s conferred by God
and so long withheld by man. Their courageous words were the
expression of sentiments which others had felt as deeply as
themselves, but which the restraints imposed by long-established
custom had taught them to suppress. But now the hour had come,
and the world stood prepared for the reception of a new thought,
which is destined to work a revolution in human society, more
beneficent than any that has preceded it. The seeds of truth
which that Convention planted in faith and hope were not left to
perish. In many thoughtful minds they germinated apace and
brought forth fruit. That fruit was seen in the large Convention
held in Ohio in the spring of 1850, in that held in Massachusetts
in the autumn of the same year, and in those which have followed
since in New England and the West.

Woman at length is awaking from the slumber of ages. Many of the
sex already perceive that knowledge, sound judgment, and perfect
freedom of thought and action are quite as important for the
mothers as for the fathers of the race. They weary of the
senseless talk of "woman's sphere," when that sphere is so
circumscribed that they may not exert their full influence and
power to save their country from war, intemperance, slavery,
licentiousness, ignorance, poverty, and crime, which man, in the
mad pursuit of his ambitious schemes, unchecked by their presence
and counsel, permits to desolate and destroy all that is fair and
beautiful in life and fill the world with weeping, lamentation,
and woe. Woman begins to grow weary of her helpless and dependent
position, and of being treated as if she were formed only to
cultivate her affections, that they may flow in strong and deep
currents merely to gratify the self-love of man.

She does not listen with delight, as she once did, when she hears
her relations to her equal brother represented by the poetical
figure of the trellis and creeping tendril, or of the oak and the
gracefully clinging vine. No, she feels that she is, like him, an
accountable being--that the Infinite Father has laid
responsibilities upon her which may not be innocently transferred
to another, but which, in her present ignorance, she is not
prepared to meet. She is becoming rapidly imbued with the spirit
of progress, and will not