ntion of Women of Chester County, met at
Marlborough Friends' Meeting-house, on Saturday, the 30th of
December, 1848, and was organized by the appointment of MARTHA
HAYHURST, President; SIDNEY PEIRCE and HANNAH PENNOCK,
Secretaries.

Letters received by a Committee of Correspondence, appointed at a
Convention last winter, were read; one, from Pope Bushnell,
Chairman of the Committee on Vice and Immorality, to which
temperance petitions were referred; and also from our
Representatives in the Legislature, pledging themselves to use
all their influence to obtain the passage of a law to prohibit
the sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage amongst us. The
Business Committee reported addresses to the men and women of
Chester County, which were considered, amended, and adopted, as
follows:

_To the Women of Chester County_:

DEAR SISTERS:--Again we would urge upon you the duty and
necessity of action in the temperance cause. Notwithstanding the
exertions that have been made, intoxicating liquors continue to
be sold and drank in our midst. Still, night after night, the
miserable drunkard reels to that home he has made desolate.
Still, wives and sisters weep in anguish as they look on those
dearer to them than life, and see, trace by trace, their delicacy
and purity of soul vanishing beneath the destroying libations
that tempt them when they pass the domestic threshold.

We need not depict to you the poverty and crime and unutterable
woe that result from intemperance, nor need you go far to be
reminded of the revolting fact, that under the sanction of laws,
men still make it a deliberate business to deal out that terrible
agent, the only effect of which is to darken the God-like in the
human soul, and to foster in its place the appetites of demons.
The law passed the 7th of April, 1846, under which the sale of
intoxicating drinks was prohibited by vote of the people in most
of the townships in Chester County, has been decided by the
Supreme Court to be unconstitutional; and this decision, by
inspiring confidence in the dealers and consumers of the fatal
poison, seems to have given a new impetus to this diabolical
traffic. Wider and deeper its ravages threaten to extend
themselves; and to every benevolent mind comes the earnest
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