for the welfare and redemption of the world.  Why, then, let me ask, is it necessary for you to enter the lists as controversial writers on this question?  Does it not look, dear sisters, like abandoning in some degree the cause of the poor and miserable slave, sighing from the cotton plantations of the Mississippi, and whose cries and groans are forever sounding in our ears, for the purpose of arguing and disputing about some trifling oppression, political or social, which we may ourselves suffer?  Is it not forgetting the great and dreadful wrongs of the slave in a selfish crusade against some paltry grievance of our own?  Forgive me if I have stated the case too strongly.  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:—­