the right train of
thought, as your practical knowledge of just what is wanted is
everything in getting up the right document. Kind regards to the
anti-slavery host now with you. I did not think that the easy
arm-chair I occupied on the Auburn platform was to bring me so
much glory. Did you know the resolutions of that meeting were
read on the floor of Congress?--that pleased me greatly. I am
very proud to stand maternal sponsor for the whole string. I wish
our Albany resolutions had more snap in them. The Garrison clique
are the only men in this nation that know how to write a
resolution.

On the 18th of February Mrs. Stanton addressed the Legislature on
woman's right of suffrage and the bill then pending in the Senate. A
magnificent audience greeted her in the Capitol. She occupied the
Speaker's desk, and was introduced by Senator Hammond, and spoke as
follows:

GENTLEMEN OF THE JUDICIARY:--There are certain natural rights as
inalienable to civilization as are the rights of air and motion
to the savage in the wilderness. The natural rights of the
civilized man and woman are government, property, the harmonious
development of all their powers, and the gratification of their
desires. There are a few people we now and then meet who, like
Jeremy Bentham, scout the idea of natural rights in civilization,
and pronounce them mere metaphors, declaring that there are no
rights aside from those the law confers. If the law made man too,
that might do, for then he could be made to order to fit the
particular niche he was designed to fill. But inasmuch as God
made man in His own image, with capacities and powers as
boundless as the universe, whose exigencies no mere human law can
meet, it is evident that the man must ever stand first; the law
but the creature of his wants; the law giver but the mouthpiece
of humanity. If, then, the nature of a being decides its rights,
every individual comes into this world with rights that are not
transferable. He does not bring them like a pack on his back,
that may be stolen from him, but they are a component part of
himself, the laws which insure his growth and development. The
individual may be put in the stocks, body and soul, he may be
dwarfed, crippled, killed, but his rights no man can get; they
live and die with him.