Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/62

 

Individualism rather than Authority—Personal appearance of Abolitionists—Clerical attempt to silence Woman—Double battle against the tyranny of sex and color—Bigoted Abolitionists—James G. Birney likes freedom on a Southern plantation, but not at his own fireside—John Bull never dreamt that Woman would answer his call—The venerable Thomas Clarkson received by the Convention standing—Lengthy debate on "Female" delegates The "Females" rejected William Lloyd Garrison refused to sit in the Convention.

gathering up the threads of history in the last century, and weaving its facts and philosophy together, one can trace the liberal social ideas, growing out of the political and religious revolutions in France Germany, Italy, and America; and their tendency to substitute for the divine right of kings, priests, and orders of nobility, the higher and broader one of individual conscience and judgment in all matters pertaining to this life and that which is to come. It is not surprising that in so marked a transition period from the old to the new, as seen in the eighteenth century, that women, trained to think and write and speak, should have discovered that they, too, had some share in the new-born liberties suddenly announced to the world. That the radical political theories, propagated in different countries, made their legitimate impress on the minds of women of the highest culture, is clearly proved by their writings and conversation. While in their ignorance, women are usually more superstitious, more devoutly religious than men; those trained to thought, have generally manifested more interest in political questions, and have more frequently spoken and written on such themes, than on those merely religious. This may be attributed, in a measure, to the fact that the tendency of woman's mind, at this stage of her development, is toward practical, rather than toward speculative science.

Questions of political economy lie within the realm of positive knowledge; those of theology belong to the world of mysteries and abstractions, which those minds, only, that imagine they have compassed the known, are ambitious to enter and explore. And yet, the