ch
management, saying:

As women are taking an active part in pressing on the
consideration of Congress many narrow sectarian measures, such as
more rigid Sunday laws, the stopping of travel, the distribution
of the mail on that day, and the introduction of the name of God
into the Constitution; and as this action on the part of some
women is used as an argument for the disfranchisement of all, I
hope this convention will declare that the Woman Suffrage
Association is opposed to all union of Church and State, and
pledges itself as far as possible to maintain the secular nature
of our Government. As Sunday is the only day that the laboring
man can escape from the cities, to stop the street-cars,
omnibuses and railroad trains would indeed be a lamentable
exercise of arbitrary authority. No, no, the duty of the State is
to protect those who do the work of the world, in the largest
liberty, and instead of shutting them up in their gloomy tenement
houses on Sunday, to open wide the parks, horticultural gardens,
museums, libraries, galleries of art and the music halls where
they can listen to the divine melodies of the great masters.

She demanded that women declare boldly and decisively on all the vital
issues of the day, and said:

In this way we make ourselves mediums through which the great
souls of the past may speak again. The moment we begin to fear
the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in
us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak,
the divine floods of light and life flow no longer into our
souls. Every truth we see is ours to give the world, not to keep
for ourselves alone, for in so doing we cheat humanity out of
their rights and check our own development.

As Mrs. Stanton finished she introduced her daughter, Mrs. Blatch, a
resident of England, who in a few impressive remarks showed that on
the great socialistic questions of the day--capital and labor, woman
suffrage, race prejudice--England was liberal and the United States
conservative; that the latter had beautiful ideas but did not apply
them, and tended too much to the worship of legislation.

The Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, retiring president of the American
Association, an uncompromising advocate of woman's enfranchisement,
then made a strong and scholarly address in the course of whic