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Mrs. Stanton's Answer to Miss A.'s Appeal.
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I returned from New York last evening; have taken the "Cooper Union," for our National Convention in May. Saw Miss Howland; she said Mr. Beecher's lecture is to be in this week's Independent, Only think how many priestly eyes will be compelled to look at its defiled page. Theodore Tilton told me that Mr. Beecher had had a severe battle to get into The Independent.
Mrs. Stanton, in answering Miss Anthony's appeal, says:
I am willing to do the appointed work at Albany. If Napoleon says cross the Alps, they are crossed. I can not, my dear friend, "move heaven and earth," but I will do what I can with pen and brain. You must come here and start me on the right train of thought, as your practical knowledge of just what is wanted is everything in getting up the right document. Kind regards to the anti-slavery host now with you. I "did not think that the easy arm-chair I occupied on the Auburn platform was to bring me so much glory. Did you know the resolutions of that meeting were read on the floor of Congress? — that pleased me greatly. Iam very proud to stand maternal sponsor for the whole string. I wish our Albany resolutions had more snap in them. The Garrison clique are the only men in this nation that know how to write a resolution.
On the 18th of February Mrs. Stanton addressed the Legislature on woman's right of suffrage and the bill then pending in the Senate.. A magnificent audience greeted her in the Capitol. She oceupied the Speaker's desk, and was introduced by Senator Hammond, and spoke as follows:
Gentlemen of the Judiciary: — There are certain natural rights as inalienable to civilization as are the rights of air and motion to the sayage in the wilderness. The natural rights of the civilized man and woman are government, property, the harmonious development ofall their powers, and the gratification of their desires. There are a few people we now and then meet who, like Jeremy Bentham, scout the idea of natural rights in civilization, and pronounce them mere metaphors, declaring that there are no rights aside from those the law confers. If the law made man too, that might do, for then he could be made to order to fit the particular niche he was designed to fill. But inasmuch as God made man in His own image, with capacities and powers as boundless as the universe, whose exigencies no mere human law can meet, it is evident that the man must ever stand first; the law but the creature of his wants; the law-giver but the mouthpiece of humanity. If, then, the nature of a being decides its rights, every individual comes into this world with rights that are not transferable. He does not bring them like a pack on his back, that may be stolen from him, but they are a component part of himself, the laws which insure his growth and development. The individual may be put in the stocks, body and soul, he may be dwarfed, crippled, killed, but his rights no man can get; they live and die with him.
