he sent me, through a brother clergyman, an apology that
would have disarmed resentment, had I felt any, toward a man who,
having opposed me without discourtesy and retracted by a published
resolution, was yet not satisfied without tendering a private apology.

I had achieved a grateful success; license to "plead the cause of the
poor and needy," where, _how_ to do so, without offending old-time
ideas of woman's sphere, had seemed to the women under whose direction
I had taken the field, the real question at issue. In consideration of
existing prejudices, they had suggested the prudence of silence on the
subject of Woman's Rights. And here, on the very threshold of the
campaign, I had been compelled to vindicate my right to speak for
woman; as a woman, to speak for her from any stand-point of life to
which nature, custom, or law had assigned her. I had no choice, no
hope of success, but in presenting her case as it stood before God and
my own soul. To neither could I turn traitor, and do the work, or
satisfy the aspirations of a true and loving woman.

For more than a quarter of a century earnest men had spoken, and
failed to secure justice to the poor and needy, "appointed to
destruction" by the liquor traffic. They had failed because they had
denied woman's right to help them, and taken from her the means to
help herself. In speaking for woman, I must be heard from a domestic
level of legal pauperism disenchanted of all political prestige. In
appealing to the powers that be, I must appeal from sovereigns drunk
to sovereigns sober,--with eight chances in ten that the decision
would be controlled by sovereigns drunk.

To impress the paramount claim of women to a no-license law, without
laying bare the legal and political disabilities that make them "the
greatest sufferers," the helpless victims of the liquor traffic, was
impossible. It would have been stupidly unwise to withhold what with a
majority of voters is the weightier consideration, that in alienating
from women their earnings, governments impose upon community taxes for
the support of the paupered children of drunken fathers, whose mothers
would joyfully support and train them for usefulness; and who, as a
rule, have done so when by the death or divorce of the husband they
have regained the control of their earnings and the custody of their
children. Thus proving, that man, by his disabling laws, has made
woman helpless and dependent, and not God, who has end