are the victims in this land, as the women
of all lands are, to the tyrannical power and godless ambition of
man; and we must show who are responsible in this matter. We must
test everybody here. Every one of us must give an account of
himself to God. It is an individual testing of character. Mark
the man or the woman who derides this movement, who turns his or
her back upon it; who is disposed to let misrule keep on, and you
will find you have a sure indication of character. You will find
that such persons are destitute of principles; for if you can
convict a man of being wanting in principle anywhere, it will be
everywhere. He who loves the right for its own sake, loves the
right everywhere. He who is a man of principle, is a man of
principle always. Let me see the man who is willing to have any
one of God's rational creatures sacrificed to promote anything,
aside from the well-being of that creature himself, and I will
show you an unprincipled man.

It is so in this movement. Nobody argues against it, nobody
pretends to have an argument. Your platform is free everywhere,
wherever, these Conventions are held. Yet no man comes forward in
a decent, respectable manner, to show you that you are wrong in
the charges you bring against the law-makers of the land. There
is no argument against it. The thing is self-evident. I should
not know how to begin to frame an argument. That which is
self-evident is greater than argument, and beyond logic. It
testifies of itself. You and I, as human beings, claim to have
rights, but I never think of going into an argument with anybody,
to prove that I ought to have rights. I have the argument and
logic here, it is in my own breast and consciousness; and the
logic of the schools becomes contemptible beside these. The more
you try to argue, the worse you are off. It is not the place for
metaphysics, it is the place for affirmation. Woman is the
counterpart of man; she has the same divine image, having the
same natural and inalienable rights as man. To state the
proposition is enough; it contains the argument, and nobody can
gainsay it, in an honorable way.

I rose simply to say, that though I should deprecate making our
platform a theological arena, yet believing that men are guilty
of intentional wrong, i