d._ It does not live in the public
mind. Now, in answer to the petition of these two thousand women,
the Committee reply that all just governments exist by the
consent of the governed. An old truism. We reply, women have
given no such consent, and therefore are not bound to allegiance.
But our sapient Legislators say, since there are two hundred
thousand women in Massachusetts twenty-one years of age, and only
two thousand who sign this petition, therefore it is fair to
suppose that the larger part of the women of the State have
consented to the present form of government. Now, this is
assuredly a willful and unworthy perversion of the truth. These
women are simply ignorant, simply supine. They have neither
affirmed nor denied. They have not thought at all upon the
subject. But there are two thousand women in Massachusetts who
think and act, to say nothing of the thousands of intelligent men
there who believe in the same doctrine. Now here is a little army
in one State alone, and that a conservative one, while through
the Middle and Western States are thousands thinking in the same
direction. Here is the leaven that must leaven the whole lump.
Here is the wise minority which will hereafter become the
overwhelming majority of the country. The Committee remark on the
fact that while 50,000 women have petitioned for a law to repress
the sale of intoxicating liquor, only two thousand petition for
the right to vote! While the multitude could readily trace the
downfall of father, husband, brother, and son, to the dram-shop,
only the thinking few could see the power beyond the law and the
lawmaker that protects the traffic, the right to the ballot, with
which to strike the most effective blow in the right place.

NEW ENGLAND WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.

BOSTON, Friday, _June 2, 1854_.

This Convention assembled the day on which poor Anthony Burns was
consigned to hopeless bondage;[50] and though many friends of the
woman movement remained in the streets to see his surrender, still at
an early hour the hall was literally crowded with earnest men and
women, whom a deep interest in the cause had drawn together. Sarah H.
Earle, of Worcester, was chosen President; Lucy Stone, Chairman of the
Business Committee, reported the resolutions, among which we find the