How the clergy generally felt was shown in 1851, at Akron, in northern Ohio. There Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Universalist ministers appealed to the Bible in justification of the subjugation of women. There was no reply until they began to boast of the intellectual superiority of their own sex. Then an illiterate old woman who had been a slave arose and said: "What 's dat got to do with women's rights, or niggers' rights either? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, would n't ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?" The convention was with her; but the Bible argument was not to be disposed of easily. The general tone of both Testaments is in harmony with the familiar texts attributed to Paul and Peter. These latter passages were written, in all probability, when the position of women was changing for the better throughout the Roman Empire: and the original words, asserting the authority of husbands, are the same as are used in regard to the power of masters over slaves. Such language had all the more weight, because the ministers had been brought up as members of the ruling sex. They may have also been biassed by the fact that their profession depends, more than any other, for success upon the unpaid services in many ways of devoted women. Emancipation was by no means likely to promote work for the Church. There was an audience of two thousand at Syracuse, in 1852, when what was called the "Bloomer Convention," on account of the short dresses worn by some members, took up a resolution, declaring that the Bible recognises the rights of women. Mrs. Rose said that the reform had merits enough of its own, and needed no justification by any book. A letter was read from Mrs. Stanton, saying that "among the clergy we find our most violent enemies, those most opposed to any change in woman's position." The accuracy of this statement was readily admitted, after a reverend gentleman had denounced the infidelity of the movement, in a speech described as "indecent" and "coarsely offensive" in the New York Herald; and the resolution was lost.