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370 nell, Dr. Bowring, Henry B. Stanton, Geoi^e Tbompsou, and Wendell Phillips. William Lloyd Garrison did* not reach England until the third day of the convention, having been unfortunately becalmed at sea. When he learned that Mas- sachusetts women had been denied their rights in the conven- tion he declined to take his seat as a member of that body. His anti-slavery principles being too broad to restrict human rights to color or sex, he took his seat in the gallery, and, through all those days looked down on the convention. Thomas Clarkson was chosen president, but be being too old and feeble to endure the fatigue, Joseph Sturge, the cele- brated Quaker merchant, presided over the deliberations. Sitting near Mrs. Mott in the convention, I mischievously suggested to her one day a dangerous contingency. ^ With a Quaker in the chair," said I, ^ suppose, in spite of the vote of excommunication, the spirit should move you to speak, what could the chairman do, and which would you obey, — the spir- it, or the convention? •* She promptly replied, ** Where the spirit of God is, there is liberty." The general indignation felt by the advanced minds among the women of England, France, and America, and the puerile tone of the debates on this question, gave birth to what is called the Woman's Righto movement on both continents. The women of England soon after established a Woman's Rights journal, and petitioned Parliament for their rights of propeity • Their demands were ably maintained by Lord Brougham in the House of Peers. The French women, too, soon after established a journal, so liberal and republican in its sentiments, that they were com- pelled to publish it in Italy, though it was clandestinely cir- culated in France. At the same time Frederika Bremer, in her popular novels, was ridiculing the creeds and codes and customs of her country, and thus undermining the laws of Sweden in regard to women, which, in many particulars, were soon after essentially modified.