re to enact
a law providing for the appointment of women in all the towns in
our State to act as joint commissioners with men in the care and
control of these institutions; and, whereas, in utter disregard
of our request, the Committee on State Charities, to whom it was
referred, in reporting back our petition to the House of
Representatives, did recommend that the petitioners be given
leave to withdraw, and the House, without (so far as we could
learn) one word of protest from any member thereof, did so
dispose of our petition; therefore,

_Resolved_, That this association do most solemnly declare, that
so far from being represented in our legislature, the rights of
the women of this State were in this instance trampled under foot
therein, and the best interests of humanity, in the persons of
the poorest and most unfortunate classes, were not sufficiently
regarded, under this system of class legislation.

_Resolved_, That, despairing of obtaining for women even the
privileges which would enable them to look after the welfare of
the destitute and the suffering, with any power or authority to
improve their condition, until equal rights in the government
itself are guaranteed to all without regard to sex, we will
henceforth make use of this treatment we have received as a new
argument in favor of the emancipation of women from the legal
status of idiots and criminals, and, with this weapon in our
hands, we will endeavor to arouse the women of our State to a
keener sense of their degraded condition, and we will never abate
our demand until an amendment to the constitution is submitted to
the people granting suffrage to the women of Rhode Island.

_Resolved_, That this preamble and these resolutions be offered
for publication to the daily papers of this city.

ELIZABETH B. CHACE, _President_.

SUSAN B. P. MARTIN, _Secretary_.

For several years the philanthropic women of Rhode Island made many
determined efforts to secure some official positions in the
charitable institutions of the State, with what success the
following report by Elizabeth B. Chace, at the annual meeting of
the American Association, in Philadelphia, in 1876, will show:

The Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association, while holding its
monthly meetings throu