f the ages,
was based upon the inherent rights of the individual. Perhaps in none
but English Colonies, by descendants of English parents, could such a
revolution have been consummated. England had never felt the bonds of
feudalism to the extent of many countries; its people had defied its
monarchs and wrested from them many civil rights, rights which
protected women as well as men, and although its common law, warped by
ecclesiasticism, expended its chief rigors upon women, yet at an early
day they enjoyed certain ecclesiastical and political powers unknown
to women elsewhere. Before the Conquest, abbesses sat in councils of
the Church and signed its decrees; while kings were even dependent
upon their consent in granting certain charters. The synod of Whitby,
in the ninth century, was held in the convent of the Abbess Hilda, she
herself presiding over its deliberations. The famous prophetess of
Kent at one period communicated the orders of Heaven to the Pope
himself. Ladies of birth and quality sat in council with the Saxon
Witas--_i.e._, wise men--taking part in the Witenagemot, the great
National Council of our Saxon ancestors in England. In the seventh
century this National Council met at Baghamstead to enact a new code
of laws, the queen, abbesses, and many ladies of quality taking part
and signing the decrees. Passing by other similar instances, we find
in the reign of Henry III, that four women took seats in Parliament,
and in the reign of Edward I. ten ladies were called to Parliament,
while in the thirteenth century, Queen Elinor became keeper of the
Great Seal, sitting as Lord Chancellor in the _Aula Regia_, the
highest court of the Kingdom. Running back two or three centuries
before the Christian era, we find Martia, her seat of power in London,
holding the reins of government so wisely as to receive the surname of
Proba, the Just. She especially devoted herself to the enactment of
just laws for her subjects, the first principles of the common law
tracing back to her; the celebrated laws of Alfred, and of Edward the
Confessor, being in great degree restorations and compilations from
the laws of Martia, which were known as the "Martian Statutes."

When the American colonies began their resistance to English tyranny,
the women--all this inherited tendency to freedom surging in their
veins--were as active, earnest, determined, and self-sacrificing as
the men, and although, as Mrs. Ellet in her "Women of the Revo