Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/157

157 arouse attention and compel investigation of this subject by lawyers and theologians as well as by women themselves.

Francis E. Abbot, editor of The Index, the organ of the Free Religious Association, spoke grandly in favor of the resolutions. He said:

These resolutions we have read with astonishment, admiration and delight. We should not have believed it possible that the convention could have been induced to adopt them. They will make forever memorable in the history of the organized woman movement, this thirtieth anniversary of its birth. They put the National Woman Suffrage Association in an inconceivably higher and nobler position than that occupied by any similar society. They go to the very root of the matter. They are a bold, dignified, and magnificent utterance. We congratulate the convention on a record so splendid in the eyes of all true liberals. From this day forth the whole woman movement must obey the inspiration of a higher courage and a grander spirit than have been known to its past. Opposition must be encountered, tenfold more bitter than was ever yet experienced. But truth is on the side of these brave women; the ringing words they have spoken at Rochester will thrill many a doubting heart and be echoed far down the long avenue of the years.

During the same week of the Rochester convention, the Paris International Congress opened it sessions, sending us a telegram of greeting to which we responded with two hundred and fifty francs as a tangible evidence of our best wishes. The two remarkable features of that congress were the promise of so distinguished a man as Victor Hugo to preside over its deliberations, though at last prevented by illness; and the fact that the Italian government sent Mlle. Mozzoni as an official delegate to the congress to study the civil position of woman in various countries, in order that an ameliorating change of its code, in respect to woman, could be wisely made.

The newspapers of the French capital in general treated the congress with respect. The Rappel, Victor Hugo's organ, spoke of it in a most complimentary manner. Theodore Stanton, in a letter to the National Citizen, said:

In one important respect this congress differed entirely from an American convention of like character—it made no demand for suffrage. The word was never mentioned except by the American delegates. In continental Europe the idea of demanding for woman a share in the government, is never considered. This is the more remarkable in France, as this claim was made at the time of the revolution. But every imaginable side of the question was discussed, except the side that comprehends all the others. To an American, therefore, European woman's rights is rather tame; it is like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. But