ballot.

When the Convention re-assembled, Mrs. Celia Burleigh, in the
absence of the President, took the chair.

Miss CATHERINE E. BEECHER, who was now introduced, requested the
Secretary, Mr. Blackwell, to read a paper which she had written,
containing her objections to woman suffrage, to which objections
Mrs. Cutler, of Ohio, would reply. Mr. Blackwell read the
following:

I will first state to what I am not opposed. And, first, I
am not opposed to women speaking in public to any who are
willing to hear, nor do I object to women's preaching,
sanctioned as it is by a prophetic apostle--as one of the
millennial results. It is true that no women were appointed
among the first twelve, or the seventy disciples sent out by
the Lord, nor were women appointed to be apostles or bishops
or elders. But they were not forbidden to teach or preach,
except in places where it violated a custom that made a
woman appear as one of a base and degraded class if she thus
violated custom.

Nor am I opposed to a woman earning her own independence in
any lawful calling, and wish many more were open to her
which are now closed.

Nor am I opposed to the agitation and organization of women,
as women, to set forth the wrongs suffered by great
multitudes of our sex, which are multiform and most
humiliating. Nor am I opposed to women's undertaking to
govern both boys and men--they always have done it, and
always will. The most absolute and cruel tyrants I have ever
known were selfish, obstinate, unreasonable women to whom
were chained men of delicacy, honor, and piety, whose only
alternatives were helpless submission, or ceaseless and
disgraceful broils.

Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights
with men. I rather claim that they have the sacred, superior
rights that God and good men accord to the weak and
defenseless, by which they have the easiest work, the most
safe and comfortable places, and the largest share of all
the most agreeable and desirable enjoyments of this life. My
main objection to the woman suffrage organizations is mainly
this, that a wrong mode is employ