urging these considerations on the Convention. My excuse is that I was unavoidably absent during the discussion on the subject.
I have the honor to be, very respectfully, madam,
Your obedient servant,
| Lucretia Mott. | Daniel O'Connell. |
The following earnest and friendly letter from William Howitt, was highly prized by Mrs. Mott:
London, June 27, 1840.
Dear Friend: — .... I regret that I was prevented from making a part of the Convention, as nothing should have hindered me from stating there in the plainest terms my opinion of the veal grounds on which you were rejected. It is a pity that you were excluded on the plea of being women; but it is disgusting that under that plea you were actually excluded as heretics. That is the real ground, and it ought to have been at once proclaimed and exposed by the liberal members of the Convention; but I believe they were not aware of the fact. I heard of the circumstance of your exclusion at a distance, and immediately said: "Excluded on the ground that they are women?" No, that is not the real cause; there is something behind. And what are these female delegates? Are they orthodox in religion? The answer was "No, they are considered to be of the Hicksite party of Friends." My reply was, "That is enough; there lies the real cause, and there needs no other. The influential Friends in the Convention would never for a moment tolerate their presence there if they could prevent it. They hate them because they have dared to call in question their sectarian dogmas and assumed authority; and they have taken care to brand them in the eyes of the Calvinistic Dissenters, who form another large and influential portion of the Convention, as Unitarians; in their eyes the most odious of heretics."
But what a miserable spectacle is this! The "World's Convention" converting itself into the fag — end of the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends! That Convention met from various countries and climates to consider how it shall best advance the sacred cause of humanity; of the freedom of the race, independent of caste or color, immediately falls the victim of bigotry; and one of its first acts is to establish a caste of sectarian opinion, and to introduce color into the very soul! Had I not seen of late years a good deal of the spirit which now rules the Society of Friends, my surprise would have been unbounded at seeing "them argue for the exclusion of women from a public assembly, "as women. But nothing which they do now surprises me. They have in this case to gratify their wretched spirit of intolerance, at once abandoned one of the most noble and most philosophical of the established principles of their own Society.
That Society claims, and claims justly, to be the first Christian party which has recognized the great Christian doctrine that there is no sex in souls; that male and female are one in Christ Jesus. There were Fox and Penn and the first giants of the Society who dared in the face of