esent condition of society, are
often more disastrous to woman than to men. Intemperance, for
instance, burdens a wife worse than a husband, owing to the
present state of society. It is not the fault of the
statute-book, and no change in the duration of marriage would
alter that inequality.

The reason why I object so emphatically to the introduction of
the question here is because it is a question which admits of so
many theories, physiological and religious, and what is
technically called "free-love," that it is large enough for a
movement of its own. Our question is only unnecessarily burdened
with it. It can not be kept within the convenient limits of this
enterprise; for this Woman's Rights Convention is not Man's
Convention, and I hold that I, as a man, have an exactly equal
interest in the essential question of marriage as woman has. I
move, then, that these series of resolutions do not appear at all
upon the journal of the Convention. If the speeches are reported,
of course the resolutions will go with them. Most journals will
report them as adopted. But I say to those who use this platform
to make speeches on this question, that they do far worse than
take more than their fair share of the time; they open a gulf
into which our distinctive movement will be plunged, and its
success postponed two years for every one that it need
necessarily be.

Of course, in these remarks, I intend no reflection upon those
whose views differ from mine in regard to introducing this
subject before the Convention; but we had an experience two years
ago on this point, and it seems to me that we might have learned
by that lesson. No question--Anti-Slavery, Temperance, Woman's
Rights--can move forward efficiently, unless it keeps its
platform separate and unmixed with extraneous issues, unmixed
with discussions which carry us into endless realms of debate. We
have now, under our present civilization, to deal with the simple
question which we propose--how to make that statute-book look
upon woman exactly as it does upon man. Under the law of Divorce,
one stands exactly like the other. All we have asked in regard to
the law of property has been, that the statute-book of New York
shall make the wife exactly like the husband; we do not go
another ste