Page:From Anne Warren Weston to Boston Female Anti-slavery Society; Monday, August 21, 1837.pdf/2

 equally unjustifiable, to sanction doctrines of woman's inferiority & subordination. The fanciful illustrations employed by some of these self elected guardians of female manners would be amusing in the extreme were it not for the reflection that in so few men as these doctrines are received just so far is a most unhappy & prejudicial influence exerted both on the mind & heart of the receiver. The man who looks upon woman, merely from the fact of her being such, as a creature dependant & subordinate, is cherishing a belief that in the very nature of things, cannot fail to exert a most baneful effect on his own character. To render his actions & his opinions consistent, believing women to be inferior, he must ever remember to address them as such; indeed in most cases no effort of the memory will be requisite, he will do so naturally & involuntarily. But with regard to this doctrine, a difference of opinion exists among women themselves, & while one class cheerfully acknowledges its own dependence & subordination, yet there is another who while they cheerfully acknowledge & fulfil all the duties of their various domestic relations,(?) are not at all prepared merely in virtue of their being women to declare themselves either subordinate to or dependant. By the first class the society of man will be flattered & soothed by the latter it will be outraged and wounded and thus all his association with the female sex, the association originally designed by God for his moral improvement, must inevitably produce a result directly the reverse. The social intercourse that should exist between men & women as mutual teachers and aides is destroyed; destroyed however not by the fact of a posture of woman kind occupying a false position, but man kind remaining in one. It may be said of women as was said of the West India Slaves "They are fit for emancipation but their Masters are not." The difficulty arises not because women are exercising their rights, but because men are trying to prevent them. To this fact there are many, many noble exceptions. Anti Slavery Women should be the last to forget this. The men who are labouring in the cause of Human Rights are not unaware the vast scope that those words embrace. As a class it will not be found that they are the people who are sorrowing over their aggrieved dignity.

In this connexion it will not be inappropriate to expect our views ?ishing the course ?scued by the Mises Grimké. We feel it to be both a duty & privilege to utter our convictions relative to their heroic & noble career. With personal experience we can testify that their eloquence devotednes & zeal in the cause of the Slave is equalled only by their piety delivery and accurate sense of all that constitutes truly feminine decorum. An attempt has been & is extensively mocking to injure the effect their thrilling appeals must produce on every Christian heart by endeavouring to substantiate the position that, for a woman to address an assembly composed of men & women is improper and indelicate & wrong. We are almost unable to state what arguments are brought forward in support of this opinion, because its friends generally confine themselves to assertion and a wither common placed