f women with men," report: That they have examined the
said petition, and have heard and considered the suggestions of
persons who have appeared before them on behalf of the
petitioners.

Your Committee are well aware that the matters submitted to them
have been, and still are, the subject of ridicule and jest; but
they are also aware that ridicule and jest never yet effectually
put down either truth or error; and that the development of our
times and the progression of our age is such, that many thoughts
laughed at to-day as wild vagaries, are to-morrow recorded as
developed principles or embodied as experimental facts.

A higher power than that from which emanates legislative
enactments has given forth the mandate that man and woman shall
not be equal; that there shall be inequalities by which each in
their own appropriate sphere shall have precedence to the other;
and each alike shall be superior or inferior as they well or ill
act the part assigned them. Both alike are the subjects of
Government, equally entitled to its protection; and civil power
must, in its enactments, recognize this inequality. We can not
obliterate it if we would, and legal inequalities must follow.

The education of woman has not been the result of statutes, but
of civilization and Christianity; and her elevation, great as it
has been, has only corresponded with that of man under the same
influences. She owes no more to these causes than he does. The
true elevation of the sexes will always correspond. But
elevation, instead of destroying, show? more palpably those
inherent inequalities, and makes more apparent the harmony and
happiness which the Creator designed to accomplish by them.

Your Committee will not attempt to prescribe, or, rather, they
will not attempt to define the province and peculiar sphere which
a power that we can not overrule has prescribed for the different
sexes. Every well-regulated home and household in the land
affords an example illustrative of what is woman's proper sphere,
as also that of man. Government has its miniature as well as its
foundation in the homes of our country; and as in governments
there must be some recognized head to control and direct, so must
there also be a controlling and directing power in every smaller
assoc