, after all, by a
compromise, as this will be.

But at that moment, there lay within the brain of the young
Genoese a dream, which although denounced by prelates and derided
by statesmen was yet destined to add another half to the visible
earth; so there is brooding in the soul of this generation, a
vision of the greatest of all political discoveries, which, when
accepted, will double the intellectual resources of society, and
give a new world, not to Castile and Leon only, but to
Massachusetts and the human race.

And lastly, as we owe the labor and the laurels of Columbus only
to the liberal statesmanship of a woman, it is surely a noble
hope, that the future Isabellas of this Nation may point the way
for their oppressed sisters of Europe to a suffrage truly
universal, and a political freedom bounded neither by station nor
by sex.

Elizabeth Oakes Smith, writing in _The Una_, says of this historical
occasion:

The Massachusetts Convention did not deign to notice the prayer
of these two thousand women who claimed the privilege of being
heard by men who assert that we are represented through them.
They decided that "it is inexpedient to act upon said petition."
This is no cause for discouragement to those who have the subject
at heart. Two thousand signers are quite as many, if not more,
than we supposed would be procured. The believers in the rights
of woman to entire equality with man in every department
involving the question of human justice are entirely in the
minority. The majority believe that their wives and mothers are
household chattels; believe that they were expressly created for
no other purposes than those of maternity in their highest
aspect; in their next for purposes of passion, with the long
retinue of unhallowed sensualities, debasements, and pollutions
which follow in the train of evil indulgence. With others, women
are sewers on of buttons; darners of stockings; makers of
puddings; appendages to wash days, bakings, and brewings; echoes
and adjectives to men for ever and ever. They are compounds of
tears, hysterics, frettings, scoldings, complainings; made up of
craftiness and imbecilities, to be wheedled, and coaxed, and
coerced like unmanageable children. _The idea of a true, noble
womanhood is yet to be create