The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1868-12-21
Terms $500 per 0nssun,, d. odrance.

long enjoyment OF unquestioned nreroga,iva
and our women must give their oppressors no
rest until their eyes are opened and their
daughters and wives and mothers and siIters
are allowed equal rights for the acquisition
and transmission of property, after marriage
everywhere, and at all times.
10 make the right of suffrage, which is but
another name for self-government, depend up
ON brutal strength, as it now does and has al
ways done, without regard to capacity, eduea-
ona S or morals, is an outrage upon humanity
summon sense, which men, themselves
"ou'u no' endure for single day, if it were
new question, or R barbariaps bad NOT ,ooda
the laws for woman from the trst hindi,o, ,,o,
everywhere to qualified slavery ,,n,;I .to,,
have come to be regarded as unchanpeable
like the laws of the Medes and Persians,
Just suppose that women were the lawoiv-
ers, and that under the laws they made mem
were taxed without representation; that men
were not allowed to hold office, to have the
care of their own children, to sit on jures or
TO say who should govern them; that mar
rled man should not be able to acquire prop
erty, to enjoy his own earnings or to transmit
his earnings to his children; that upon the
marriage of man all his personal property
should rest forever and absolutely in the wife.
by the very act of marriage; and all the rents
and profits of his real estate should also belong
to her, for life; while but one-third part of her
personal property should go to the husband
and even that third, not by the act of marriage
nor during marriage, but after the wife's
death; and one-third only of the rents and
prohts OF her real estate, after her death-so
that the husband would not have sixpence
he could call his own during cogertuye: and
suppose further, that among the provisions
made by women lawgivers for the comfort and
protection OF those whom they profess to re-
we're and cherish, as men profess to revere and
cherish women now, there should be proyis-
ion such as there was once in this country. and
still is, in the mother country, with a slight
modification, whereby instead of hanging and
burning tor murder, the culprit should be on
ly drawn and hung, so that if a husband killed
his wife, it should be petty treason, as where
an ecclesiastc kills his superior or a servant
his master, while if wife killed her husband
it should be only murder; and that all the
judges and lawyers and officers and lawgiyers
OF the land should always be women-how
long would men bear a system so preposterous
and foolish, and wicked? Would they not rise
up in wrath and rebellion, and would not the
kingdoms, and thrones, the lawyers and Judges
of earth disappear like dust before the whirl-
wind?
And why? Not because men are wiser OF
better, but because they are stronger of body
than women.
That the rights of a minority are only Just
what the majority dare not or cannot refuse,
we all know. All the concessions wrung from
Man to Woman for hundreds of years, and es-
pecially here, within the last fifteen or twenty
years, whereby she is allowed to earn, acquire
and transmit property while married, in some
of the States have been the result of agitation.
Left to themselves, women, as a class would
be now just where they were then; ignorant
alike of their rights, unmndfu of their chief
duties as wives and mothers, and afraid to
breathe or stir, lest they should be stigmatized
as Bloomers or strong-minded women; for they
never dreamed of asserting their rights, as the
teachers of men from the irst-nor did they
often presume to have any rights beyond
those which men had granted them for their
own comfort and pleasure-that is for the
comfort and pleasure not of lcomen-but of
men.
Why not insist upon the same code of NOR
ais for men as for women? Insist upon the
right of suffrage for women, and you will
have it conceded, just in proportion to your
strength; and with it, pay for your labor, ac-
cording to its WORTH a share in the distribu-
tion OF power and emolument and such con-
sideration as you will find ten thousand times
more desirable than all the hypocritcal defer
ence and fiattering courtesy which the men,
who hold you in bondage now, your fathers,
and brothers and husbands and sons-your
oppressors-who now not only make but ad-
minister the laws, pretend to feel for you
That done, and on the great day of jubilee =,
WOMAN will say to MAN, as with the voice of
ten thousand trumpets,
"And thou, from thy reluctant hand
The thunderbolt is wrung."
JOHN NEAL.