ction; that we know; but whence
arises the imperfection? It does not satisfy us to assert that
they proceed from the depravity of man; how came he depraved? Nor
is it more consoling to declare that all human institutions must
change and perish. Why must they? Human institutions, if founded
upon eternal principles, become divine, and may be immortal; it
is not the human, but the inhuman institutions which perish; not
humanity, but inhumanity which fills the earth with strife and
blood.

No! there is behind and below all these imaginary causes, a real
cause for the degeneracy of the race. It may be traced to the
long continued disregard of the laws of God in relation to woman,
and the retribution is worked out physiologically upon the whole
nature of man, reaching every tissue of his body and every
faculty of his mind.

It is a law of God, well understood, that whenever and wherever
any community forcibly depresses any class of its people below
the general level, it not only injures and degrades that class,
but is itself injured, degraded, and deranged in exact proportion
to the wrong it perpetrates. Whenever we crowd any portion of our
fellow-beings into an abyss of ignorance and servitude, we are
drawn irresistibly, by their weight, to the brink of the same
gulf.

If this be the inevitable result of the oppression of an
individual, or a class, how much more forcibly must it apply when
one-half the world, the "mothers of the living," are made subject
to systematic deprivation of rights and tyrannous restriction in
the exercise of high and noble faculties.

I do not propose to detail the disabilities under which woman
suffers. They have been ably depicted by women in this meeting.
But I wish to indicate the breadth and basis of this reform, for
the consideration of those people who suppose it to be a
fractional and transient movement.

Whatever suffering or degradation woman is subjected to, by the
depression of the whole sex below the level of society, reacts
with frightful force upon man; who is thus compelled to
compensate for the cruel and mistaken policy, which, in all time,
has denied to her equal opportunities of education and
development, closed to her those avenues to profit and progress
open to him, ignored her in