The experience of that week dispelled my Pauline prejudice. I needed no other warrant for the course the Misses Grimké were pursuing than the evidence they gave of their power to speak so as to instruct and deeply impress those who listened to them. I could not believe that God gave them such talents as they evinced to be buried in a napkin. I could not think they would be justified in withholding what was so obviously given them to say on the great iniquity of our country, because they were women. And ever since that day I have been steadfast in the opinion that the daughters of men ought to be just as thoroughly and highly educated as the sons, that their physical, mental, and moral powers should be as fully developed, and that they should be allowed and encouraged to engage in any employment, enter into any profession, for which they have properly qualified themselves, and that women ought to be paid the same compensation as men for services of any kind equally well performed. This radical opinion is spreading rapidly in this country and in England, and it will ultimately prevail, just as surely as that God is impartial and that “in Christ Jesus there is neither bond nor free, neither male nor female.” And yet it has been, and is, as strenuously opposed and as harshly denounced as was our demand of the immediate emancipation of the enslaved. Men and women, press and pulpit, statesmen and clergymen, legislative and ecclesiastical bodies have raised the cry of alarm, and pronounced the advocates of the equal rights of women dangerous persons, disorganizers, infidels. The first combined assault was made upon “The Rights of Women” by the Pastoral Association of Massachusetts in the fall of 1837 or the spring of 1838, in their spiritual bull against the antislavery labors of the Misses Grimké, which it utterly condemned as unchristian and demoralizing. This, of course, made it the duty, as it was pleasure, of the New England Abolitionists to stand by those excellent women, who had rendered such inestimable services to the cause of the enslaved, the down-trodden, the despised millions of our countrymen. Therefore, at the next New England Antislavery Convention, held in Boston, May, 1838, attended by delegates from eleven States, it was “_Voted_, That all persons present, or who may be present, at subsequent meetings, whether men or women, who agree with us in sentiment on the subject of slavery, be invited to become members and participate in the proceedings of the Convention.” This gave rise to a long and very animated discussion, but was passed by a very large majority. Immediately eight Orthodox clergymen requested to have their names erased from the roll of that Convention, and seven others, including some of our faithful fellow-laborers, presented a protest against the vote, which, by their request, was entered upon the records, and published with the doings of the Convention.