t
with only one right, which she enjoys in common with the pauper,
viz.: the right of maintenance. Indeed when she has taken the
sacred marriage vow, her legal existence ceases.

And what is our position politically? Why, the foreigner who
can't speak his mother tongue correctly; the negro, who to our
own shame, we regard as fit only for a boot-black (whose dead
even we bury by themselves), and the drunkard, all are entrusted
with the ballot, all placed by men politically higher than their
own mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. The woman who, seeing
and feeling this, dare not maintain her rights, is the woman to
hang her head and blush. We ask only for justice and equal
rights--the right to vote, the right to our own earnings,
equality before the law--these are the Gibraltar of our cause.

Rev. ANTOINETTE L. BROWN: Man can not represent woman. They
differ in their nature and relations. The law is wholly
masculine; it is created and executed by man. The framers of all
legal compacts are restricted to the masculine stand-point of
observation, to the thought, feelings, and biases of man. The law
then could give us no representation as woman, and therefore no
impartial justice even if the present lawmakers were honestly
intent upon this; for we can be represented only by our peers. It
is expected then under the present administration, that woman
should be the legal subject of man, legally reduced to pecuniary
dependence upon him; that the mother should have lower legal
claims upon the children than the father, and that, in short,
woman should be in all respects the legal inferior of man, though
entitled to full equality.

Here is the fact and its cause. When woman is tried for crime,
her jury, her judges, her advocates, are all men; and yet there
may have been temptations and various palliating circumstances
connected with her peculiar nature as woman, such as man can not
appreciate. Common justice demands that a part of the law-makers
and law executors should be of her own sex. In questions of
marriage and divorce, affecting interests dearer than life, both
parties in the compact are entitled to an equal voice. Then the
influences which arise from the relations of the sexes, when left
to be exerted in our halls of justice, would at l