that it disqualifies them for public duties. Nobody
challenges them as jurors, and demands if they have
discharged the family obligation. Rather it is held wise in
them to give themselves wholly to their pursuits, without
the distraction of conjugal joys, until they have achieved
success. Why should the family requirement, which man throws
off so easily, be made a yoke for woman? There is something
more fundamental than nursing babies or coddling the
appetites of husbands. The sentiment, "Give me liberty, or
give me death," is the American instinct. Breathes there a
woman with soul so dead that she would bring forth slaves?
Babes had better not be born if they are not to have their
rights. It is the duty of women to first provide the state
of freedom for their progeny. Then they may consent to
become wives and mothers. Liberty and the exercise of all
political rights are so bound together, that to neglect one
is to abandon all. Trial by a jury of one's peers is the
essential principle of the administration of justice. To be
a peer on a jury involves the whole principle of equal
rights. To abandon this to man, is to accept subjection to
man.

For women to neglect jury duty is to give men the exclusive
privilege to _judge women_, and to abandon the right to be
tried by a jury of their peers. How can men justly judge a
woman? They cannot have that knowledge of her peculiar
physical and mental organization which is requisite to the
judgment of motives and temptations. They cannot comprehend
the variable moods and emotions, nor the power of her
impulses. It is monstrous injustice to judge women by the
same rules as men. And men lack that intuitive charity and
tender sympathy which women always feel for an exposed,
erring sister. Furthermore, many of the crimes of men are
against women. How can men appreciate their injury? That
which is her ruin, they call, as Anna Dickinson says, sowing
their wild oats. How can justice be expected from those who
instinctively combine to preserve their privilege to abuse
women? For the administration of justice to women who are