s and girls, both black and
white; justice and mercy in the alms-house, jail, prison, and the
marts of trade, thus securing equal rights to all.

WOMAN'S EARLY POLITICAL RIGHTS.

In Massachusetts, women voted at an early day. First, under the Old
Province Charter, from 1691 to 1780, for all elective officers;
second, they voted under the Constitution for all elective officers
except the Governor, Council, and Legislature, from 1780 to 1785. The
Bill of Rights, adopted with the Constitution of 1780, declared that
all men were born free and equal. Upon this, some slaves demanded
their freedom, and their masters yielded.[31] Restrictions upon the
right of suffrage were very great in this State; church membership
alone excluded for thirty years three-fourths of the male inhabitants
from the ballot-box.[32]

That women exercised the right of suffrage amid so many restrictions,
is very significant of the belief in her right to the ballot, by those
early Fathers.[33]

THE FIRST STEP IN MASSACHUSETTS.

Woman's rights petitions were circulated in Massachusetts as early as
1848. Mary Upton Ferrin, of Salem, in the spring of that year,
consulting Samuel Merritt, known as "the honest lawyer of Salem," in
regard to the property rights of married women, and the divorce laws,
learned that the whole of the wife's personal property belonged to the
husband, as also the improvements upon her real estate; and that she
could only retain her silver and other small valuables by secreting
them, or proving them to have been loaned to her. To such deception
did the laws of Massachusetts, like those of most States, based on the
Old Common Law idea of the wife's subjection to the husband, compel
the married woman in case she desired to retain any portion of her own
property.

Mrs. Ferrin reported the substance of the above conversation to Mrs.
Phebe King,[34] of Danvers, who at once became deeply interested,
saying, "If such are the laws by which women are governed, every woman
in the State should sign a petition to have them altered."

"Will you sign one if drawn up?" queried Mrs. Ferrin.

"Yes," replied Mrs. King, "and I should think every woman would sign
such a petition."

As the proper form of petitions was something with which women were
then quite unfamiliar, the aid of several gentlemen was asked, among
them Hon. D. P. King and Judge John Heartley, but all refused.

Miss Betsy King then suggested that Judge Pitkin[35] poss