hematics to the
savants of our age, discovered planets, piloted ships across the
sea, are denied the most sacred rights of citizens, because,
forsooth, we came not into this republic crowned with the dignity
of manhood! Woman is theoretically absolved from all allegiance
to the laws of the State. Sec. 1, Bill of Rights, 2 R. S., 301,
says that no authority can, on any pretence whatever, be
exercised over the citizens of this State but such as is or shall
be derived from, and granted by the people of this State.

Now, gentlemen, we would fain know by what authority you have
disfranchised one-half the people of this State? You who have so
boldly taken possession of the bulwarks of this republic, show us
your credentials, and thus prove your exclusive right to govern,
not only yourselves, but us. Judge Hurlburt, who has long
occupied a high place at the bar in this State, and who recently
retired with honor from the bench of the Supreme Court, in his
profound work on Human Rights, has pronounced your present
position rank usurpation. Can it be that here, where we
acknowledge no royal blood, no apostolic descent, that you, who
have declared that all men were created equal--that governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, would
willingly build up an aristocracy that places the ignorant and
vulgar above the educated and refined--the alien and the
ditch-digger above the authors and poets of the day--an
aristocracy that would raise the sons above the mothers that bore
them? Would that the men who can sanction a Constitution so
opposed to the genius of this government, who can enact and
execute laws so degrading to womankind, had sprung, Minerva-like,
from the brains of their fathers, that the matrons of this
republic need not blush to own their sons!

Woman's position, under our free institutions, is much lower than
under the monarchy of England. "In England the idea of woman
holding official station is not so strange as in the United
States. The Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery held the
office of hereditary sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised it in
person. At the assizes at Appleby, she sat with the judges on the
bench. In a reported case, it is stated by counsel, and
substantially assented to by the c