three thousand excited admirers; if Madame Sontag could
give a full-dress rehearsal (which does not commonly imply a
superfluity of apparel) for the special edification of the clergy
of Boston, and be rewarded with duplicate Bibles, it is difficult
to see why a woman may not vote on questions vitally affecting
the interests of herself, or children, or kindred.

But, with all our dainty notions of female proprieties, women
are, by common consent, dragged into court as witnesses, and
subjected to the most scrutinizing and often indelicate
examinations and questions, if either party imagines he can gain
a sixpence, or dull the edge of a criminal prosecution, by her
testimony. The interest, convenience, and prejudices of men, and
not any true regard for the delicacy of the sex, seem to be the
standard by which woman's rights and duties are to be measured.
It is prejudice, custom, long-established usage, and not reason,
which demand the sacrifice of woman's natural rights of
self-government; a relic of barbarism still lingering in all
political, and nearly all religions organizations. Among the
purely savage tribes, woman takes position as a domestic
drudge--a mere beast of burden, whilst the sensual civilization
of Asia regard her more in the light of a domestic luxury, to be
jealously guarded from the profane sight of all men but her
husband. Both positions equally and widely remote from the noble
one God intended her to fill.

In Persia and Turkey women grossly offend the public taste if
they suffer their faces to be seen in the streets. In the latter
country they are prohibited by law, in common with "pigs, dogs,
and other unclean animals," as the law styles them, from so much
as entering their mosques. _Our_ ideas of the proper sphere,
duties, and capabilities of woman do not differ from these so
much in kind as degree. They are all based upon the assumption
that man has the right to decide what are the rights, to point
out the duties, and to fix the boundaries of woman's sphere;
which, taking for true, our cherished theory of government, to
wit: the _inalienability and equality of human rights_ can hardly
be characterized by a milder term than that of an impudent and
oppressive usurpation. Who has authorized us, whilst railing at
miters, and crosiers, and scepters, and shouting in the ears of
the British Lion, as self-evident truths, "representation and
taxation are, and _shall_ be, inseparable,"--"governments, to