We have all preached emancipation by peaceful means; and now some are amazed that the attainment of _all_ right, in like manner, should have suggested itself to men’s minds! We have all denied that might makes right, and asserted the supremacy of moral power; and yet some are standing in terror-stricken astonishment that the “woman question” is stirred in every heart; and “other some” are persecuting and forsaking their brethren, because the examination and application of principles, though limited in the anti-slavery society by the terms of association, cannot be stayed in men’s minds or individual lives. The time has come for men to look their terrors for the future in the face. A little thought will show them thus much at least;--that it is no sin against an anti-slavery society, to apply, in another association, the peaceful principles by which it is proposed to abolish slavery, to the sins involved in existing governments or sacerdocies. If institutions, religious or political, are unable to stand the test of such an application, that, in the opinion of some, is the fault of the institutions. With this opinion, anti-slavery societies have no more to do than with the question sometimes started, of the duty of urging prayer upon the unconverted, whose prayers God pronounces an abomination. Discussion of collateral subjects is often salutary and necessary in our associations; but to a _decision_ upon them, by which new tests of membership are introduced, no anti-slavery society is competent. It ceases to be an anti-slavery society from the moment it assumes to decide upon opinions respecting governments or churches. No man is required, as an abolitionist, to endorse or oppose governments or church establishments. But every thoughtful and honest mind, whether its anchor have “entered into that which is within the veil” or not, feels called by its allegiance to freedom, instantly to resist any attempt to make one man accountable to another for the progress of his mind. This same allegiance to the foundation principle of inalienable _human_ rights, warns a man against laboring to prevent woman from standing upon it, if such should be her determination. She may, in his opinion, be sinning against propriety--sinning against Paul, by acting in anti-slavery societies: but he himself sins against freedom in striving for her exclusion; and any act against freedom, is treason to the slave. Men whose principles, thus imperfectly developed, are at war with each other, will, in all probability, become worse in their last state than in their first, especially if they are yielding not so much to their own convictions as to the pretexts in which a public _abstractly_ opposed to slavery, is fain to clothe its hatred to a _real_ opposition. If they are striving to pacify the foes of freedom by these outrages upon her principles and her advocates, their case is a desperate one, and affords but little probability of repentance.