The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1869-12-10

Horrible Revelations.
Conventicles and meetings of the women's
rights women are increasing East and West,
and they are widening the sphere of their dis
cussions from women's rights in the matter of
suffrage to Everything in heaven above, in the
earth below and in the waters under the earth.
But at the Woman's National Suffrage Asso-
citation meeting in this city on Wednesday
evening last the Mcfarland Richardson
tragedy, with all its shocking details and
teachings, was the engrossing subject of the
evenings debates and resolutions.
Mrs. Norton led off in resolution against
the manufacturing of public opinion in behalf
of an assassin, declaring that chad Sickles
and Cole both suffered the just punishment of
their crimes this CRichardson) murder would
never have been committed" Upon this hint
O woman's rights man Of the free love order,
named Poole, took up the subject. He con-
tended that the divorce laws Of New York
were not free and easy enough that the death
bed marriage of Richardson and Mrs. McFar-'
land upon that Indiana divorce was a glorious
thing, though in defiance of the laws of New
York; that women are loaded down with laws,
and he objected to all laws affecting women
because they are women, and SO on. Next
came Mrs. Blake, who, having a husband
OF her own, did not admire| these
lax divorce laws of the Western States.
In France during the Reign Of Terror,
when the divorce laws were relaxed,
woman could not go to public assemblage
without seeing six or eight different husbands,
and Mrs. Blake didn't want anything Of that
kind. Mrs. Norton, for her part, thought that
a state of things which allowed woman six
or eight husbands was much better than the
order of society under which poor woman
was obliged to live with husband she
detested. This, surely, was speaking right
out in meeting" Mrs. Symmetry, Mortified, no
doubt, at Mrs. Nortons ideas of women's
rights, suggested that the real question before
the society was woman's right to the ballot.
A certain DR.. Hoeber here put in his oar,
contending that women's rights in matrimony
were dependent upon their possession of the
right of suffrage In the deplorable fact that
none of the newspapers had come forth to the
defence of Mrs. Mcfarland you could see how
women are treated. In fact, he pronounced
our present system of marriage as nothing but
prostitution. Mrs. Norton backed up this free
love doctor, and commended that the question
of suffrage and the question of the divorce
laws were mother and child. This simply
means that the ultimatum of these woman
suffrage associations is free love and easy
divorces
This, then, as the upshot Of woman suf-
frage, is the entertainment to which the Ameri-
can people are invited-free love and free and
easy divorces-comprehendin the abolition
of the family, and the substitution of the
Fourierite phalanx or the juvenile asylum
for the children of the community. What
a horrible mess of darkness, diabolism
and chaos, to be sure In the face
of such impudent and startling revelations
from these free love men in petticoats and
these old women in breeches, and in view of
their atrocous designs upon society, McFar-
land will be apt to be considered the avenger
of an outraged community, rather than an
offender against it's laws. Indeed, with few
more of these outspoken free love women's
rights meetings on the Richardson assassina-
ton it will be impossible to obtain jury on
the case.