t rate of wages she proposed. I mention this
convention in a legal connection, believing that it was intended to
remove some local legal barriers.

SUFFRAGE.

Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Sarah E. Wall, and a few other women, have
continued their annual protests without intermission. In somewhat the
same way have petitions recently been sent to Congress in behalf of
Universal Suffrage. We had no expectation that any favorable reception
would await such petitions, but it was a duty to put them on record.
What fate they met in Congress, you have so recently heard that I have
no occasion to record it. Minnesota, New York, and other States, have
petitioned their Legislatures to the same effect.

PROGRESS.

The real gain of a reform, starting from the heart of the family, must
necessarily be very slow. I remember that some years ago, when I
printed my book on labor, one of my kindest critics congratulated the
public that of my nine lectures, I had published only these. He
thought it was useless to contend for more book-learning for women,
and the subject of Civil Rights still disgusted his sensitive ear. The
common sense of the book on labor ought to have shown him how I should
treat the subject of education. He could not understand how the woman
who gets an education which does not make her a "bread-winner," is
essentially defrauded, nor how a woman well paid for her labor is
essentially wronged, when she is denied the privilege of protecting it
by her vote. There is, however, a surely growing sense of this shown
in the substantial advance of her civil rights.

In the early part of 1865, the people of Victoria, in Australia,
assembled to elect a member of Parliament, were surprised to find the
whole female population voting. Some quick-sighted woman had
discovered that the letter of the new law permitted it, and their
votes were accepted and wisely given. _The London Times_, in the month
of May, says that, in a _country like Australia_, it can easily
believe that such an extension of the franchise will be a _marked
improvement_, and thinks that the precedent will stand! The Government
of Moravia has also, within the past year, granted the municipal
franchise to widows who pay taxes. In January, 1864, the Court of
Queen's Bench in Dublin, Ireland, restored to woman the _old right_ of
voting for Town Commissioners. The Justice (Fitzgerald) desired to
state that ladies were entitled to sit as Town Commissioners as well
as t