special subjects,
and fill important positions on journals owned and edited by men.
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert edits "The Woman's Kingdom" in the
_Inter-Ocean_, one of the leading dailies of Chicago. Mary Forney
Weigley edits a social department in her father's--John W.
Forney--paper, the _Progress_, in Philadelphia. The political columns
of many papers are prepared by women, men often receiving the credit.
Among the best editorials in the New York _Tribune_, from Margaret
Fuller to Lucia Gilbert Calhoun, have been from the pens of women.

If the proverb that "the pen is mightier than the sword" be true,
woman's skill and force in using this mightier weapon must soon change
the destinies of the world.

CHAPTER III.

THE WORLD'S ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION, LONDON, JUNE 12, 1840.

Individualism rather than Authority--Personal appearance of
Abolitionists--Clerical attempt to silence Woman--Double battle
against the tyranny of sex and color--Bigoted Abolitionists--James
G. Birney likes freedom on a Southern plantation, but not at his
own fireside--John Bull never dreamt that Woman would answer his
call--The venerable Thomas Clarkson received by the Convention
standing--Lengthy debate on "Female" delegates--The "Females"
rejected--William Lloyd Garrison refused to sit in the Convention.

In gathering up the threads of history in the last century, and
weaving its facts and philosophy together, one can trace the liberal
social ideas, growing out of the political and religious revolutions
in France, Germany, Italy, and America; and their tendency to
substitute for the divine right of kings, priests, and orders of
nobility, the higher and broader one of individual conscience and
judgment in all matters pertaining to this life and that which is to
come. It is not surprising that in so marked a transition period from
the old to the new, as seen in the eighteenth century, that women,
trained to think and write and speak, should have discovered that
they, too, had some share in the new-born liberties suddenly announced
to the world. That the radical political theories, propagated in
different countries, made their legitimate impress on the minds of
women of the highest culture, is clearly proved by their writings and
conversation. While in their ignorance, women are usually more
superstitious, more devoutly religious than men; those trained to
thought, have generally manifested more