reciating, or
grasping, exercises a powerful, indeed a controlling influence in
making our people what they are, and our nation what it is.

These petitions ask only that these rights, enjoyed by one
portion of the American people, may be extended to embrace the
whole, not less for the abstract but all-sufficient reason, that
they have been given to the whole by the Creator, than that by
their application to the whole, the more general will be the
benefits experienced; and the deeper, broader, more prevailing
and more enduring will become those benefits. Manifestly, such
must be the case; for as these rights belong to humanity, and
produce their exalted and beneficial fruits by their application
to and upon humanity, it follows that, wherever humanity is,
there they belong, and there they will work out their beneficial
results. To exclude woman from the possession of equal political
rights with man, it should be shown that she is essentially a
different being; that the Creator of man is not her Creator; that
she has not the same evil to shun, the same heaven to gain; in
short, the same grand, immortal destiny which is supposed to
invite to high uses the capacity of man, does not pertain to nor
invite her. We say this must be shown; and if it can not be, as
certainly it can not, then it follows that to withhold these
rights, so beneficial to one portion, is to work an immediate and
particular injury to those from whom they are withheld, and,
although a more indirect, not a less certain injury to all.
Man-masculine is not endowed by his Creator with certain
inalienable rights because he is male, but because he is human;
and when, in virtue of our strong and superior physical capacity,
we deny to man-feminine the rights which are ours only in virtue
of our humanity, we exercise the same indefensible tyranny
against which _we_ felt justified in taking up arms, and
perilling life and fortune.

The argument against conceding these rights all are familiar
with. They are precisely the same which have been in the mouths
of tyrants from the beginning of time, and have been urged
against any and every demand for popular liberty. A want of
capacity for self-government--freedom will be only
licentiousness--and out of the possession of rights will gr