will be need
of much laboring and of long waiting. Sir William Jones tells us
that the Hindoo laws declared that women should have no political
independence--and there is many a backward Yankee who don't know
any better than to agree with the Hindoos. Salatri, the Italian,
drew a design of Patience--a woman chained to a rock by her
ankles, while a fountain threw a thin stream of water, drop by
drop, upon the iron chain, until the link should be worn away,
and the wistful prisoner be set free. In like manner the
Christian women of this country are chained to the rock of
Burmese prejudice; but God is giving the morning and the evening
dew, the early and the latter rain, until the ancient fetters
shall be worn away, and a disfranchised sex shall leap at last
into political liberty. [Applause]. And now for Mr. Beecher.

MR. BEECHER, on rising, was received with hearty applause,[62] and
spoke for an hour, in a strain of great animation, as follows:

It may be asked why, at such a time as this, when the attention
of the whole nation is concentrated upon the reconstruction of
our States, we should intrude a new and advanced question. I have
been asked "Why not wait for the settlement of the one that now
fills the minds of men? Why divert and distract their thoughts?"
I answer, because the questions are one and the same. We are not
now discussing merely the right of suffrage for the African, or
his status as a new-born citizen. Claiming his rights compels us
to discuss the whole underlying question of government. This is
the case in court. But when the judge shall have given his
decision, that decision will cover the whole question of civil
society, and the relations of every individual in it as a factor,
an agent, an actor....

All over the world, the question to-day is, Who has a right to
construct and administer law? Russia--gelid, frigid Russia--can
not escape the question. Yea, he that sits on the Russian throne
has proved himself a better democrat than any of us all, and is
giving to-day more evidence of a genuine love of God, and of its
partner emotion, love to man, in emancipating thirty million
serfs, than many a proud democrat of America has ever given.
(Applause.) And the question of emancipation in Russia is only
the preface to the next ques