e, dignity, and nobility? How can she endure our present
marriage relations, by which woman's life, health, and happiness are
held so cheap, that she herself feels that God has given her no
charter of rights, no individuality of her own. I answer, she
patiently bears all this because in her blindness she sees no way of
escape. Her bondage, though it differs from that of the negro slave,
frets and chafes her just the same. She too sighs and groans in her
chains; and lives but in the hope of better things to come. She looks
to heaven; whilst the more philosophical slave sets out for Canada.
Let it be the object of this Convention to show that there is hope for
woman this side of heaven, and that there is a work for her to do
before she leaves for the celestial city.

Marriage is a divine institution, intended by God for the greater
freedom and happiness of both parties--whatever therefore conflicts
with woman's happiness is not legitimate to that relation. Woman has
yet to learn that she has a right to be happy in and of herself; that
she has a right to the free use, improvement, and development of all
her faculties, for her own benefit and pleasure. The woman is greater
than the wife or the mother; and in consenting to take upon herself
these relations, she should never sacrifice one iota of her
individuality to any senseless conventionalisms, or false codes of
feminine delicacy and refinement.

Marriage, as we now have it, is opposed to all God's laws. It is by no
means an equal partnership. The silent partner loses everything. On
the domestic sign, the existence of a second person is not recognized
by even the ordinary abbreviation, Co. There is the establishment of
John Jones. Perhaps his partner supplies all the cents and the
senses--but no one knows who she is or whence she came. If John is a
luminous body, she shines in his reflection; if not, she hides herself
in his shadow. But she is nameless, for a woman has no name! She is
Mrs. John or James, Peter or Paul, just as she changes masters; like
the Southern slave, she takes the name of her owner. Many people
consider this a very small matter; but it is the symbol of the most
cursed monopoly on this footstool; a monopoly by man of all the
rights, the life, the liberty, and happiness of one-half of the human
family--all womankind. For what man can honestly deny that he has not
a secret feeling that where his pleasure and woman's seems to
conflict, the woman must b