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and society are not by any means exclusively man's fault, -rests upon no serious or earnest difference of opinion, but upon shades of fashion, delicacy of taste, fastidious sensibility, and other absurdities, and to that we offer up, day by day, the virtue of society.
Lucretia Mott, at the very first Woman's Rights Convention assembled in this country some eighteen years ago, bade us remember that it would not be men that would be our greatest obstacles; that it would not be the law-book; but that we were launching a cause which would find in the besotted opposition of its own victims its deadliest foe. [Applause.] That has not ceased to be true to-day.
Remember also that the moment you issue your command every medical college will be open.
The moment you take off your ban every avenue of trade will be trodden by women.
The moment you make known your purpose the statute-book will record your verdict.
Wives and daughters, you are able in these matters to dictate the policy of your fathers and husbands.
In Massachusetts, we owe one of the first steps toward the recognition of woman's right to property to the selfishness of fathers, about to leave their daughters dowered with large wealth, and unwilling to trust it to the chances of their husbands' character.
They were always anxious to put it into the hands of trustees, and they found that men were very much averse, even when bidden by the strongest friendship, to undertake a long trust on account of its dangers and responsibility.
The fathers themselves selected the most conservative lawyer at the Suffolk bar to draw the statute, than which we could not have imagined a better, which secured to wealthy women the control of their inherited property, even if they were married.
Again, it was the bank interest of the savings-bank
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