e torn joint from joint by the ferocious beasts of the
Amphitheatre, and tossed by the wild bull in his fury, for the diversion
of that idolatrous, warlike, and slaveholding people. Yes, _women_
suffered under the ten persecutions of heathen Rome, with the most
unshrinking constancy and fortitude; not all the entreaties of friends,
nor the claims of new born infancy, nor the cruel threats of enemies
could make _them_ sprinkle one grain of incense upon the altars of Roman
idols. Come now with me to the beautiful valleys of Piedmont. Whose
blood stains the green sward, and decks the wild flowers with colors not
their own, and smokes on the sword of persecuting France? It is
_woman's_, as well as man's? Yes, _women_ were accounted as sheep for
the slaughter, and were cut down as the tender saplings of the wood.

But time would fail me, to tell of all those hundreds and thousands of
_women_, who perished in the Low countries of Holland, when Alva's sword
of vengeance was unsheathed against the Protestants, when the Catholic
Inquisitions of Europe became the merciless executioners of vindictive
wrath, upon those who dared to worship God, instead of bowing down in
unholy adoration before "my Lord God the _Pope_," and when England, too,
burnt her Ann Ascoes at the stake of martyrdom. Suffice it to say, that
the Church, after having been driven from Judea to Rome, and from Rome
to Piedmont, and from Piedmont to England, and from England to Holland,
at last stretched her fainting wings over the dark bosom of the
Atlantic, and found on the shores of a great wilderness, a refuge from
tyranny and oppression--as she thought, but _even here_, (the warm blush
of shame mantles my cheek as I write it,) _even here, woman_ was beaten
and banished, imprisoned, and hung upon the gallows, a trophy to the
Cross.

And what, I would ask in conclusion, have _women_ done for the great and
glorious cause of Emancipation? Who wrote that pamphlet which moved the
heart of Wilberforce to pray over the wrongs, and his tongue to plead
the cause of the oppressed African? It was a _woman_, Elizabeth Heyrick.
Who labored assiduously to keep the sufferings of the slave continually
before the British public? They were _women_. And how did they do it? By
their needles, paint brushes and pens, by speaking the truth, and
petitioning Parliament for the abolition of slavery. And what was the
effect of their labors? Read it in the Emancipation bill of Great
Brita