Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/679

649 He was glad to hear from the applause which followed the gentleman's remarks, that there was a large number of persons present who were opposed to the views of the Convention. It was of little use talking to friends who already agreed with you, but it was always of advantage to talk to opponents, whom you might hope to convert. He was glad that those who differed with them were there, because it showed that the question was one of interest, and was beginning to excite those who probably had bestowed but little thought on it before. He did not think the gentleman could have meant what he said when he accused him of slander. He did not mean to slander anybody. And he did not think he quite meant what he said about his erratic and shallow reasonings. He would appeal to all if he had not treated the gentleman with courtesy. He thought he had answered the gentleman's inquiry, when in reply to the question whether he founded this claim on nature or on revelation, he said that he personally founded it on nature. If there was in the compass of the English language any simpler way of answering the question than that he did not know it. The gentleman, from the scope of his remarks, evinced a considerable love for metaphysical theology. His reasoning appeared to be a little dim; perhaps it was for want of comprehension on his part. He liked to plant himself on the fundamental principles of human nature, and work out his opinions from them.

In reply to the gentleman's reasoning about the universality of a thing being a test of its naturalness, he could say that there were a good many races who did not know that two and two make four. According to the gentleman's idea of natural laws, therefore, it was not natural that two and two should make four. But it had always been a question among metaphysicians, which was really the most natural condition for man—the savage or the civilized state? His own opinion was that the state of highest cultivation was the most natural state of man. He tried to develop his own nature in that way, and one of the consequences of that development was the conviction that two and two made four; while another was the conviction that his wife had as much right to determine her sphere in life for herself as he had for himself. And having come to that conviction, he should endeavor to carry it out, and he hoped by the time the young gentleman came to have a wife, he would be converted to that principle.

In reference to his attack on the editor of The Daily Times for the article on the Woman's Convention, which had appeared in the edition of the previous day, he remarked that he had read that article without any particular reverence for its author. He knew the quarter from which it came. There was not a man in New York who better understood on which side his bread is buttered than the editor of The Daily Times. That gentleman always wished people to understand that his journal was The Times, and was not The Tribune, and never failed to avail himself of the Woman's Rights movement as giving him such an opportunity. Have you ever seen a little boy running along the street, and carefully dodging between two big boys? If you have, that was the editor of The Times between Greeley and Bennett. The Times seeks to be a journal and nothing else. I will always say of it, continued the speaker, that the reports in