t predict what they
will be; but that they will be great our past experiences should
teach us. It was thought a very little matter to leave our
Constitution indefinite as to the rights of colored men. Our
fathers in the meetings held to ratify the Constitution, said
they had done all that could be expected, said that the
death-blow was struck at the institution of slavery, that it
would soon die a natural death; and thus they quieted those who
were distrustful because slavery was not explicitly abolished in
the Constitution. The people, engaged in their various pursuits,
ambitious for office, eager for wealth, let this seed of wrong
become a mighty upas tree that covered our republic all over, and
scattered everywhere its poisonous fruits. Shall we dare to go on
for another period of our national existence knowing that at the
foundation of our government there is a tremendous wrong?

What should the government of a nation be? Ought it not to be as
much as possible like the government of a well-ordered family?
Can you think of any model so good as the divine model set before
us in the family? What would the family be with a father and
without a mother? To whom do you owe the most--your father or
your mother? Who controlled the family most effectually? Some
thirty years ago, being chairman of the Board of Education in my
district, I proposed to put a woman into a school where the male
teachers had been set at nought year after year. It stood the
lowest in rank when she took it; but in less than a month its
character was obviously changed, and at the end of the term it
stood number three in point of character as well as in
scholarship. Men are not governed by the fear of punishment. They
are governed by a strong, persistent manifestation of the
consciousness of a right to govern them; and that is pressed upon
them more effectually by the influence of a mother or a sister
than of a father or a brother. Just so it will be in the
government of our country, when women shall educate and prepare
themselves to take part in that government, with their almost
instinctive perception of the right, the true, and the good.

And if our fathers and mothers were what they might and should
be, the children would be so well trained that they would govern
th