I hope before even this motion is put, gentlemen will be allowed to reflect upon the important question whether these individuals deserve any consideration at the hands of the Legislature.  Whatever may be their pretensions or their sincerity, they do not appear satisfied with having unsexed themselves, but they desire to unsex every female in the land and to set the whole community ablaze with unhallowed fire.  I trust, sir, the House may deliberate before we suffer them to cast their firebrand into our midst.  True, as yet, there is nothing officially before us, but it is well known that the object of these unsexed women is to overthrow the most sacred of our institutions, to set at defiance the divine law which declares man and wife to be one, and establish on its ruins what will be in fact and in principle but a species of legalized adultery.

It is, therefore, a matter of duty, a duty to ourselves, to our consciences, to our constituents and to God, who is the source of all law and of all obligations, to reflect long and deliberately before we shall even seem to countenance a movement so unholy as this.  Are we, sir, to give the least countenance to claims so preposterous, disgraceful and criminal as are embodied in this address?  Are we to put the stamp of truth upon the libel here set forth, that men and women in the matrimonial relation are to be equal?  We know that God created man as the representative of the race; that after his creation, his Creator took from his side the material for woman’s creation; and that, by the institution of matrimony, woman was restored to the side of man, and they became one flesh and one being, he the head....

But we are now asked to have the ordinance of matrimony based on jealousy and distrust; and, as in Italy, so in this country, should this mischievous scheme be carried out to its legitimate results, we, instead of reposing safe confidence against assaults upon our honor in the love and affection of our wives, shall find ourselves obliged to close the approaches to those assaults by the padlock.

The petitions were referred to a select committee of the Senate and the Assembly, which Miss Anthony addressed.  The Albany Argus reported her speech as follows: 

Miss Anthony said that she appeared on behalf of the signers of the petitions and tendered to the Legislature thanks for the courteous manner in which they had been received.  They asked that husband and wife should be tenants in common of property, but with a partition upon the death of one; that a wife should be competent to discharge trusts and powers, the same as a single woman; that the statute in respect to married women’s property should be made effectual, and the wife’s property descend as though she had been unmarried; that married women should be entitled to execute letters testamentary and of administration; that they should have power to make