Has he forgotten Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, who declared that her children were her jewels? And why? Because they were the champions of freedom. Does he not remember Portia, the wife of Brutus and daughter of Cato, and in what terms she is represented in the history of Rome? Has he not read of Arria, who, under imperial despotism, when her husband was condemned to die by a tyrant, plunged the sword into her own bosom, and, handing it to her husband, said, 'Take it, Paetus, it does not hurt,' and expired? "To come to a later period,--what says the history of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors? To say nothing of Boadicea, the British heroine in the time of the Caesars, what name is more illustrious than that of Elizabeth? Or, if he will go to the Continent, will he not find the names of Maria Theresa of Hungary, the two Catharines of Russia, and of Isabella of Castile, the patroness of Columbus, the discoverer in substance of this hemisphere, for without her that discovery would not have been made? Did she bring 'discredit' on her sex by mingling in politics? To come nearer home,--what were the women of the United States in the struggle of the Revolution? Or what would the men have been but for the influence of the women of that day? Were they devoted _exclusively_ to the duties and enjoyments of the fireside? Take, for example, the ladies of Philadelphia." Mr. Adams here read a long extract from Judge Johnson's life of General Greene, relating that during the Revolutionary War a call came from General Washington stating that the troops were destitute of shirts, and of many indispensable articles of clothing. "And from whence," writes Judge Johnson, "did relief arrive, at last? From the heart where patriotism erects her favorite shrine, and from the hand which is seldom withdrawn when the soldier solicits. The ladies of Philadelphia immortalized themselves by commencing the generous work, and it was a work too grateful to the American fair not to be followed up with zeal and alacrity."