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 world. Surely at no distant day the sense of justice which exists in everybody will secure our claim, and we shall have at last a truly representative government, of the people, by the people and for the people. We may, therefore, rejoicing in what is already gained, look forward with hope to the future."

A large audience listened to the address of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe on The Chivalry of Reform, during which she said:

The political enfranchisement of woman has long been sought upon the ground of abstract right and justice. This ground is surely the soundest and safest basis for any claim to rest upon. But mankind, after yielding a general obedience to the moral law, will reserve for themselves a certain freedom in its application to particular things. Even in so imperative a matter as the salvation of their own souls they will not be content with weights and measures. The touch of sentiment must come in, uplifting what law knocks down, freeing what it trammels, satisfying man's love for freedom by ministering to his sense of beauty. When this subtle power joins itself to the demonstrations of reason, the victory is sure and lasting.

It is in the grand order of these ideas that I stand here to advocate the enfranchisement of my sex. Morally, socially, intellectually equal with men, it is right that we should be politically equal with them in a society which claims to recognize and uphold one equal humanity. I do not say it is our right. I say it is right—God's right and the world's.

In the name of high sentiment then, in the name of all that good men profess, I ask that the gracious act may be consummated which will admit us to the place that henceforth befits us, that of equal participants with you in the sovereignty of the people. Do this in the spirit of that mercy whose quality is not strained. Remember that the neglect of justice brings with it the direst retribution. Make your debt to us a debt of honor, and pay it in that spirit; if you do not pay it, dread the proportions which its arrears will assume. Remember that he who has the power to do justice and refrains from doing it, will presently find it doing itself, to his no small discomfiture.

Women, trained for the moral warfare of the time, armed with the fine instincts which are their birthright, are not doomed to sit forever as mere Spectators in these great encounters of society. They are to deserve the crown as well as to bestow it; to meet the powers of darkness with the powers of light; to bring their potent aid to the eternal conquest of right. And let me say here to those women who not only hang back from this encounter but who throw obstacles in the way of true reform and progress, that the shallow ground upon which they stand is within the belt of the moral earthquake, and that what they build upon it will be overthrown.

The Rev. Miss Shaw, in an address filled with humor as well