nto 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 the world's prejudices to place
woman in her first rank; to recognize and maintain her moral and
intellectual equality. It was this Society which thus gave to
woman her inalienable rights, her true liberty; which restored to
her the exercise of mind, and the capacity to exhibit before her
assumed ancient lord and master, the highest qualities of the
human heart and understanding; discretion, sound counsel, sure
sagacity, mingled with feminine delicacy, and that beautiful
innate modesty which avails more to restrain its possessor within
the bounds of prudence and usefulness than all the laws of
corrupt society. It was this Society which, at once fearless in
its confidence in woman's goodness and sense of propriety, gave
its female portion its own meetings of discipline, meetings of
civil discussion and transaction of actual and various business.
It was this Society which did more; which permitted its women in
the face of a great apostolic injunction to stand forth in its
churches and preach the Gospel. It has, in fact, sent them out
armed with the authority of its certificates to the very ends of
the earth to preach in public; to visit and persuade in private.

And what has been the consequence? Have the women put their faith
And philosophy to shame? Have they disgraced themselves or the
Society which has confided in them? Have they proved by their
follies, their extravagances, their unwomanly boldness and want
of a just sense of decorum that these great men were wrong? On
the contrary, I will venture to