Of the two chief pretences for such an organization--the first, that the subject of women’s rights to sustain civil and ecclesiastical offices &c. had been “_dragged in_,” and “_hitched on_,” (as the phrases were,) was an entirely _false_ pretence, that subject never having been introduced in the Massachusetts Society. Women had, indeed, persisted in exercising the rights and duties of members, which they could not be prevented from doing without a violation of the letter and spirit of the Society’s constitution, and if the necessity of a new organization was grounded on this circumstance, its contrivers were plainly hypocritical in striving to make it auxiliary to the National Society, which also admitted women. They intimated, that they hoped to be able to make that Society recede from its ground _next year_;--but _honestly_ bigoted minds, _conscientiously_ opposed to women’s acting in the anti-slavery cause on their own responsibility, would surely never begin their course of opposition by the sin of co-operation for a _year_. The second pretence, that the old Society had become a no-government society, was without a shadow of foundation. The strongest political resolution it had ever adopted, to which Mr. Stanton’s resolution in 1837 was feeble, had been passed this year. But, then it had refused to cast out Mr. Garrison: “ay! _there’s_ the rub!” This exclamation of the Prince of Denmark, when _his_ mind was occupied with the question, “to be or not to be,” conveys, in this connection, a summary of the reasons which decided the new organization “to be.” The New England convention decided that such an association, so gathered, so founded and so organized, _could not give aid_ to any organization upon the old basis, which it had _deserted_ and _condemned_; and they notified the Executive Committee at New York of the same. The hostility of its founders to the Massachusetts Society--the difference it had made as to the fundamental principles, the exclusiveness of its foundation--its mathematical position, working the same derangement in the anti-slavery system as a new planet in the orbit of the earth might do in the solar system,--all forbade it fraternal greeting or long life. The course the New York Committee should take in action, would be the measure of their own worth to the cause. So opposite were these two Societies, that one or the other must needs be unworthy of the affiliation. If the New York Committee should, after their well-remembered wont, think neutrality possible, still to be neutral would be to spare the criminal; and “_Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur_.”