in a petition to
Parliament. It is well known that people by nature are opposed to new
things; before education people are anti-suffragists. If a petition
opposed to woman suffrage should be presented to the Hottentots, the
Afghanistans, the tribes of Thibet or to the interior of Turkey, every
individual would sign it and the longest petition 'opposed to the
further extension of rights to women' yet known could be secured
there. A petition for suffrage, however, carries a very different
meaning; every name represents a convert, a victory, an education of
the understanding, an answer to an appeal for justice. A woman
suffrage petition is a gain; an anti-suffrage petition merely shows
how much more must be gained. One is positive, the other negative.
Wait a little and you will find that England, and other countries as
well, will perceive the real truth, that the anti-suffrage women are
the most inconsistent products of all the ages."

The flaying did not stop here but Mrs. Catt called attention to the
fact that this convention celebrated the birthday of Mary
Wollstonecraft, referred to the position of women in her time and
said:

There have been women who have crucified their very souls and the
lineal ancestors of the present-day "antis" with withering scorn
and criticism opposed every step. Yet some of those modern
anti-suffragists possess a college degree, an opportunity which
other women won for them in the face of universal ridicule; they
own property which is theirs today as the effect of laws which
other women labored for a quarter of a century to secure; they
stand upon public platforms where free speech for women was won
for them by other women amid the jeers of howling mobs; they use
the right of organization which was established as the result of
many a heartache and many a brave endeavor when the world
condemned it as a threat against all moral order. They accept
with satisfaction every political right which has been accorded
by their Government; they even accept public office. They take
all as their birthright; and yet, endowed with this power of
education, of property, of organization, of free speech, of
partial political rights, they turn upon the last logical effort
in the movement which has given them so much and with supreme
self-satisfaction say: "Thus far shalt thou come and no farther."
It takes no lo