Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/639

Rh the following communication. It is proper to state that it is written in reply to an article of one of our morning contemporaries, published a day or two ago:

"Let us take it for granted that your pop-gun of pleasantry has killed off the six thousand 'strong-minded' women and 'weak-minded' men who signed the petitions to the Legislature for Justice to Woman. And thus having disposed of personalities, will you be pleased to pass on to a discussion of the following questions:

"1, Are women, in New York, persons, people, citizens, members of the State? If they are not, then why are they numbered in the census, taxed by assessors, and subjected to legal penalties? If they are, then why is authority exercised over them without their consent asked or granted?

"2. If among the male half of the people, only criminals, aliens, and minors are excluded from the right of suffrage are all women excluded from exercising this right, on the ground of criminality, idiocy, foreign associations, or infantile imbecility?

"3. If the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of New York are the peers and equals of their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons, why should they not enjoy all civil and political rights equally with them? If they are, on the contrary, an inferior caste, how can a jury of men thus avowedly superior, be regarded as peers and equals of any woman whom they are summoned to try?

"4. Would the editor of The Register consider himself justly treated if he would some day find himself governed by women, without his consent, taxed by women without power of voting for his representative, tried by a jury of women under laws made and administered by women?

"5. If prosecuted under the law of libel before a court of women for, his late remarks, does he think he would get his deserts?

2em

Knickerbocker, Albany, March 8, 1854:. — The editor of The State Register is going it blind on woman's rights matters. He was out on Monday with a half column leader that touched everything except the matter in dispute. We quote a paragraph:

"People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment should sanction or tolerate these unsexed women, who make a scoff at religion, who repudiate the Bible, and blaspheme God; who would step out from the true sphere of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, and take upon themselves the duties and the business of men; stalk into the public gaze, and by engaging in the politics, the rough controversies, and trafficking of the world, upheave existing institutions, and overturn all the social relations of life."

The Register either misunderstands matters, or else willfully misrepresents them. The leading women connected with this new movement do not scoff at religion, repudiate the Bible, nor blaspheme God. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Brown are no more opposed to God and religion than the editor of The Register is, They are educated, Christian women, and would no sooner "overturn society "than they would bear false witness against their neighbors. Before The Register again attacks the reforms proposed