“We are here to-day,” the bright, clear ringing voice declares, “to open a building the magnitude of which cannot be measured by any other in the world. The Hall of Liberty stands here to day as a living witness to the desire of woman to be heard. It was six years ago that I first saw it in my dreams. It is reality now, and will endure through all time, as a memorial of the first great effort made by woman to shake off the chains of slavery, that ever since our knowledge of man began, have held her a prisoner in the gilded gaols of inactivity and helplessness. I stand here to-day prepared to deny that woman is the inferior of man, either in mental capacity or physical strength, provided always that she be given equal advantages with him. I go further still, and declare that in the former respect she is his superior. You deny it? Then give her the chance, and I have no fear but that she will prove that I have not lied. You have to-day seen passed in review 10,000 representatives of the 200,000 volunteers that in a little more than four years have been enrolled and drilled into the splendid efficiency witnessed on this memorable occasion. Will you pretend or seek to tell yourselves that in warfare they would be unavailing? I laugh such an idea to scorn. One of our most heart-stirring writers—I allude to Whyte-Melville—has left it declared in his writings, ‘that if a legion of Amazons could be rendered amenable to discipline they would conquer the world.’ He was right. The physical courage, of which men vaunt so much, is as nothing when compared with that greater and more magnificent virtue, ‘moral courage,’ which women have shown that they possess in so eminent a degree over men; and hence physical courage would come as an agreeable and welcome visitor where hitherto it has been forcibly denied admission. “Men and women who hear me to-day, I beseech you ponder the truth of what I have told you in your hearts. You boast of a civilisation unparalleled in the world’s history. Yet is it so? Side by side with wealth, appalling in its magnitude, stalks poverty, misery, and wrong, more appalling still. I aver that this poverty, misery, and wrong is, in a great measure, due to the false and unnatural position awarded to woman; nor will justice, reparation, and perfection be attained until she takes her place _in all things_ as the equal of man. “And now, my friends, I will detain you no longer. In this great Hall of Liberty woman will find much which has long been denied her. It is but a drop in the ocean of that which is her right, yet is it a noble beginning of that which must inevitably come. I declare this Hall of Liberty to be open.”