ry seat
being occupied, and crowds standing in the aisle, and the rear of the
hall.

LUCRETIA MOTT had been chosen to preside, but was not able, on account
of the crowd, to reach the platform at the hour appointed. The
Convention was therefore called to order by Susan B. Anthony.

Mrs. CAROLINE H. DALL, of Boston, was the first speaker. She desired
to commemorate the century which had just closed since the death of
Mary Woolstonecraft, and to show that what she did in the old world,
Margaret Fuller had done in the new; but the noise and restlessness
among the audience were so great (much of which, we charitably hope,
was attributable rather to the discomfort of their position than to
any want of respect for the speaker, or for the cause which the
Convention represented), that she yielded to the wish of the presiding
officer, and sat down without speaking of Margaret Fuller.

Short speeches were made by Lucretia Mott, Antoinette Brown Blackwell,
and Ernestine L. Rose; but as it proved to be another turbulent
meeting, Wendell Phillips, who understood from long experience how to
play with and lash a mob, and thrust what he wished to say into their
long ears, all with one consent yielded the platform to him, and for
nearly two hours he held that mocking crowd in the hollow of his hand.
In closing he said:

I will not attempt to detain you longer. ["Go on"--"Go on."] I
have neither the disposition nor the strength to trespass any
longer upon your attention. The subject is so large that it might
well fill days, instead of hours. It covers the whole surface of
American society. It touches religion, purity, political economy,
wages, the safety of cities, the growth of ideas, the very
success of our experiment. I gave to-night a character to the
city of Washington which some men hissed. You know it is true. If
this experiment of self-government is to succeed, it is to
succeed by some saving element introduced into the politics of
the present day. You know this: Your Websters, your Clays, your
Calhouns, your Douglases, however intellectually able they may
have been, have never dared or cared to touch that moral element
of our national life. Either the shallow and heartless trade of
politics had eaten out their own moral being, or they feared to
enter the unknown land of lofty right and wrong.

Neither of these great names has linked its fam