ncreasing interest and grave consideration, from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, and what at first appeared to be so foolish in
pretension is admitted by all reflecting and candid minds to be
deserving of the most respectful treatment. Then, its avowed
friends, were indeed "few and far between," even among those
disfranchised as the penalty of their womanhood. Now, they can be
counted by tens of thousands, and their number is
augmenting--foremost in intelligence, in weight of character, in
strength of understanding, in manly and womanly development, and
in all that goes to make up enlightened citizenship. Then, with
rare exceptions, women were everywhere remanded to poverty and
servile dependence, being precluded from following those
avocations and engaging in those pursuits which make competency
and independence not a difficult achievement. Now, there is
scarcely any situation or profession, in the arrangements of
society, to which they may not and do not aspire, and in which
many of them are not usefully engaged; whether in new and varied
industrial employment, in the arts and sciences, in the highest
range of literature, in philosophic and mathematical
investigations, in the professions of law, medicine, and
divinity, in high scholarship, in educational training and
supervision, in rhetoric and oratory, in the lyceum, or in
discharging the official duties connected with the various
departments of the State and national governments.

Almost all barriers are down except that which prevents women
from going to the polls to help decide who shall be the
law-makers and what shall be the laws, so that the general
welfare may be impartially consulted, and the blessings of
freedom and equal rights be enjoyed by all. That barrier, too,
must give way wherever erected, as sure as time outlasts and
baffles every device of wrong-doing, and truth is stronger than
falsehood, and the law of eternal justice is as reliable as the
law of gravitation. Yes! the grand fundamental truths of the
Declaration of Independence shall yet be reduced to practice in
our land--that the human race are created free and equal; that
government derives its just powers from the consent of the
governed, and that taxation without representation is tyranny.
And I confidently pred