ngly. I would not
for the world interfere with you in matters of conscientious duty, but
I wish you would weigh candidly the whole subject, and see if it does
not _seem_ an abandonment of your first love. Oh, let us try to forget
everything but our duty to God and our fellow beings; to dethrone the
selfish principle, and to strive to win over the hard heart of the
oppressor by truth kindly spoken. The Massachusetts Congregational
Association can do you no harm if you do not allow its splenetic and
idle manifesto to divert your attention from the great and holy
purpose of your souls.

"Finally, dear sisters, rest assured that you have my deepest and
warmest sympathy; that my heart rejoices to know that you are mighty
instruments in the hands of Him who hath come down to deliver. May the
canopy of His love be over you, and His peace be with you!

"Your friend and brother,

"JNO. G. WHITTIER."

Weld's first letter, written the day after Whittier's, begins by
defining his own position on the disturbing question. He says: "As to
the rights and wrongs of woman, it is an old theme with me. It was the
first subject I ever discussed. In a little debating society, when a
boy, I took the ground that sex neither qualified nor disqualified for
the discharge of any functions, mental, moral, or spiritual: that
there is no reason why woman should not make laws, administer justice,
sit in the chair of State, plead at the Bar, or in the pulpit, if she
has the qualifications, just as much as man. What I advocated in
boyhood, I advocate now--that woman, in every particular, shares,
equally with man, rights and responsibilities. Now that I have made
this statement of my creed on this point, to show you that we fully
agree, except that I probably go much further than you do, I must say
I do most deeply regret that you have begun a series of articles in
the papers on the rights of woman. Why, my dear sisters, the best
possible advocacy which you can make is just what you are making day
by day. Thousands hear you every week who have all their lives held
that women must not speak in public. Such a practical refutation of
the dogma which your speaking furnishes has already converted
multitudes."

He then goes on to urge two strong points:--

1st. That as Southerners, and having been brought up among
slaveholders, they could do more to convince the North than twenty
Northern women, though they could speak as well, and that they would
los