rd of Mrs. Norton, "the woman
Byron," as critics call her--the granddaughter of Sheridan, and
the one on whose shoulders his mantle has rested--a genius by
right of inheritance and by God's own gift. Perhaps you may
remember that when the Tories wanted to break down the reform
administration of Lord Melbourne, they brought her husband to
feign to believe his wife unfaithful, and to sue her before a
jury. He did so, brought an action, and an English jury said she
was innocent; and his own counsel has since admitted, in writing,
under his own signature, that during the time he prosecuted that
trial, the Honorable Mr. Norton (for so he is in the Herald's
Book) confessed all the time that he did not believe a word
against his wife, and knew she was innocent. She is a writer. The
profits of her books, by the law of England, belong to her
husband. She has not lived with him--of course not, for she is a
woman!--since that trial; but the brute goes every six months to
John Murray, and eats the profits of the brain of the wife whom
he tried to disgrace. (Loud cries of "shame," "shame"). And the
law of England says it is right; the orthodox pulpit says, "If
you change it, it will be the pulling down of the stars and St.
Paul." I do not believe that the Honorable Mr. Norton is half as
near to the mind of St. Paul as the Honorable Mrs. Norton. I go,
therefore, for woman having her right to her brain, to her hands,
to her toil, to her ballot. "The tools to him that can use
them"--and let God settle the rest. If He made it just that we
should have democratic institutions, then He made it just that
everybody who is to suffer under the law should have a voice in
making it; and if it is indelicate for woman to vote, then let
Him stop making women (applause and laughter), because
republicanism and such women are not consistent. I say it
reverently; and I only say it to show you the absurdity. Why, my
dear man and woman, we are not to help God govern the world by
telling lies! He can take care of it Himself. If He made it just,
you may be certain that He saw to it that it should be delicate;
and you need not insert your little tiny roots of fastidious
delicacy into the great giant rifts of God's world--they are only
in the way. (Applause).

The first evening se