said: There is a feeling to-day that woman
has some rights, that she has some reason to complain of the
present relation in which she is placed. In this country we
congratulate ourselves that woman occupies a higher position than
elsewhere, although some think it would be a calamity to improve
her condition still further, and mere fanaticism to raise her
still higher.

The cry is--"unnatural!" The aspiration of woman for a better
lot, say her oppressors, is not natural, it is abnormal! So they
say; but why not hear her on the matter? Is she, the most
interested party, to have no voice in the solution of a question
which is to her of such overwhelming interest? I ask, did God
give woman aspirations which it is a sin for her to gratify?
Abnormal! No, it is to be found everywhere. The man whose soul
is so callous that he can hold his fellow-man as a slave, cries
out (as in excuse) that the slave is contented. The autocrat
exclaims that it is only a turbulent Kossuth or a factious
Mazzini who feels that uneasy discontent which preys not on the
hearts of his millions of legal slaves. Will that be, to us, an
argument that the tyrant is in the right? No! the aspirations to
liberty and justice are universal, and ever though the volcanic
blaze breaks into the air only through the loftiest mountain
peaks, the volcano is in itself an index to the ocean of molten
fire that boils inaudibly beneath it. And so the deep discontent
of humble millions breaks through the mountain-minds of their
great leaders. Woman is a part of the human commonwealth; why
deprive her of a voice in its government? Woman herself, a
component part of the community, must be called into the councils
which direct it, else a wrong is done her, the responsibility of
which lies heavily on those who do it. We ask rights for woman,
because she has a human nature, and it is not only ungenerous and
unmanly, but in the highest degree unjust to banish her from the
discussion of questions which so nearly and dearly concern her,
and in which nature, reason, and God have announced that she
should have a voice.

Either there is a distinction between the sphere of man and that
of woman, or there is not. If there is, it is unfair to have one
determine both; if there is not, why does tyrannou