her own eyes, but in that of every man on the footstool. A
cultivated lady in Baltimore writes us a description of a colored
republican reunion, held in that city a few evenings since, in
which a colored gentleman offered the followin