less ecstatic than the
enthusiasm of its present pioneers; for, in the interval, these
advanced women may have won for their withholding sisters the
entire list of male prerogatives. What adds to the force of the
present woman suffrage party is the dignity, intelligence and
purity of its participants. The venerable Lucretia Mott; the
honest, straightforward Susan B. Anthony; the cultivated Ellen
Clark Sargent (wife of the California senator); the beloved
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and indeed all the names attached to the
declaration command our respect. Whatever we may think of the
points of the declaration itself, with all our sincere admiration
of these gentlewomen, increased by the knowledge everywhere that
they are ardent republicans, we fear that their weakness, to
employ a paradox, consists in their strength, or, in other words,
that it is difficult to induce even the most benevolent and
sympathetic observer to believe that they are really as much
persecuted and oppressed as they claim to be. When the colored
man demanded his rights they were given to him because these
rights in republican constitutions were regarded as inherent, and
also because he had reciprocal duties to discharge, and heavy
burdens to carry, and when the Southern confederate demanded
restitution of his rights, he rested his claim upon the double
basis that he had earned forgiveness by his bravery, and that
political disfranchisement did not belong to a republican
example. Fortunately or unfortunately, it is very different with
the ladies; and so when they come forward insisting upon rights
heretofore accorded to men alone, they must encounter all the
differences created by the delicacy of their own sisters and the
reverence and love of the men, and the hard fact that these two
influences have made it heretofore impossible for women to
descend to the arena of politics. Having said this much, we
present a few of the cardinal points of the woman's declaration
of rights laid before the august memorial centennial celebration
last Tuesday, July 4, 1876.--[Philadelphia _Press_, July 15.

On July 19, the Citizens' Suffrage Association, of Philadelphia,
joined with the National Association in commemorating the first
woman's rights convention called by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth
Cady Stanton