gravated cases among leading families, both in this country and
England. The very liberal bill pending in the Legislature had drawn
special attention to it in the Empire State, which not only made the
whole question of marriage and divorce a topic of conversation at
every fireside, but of many editorial debates in our leading journals.
Among others, Horace Greeley, in _The New York Tribune_, had a
prolonged discussion with the Hon. Robert Dale Owen,[174] in which it
was generally thought that the weight of argument rested with Mr.
Owen; but it was evident that Mr. Greeley did not think so, as he
afterward republished the whole controversy at his own expense. _The
Albany Evening Journal_ also took strong grounds against the bill. But
the opponents invariably discussed the question on the basis that
marriage was an _equal_ relation, in which man suffered as much as
woman, ignoring the fact that _man_ had made the laws governing it,
and all to his own advantage.

From the following letter of Lucretia Mott, we see how clear she was
as to the merits of the position we had taken in the discussion of
this vital question:

ROADSIDE, near Philadelphia, 4th Mo., 30th, '61.

MY DEAR LYDIA MOTT:--I have wished ever since parting with thee
and our other dear friends in Albany to send thee a line, and
have only waited in the hope of contributing a little
"substantial aid" toward your neat and valuable "depository." The
twenty dollars enclosed is from our Female Anti-Slavery Society.

I see the annual meeting in New York is not to be held this
spring. Sister Martha is here, and was expecting to attend both
anniversaries. But we now think the Woman's Rights meeting had
better not be attempted, and she has written Elizabeth C. Stanton
to this effect.

I was well satisfied with being at the Albany meeting. I have
since met with the following from a speech of Lord Brougham's,
which pleased me, as being as radical as mine in your stately
Hall of Representatives:

"Before woman can have any justice by the laws of England, there
must be a total reconstruction of the whole system; for any
attempt to amend it would prove useless. The great charter, in
establishing the supremacy of law over prerogative, provides only
for justice between man and man; for woman nothing is left but
common-law, accumulations and modificat