of the
time now wasted, and would have had just the weight proper to
their sense and appropriateness, and no more. But instead of this
the World's Convention was disturbed and its orators silenced.
The consequences will be the mass of people throughout the
country who might otherwise not know of its existence, will have
their attention called and their sympathies enlisted in its
behalf. So, too, when Antoinette Brown is put down by Rev. John
Chambers and his colleagues, and denied what is her clear right
as a member of the Temperance Convention by a vociferous mob,
composed, we are sorry to say, very largely of clergymen, every
impartial person sees that she is surrounded with a prestige and
importance which, whatever her talents as a speaker, she could
hardly hope to have attained. Many who question the propriety of
woman's appearing in public, will revolt at the gagging of one
who had a right to speak and claimed simply to use it on a proper
occasion. There is in the public mind of this country an
intuitive love of fair play and free speech, and those who
outrage it for any purpose of their own merely reinforce their
opponents, and bestow a mighty power on the ideas they hate and
fain would suppress.

_Tribune, Sept. 12, 1853._

Arguments _pro_ and _con_. The meetings at the Tabernacle Tuesday
and Wednesday last, exhibited some features not often paralleled
in the progress of any public agitation for the redress of
grievances, or the vindication of rights. The advocates of an
enlargement of the allotted sphere of woman, had hired the house,
paid the advertising and other expenses, gathered at their own
expense from their distant homes, and taken all the
responsibilities of the outlay, yet they offered and desired
throughout to surrender their own platform for one-half of the
time, to any respectable and capable antagonists who should see
fit to appear and attempt to show why their demands were not just
and their grievances real. Consequently, though they are engaged
in a struggle, not only against numbers and power, and fashion
and immemorial custom, but with the Pulpit and the Press actively
and bitterly leading and spurring on their antagonists, and with
no access to the public ear but from the public platform,