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Rh cess, and that Mrs. Lucretia Mott will live to see the fruit of some of her good and noble work.

July 14, 1870.

—I thank you much for your invitation to attend your second decade meeting of the Woman's Suffrage Association. I regret that it will not be in my power to accept it. Much as I enjoyed my visit to America, it is rather too far to undertake a second journey there. You must, indeed be glad, after twenty years of work, to see the great advance in public opinion on this question. It seems now to be progressing very fast. I have just aided in establishing a committee at Stroud, and we hope soon to have one in every borough in England for female suffrage. Yours truly,

2em


 * —Mrs. Butler regrets very much not to have been able to write to you before, and begs you will kindly accept her apologies as well as her thanks for your invitation to your Decade Meeting. I have the honor and privilege to be at present Mrs. Butler's Secretary. She is overwhelmed with work, and would be thankful for your sympathy in it. I wish I could give you a clear idea of the battle she has to fight, but it is very difficult for me, as a German, to put it in adequate words.

Mrs. Butler's introductory essay to "Woman's Work and Woman's Culture" only gives a faint idea of her character and strivings, compared to the grand reality of her life. She has devoted more than fifteen years to the rescue of "fallen women"—a work that requires more active charity and self-denial than any other. The English Parliament passed, some time ago, certain acts called the Contagious Disease Acts, as a sanitary measure, on the model of Continental legislation. To earnest, religious minds, like Mrs. Butler's, the acts appear immoral in principle, as declaring vice a necessity; unjust, as inflicting penalties on women and letting men go free; and cruel in their application, enrolling women in a degraded class, making their return to virtue almost impossible. I think if I tell you that by these acts a woman can be arrested by a policeman on suspicion of being a prostitute, and subjected to an examination which amounts to a surgical operation, always disgraceful, sometimes injurious, even dangerous, I have made quite clear to an American lady that such a state of things can not be endured.

The best English women, with Mrs. Butler and Miss Nightingale as leaders, stand up nobly for the poor, degraded women whom, with their true Christian hearts, they still recognize as sisters. Mrs. Butler, who is rather delicate, devotes all her strength to this cause at present. She travels much, has been in the garrison towns, where, for the benefit of the soldiers, these atrocious acts are in force, and in large meetings denounces the cruelties to women. By her efforts more than sixty thousand signatures have been obtained for the repeal of the acts. Many good men, I am thankful to say, are on our side, and it is a matter of congratulation that in this point many people join who widely differ in other respects. I firmly believe that this question, which can no longer be avoided, will produce a great social reform. Women who timidly keep aloof from all political movements, after this experience of male legislation, eagerly demand the suffrage.

I am sure you will forgive Mrs. Butler for not writing herself. As soon as she has a little more breathing time she is sure to write, but she fears she will never be able to cross the Atlantic.

Mrs.

92, 7th September.


 * —I burned the answer I had written to you under the shameful government now fallen, and whose crimes and treasons extorted from me cries of despair for the ruin they have brought on our country.

I thank you for the generous sympathy you express toward us in our great woe. Your honored named have been blessed for this by our French hearts, We are now relieved, and though our actual peril is none the less, we are in possession of our own force. We are rid of the despicable robbers of our honor, our fortune and our lives; and in the most terrible energy, is a consolation and support. Better is it to die with honor wan