no true and virtuous soul can accept slavery. You reproach woman
with being an active agent in corruption and ruin, without
perceiving that it is you who have condemned her to this awful
work, in which only your bad passions sustain her. Whatever you
may do, you can not escape her influence. If she is free,
virtuous, and worthy, she will give you free, virtuous, and
worthy sons, and maintain in you republican virtues. If she
remain a slave, she will debase you and your sons; and your
country will come under the rule of tyranny. Insane men can not
understand that where there is one slave there are always two--he
who wears the chain and he who rivets it. Unreasonable,
short-sighted men can not understand that to enfranchise woman is
to elevate man; to give him a companion who shall encourage his
good and noble aspirations, instead of one who would debase and
draw him down into an abyss of selfishness and dishonesty.
Gentlemen, will you be just, will you preserve the republic, will
you stop the moral ruin of your country; will you be worthy,
virtuous, and courageous for the welfare of your nation, and, in
spite of all obstacles, enfranchise your mothers, wives,
daughters, and sisters? Take care that you be not too late! Such
injustice and folly would be at the cost of your liberty, in
which event you could claim no mercy, for tyrants deserve to be
the victims of tyrants.

After her brief address, Madame de Hericourt submitted to the
Convention a series of resolutions for the organization of
Women's Leagues.[121]

ERNESTINE L. ROSE said--_Mrs. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen_:
What we need is to arouse both men and women to the great
necessity of justice and of right. The world moves. We need not
seek further than this Convention assembled here to-night to show
that it moves. We have assembled here delegates from the East and
the West, from the North and the South, from all over the United
States, from England, from France, and from Germany--all have
come to give us greeting and well-wishes, both in writing and in
speech. I only wish that this whole audience might have been able
to understand and appreciate the eloquent speeches which have
been delivered here to-night. They have been uttered in support
of the claim--the just demand--of woma