Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/854

820 Business Committee — Lucy Stone Blackwell, Ohio; Lucretia Mott, Pennsylvania; Josephine S. Griffing, Adelaide Swift, Henry B. Blackwell, Ohio.

Secretaries — Rebecca Plumly, Pennsylvania; Wm. Henry Smith, editor of The Type of the Times.

All men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and,

To secure these rights governments are instituted among them, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; therefore

Resolved, That the legislators of these United States are self-convicted of the grossest injustice and of inconsistency with their own admitted principles, while they refuse these rights to women.

Resolved, That taxation without representation is tyranny.

Resolved, That in accordance with an universally admitted and self-evident truth, woman should possess the elective franchise, as a basis of all legal and political rights, as the only effective protection of their interests, as a remedy against present oppression, and as a school for character.

Resolved, That the right to acquire knowledge should be limited only by the capacity of the individual; and, therefore, we deprecate, especially, that social usage, inexorable as a written statute, which excludes woman from all our best colleges, universities, schools of law, medicine, and divinity, and that we demand equal scholastic advantages for our daughters and our sons; that while only three out of the one hundred and fifty American colleges are open to women, and while every avenue to scientific and professional culture is closed against her, it is unfair to judge woman by the same intellectual standard as man, and impossible to define a limit to her capacities and talents.

Resolved, That the inadequate compensation which the labor of women now commands, is the source of inexpressible individual misery and social demoralization; that inasmuch as the law of supply and demand will always regulate the remuneration of labor, the diversity of female employments and her free access to every branch of business, are indispensable to the virtue, happiness, and well-being of society.