What he calls a "woman's security" is proved to be no security, even in the small matter of money; for men are constantly imposing taxes, the burden of which _they_ are never to bear. As I have shown, in treating of labor, what position women hold toward the State in the matter of employment, I will not repeat the statement here. Let these pages bear no other burden than that of woman's civil rights,--"woman's rights,"--a phrase which we _all_ hate; which soils the lips that use it; which women speak with such unction as a slave might clank his chains! Soil the lips? Not because it is a phrase which stirs the ridicule and the contempt of the weak-minded; not because _you_ consider it only the second term of the Bloomer equation: but because the necessity to use it shows how little has yet been done; shows that men still dwell on distinctions of sex, in preference to identities of duty; that women are play-things still in the popular estimate,--creatures of the nursery and the drawing-room, but not angels of God, joint-heirs of immortality. We have not laid a secure foundation for any statement on this subject, unless we have made it clear that "woman's rights" are identical with "human rights;" that what men do for women, they do in far _wider_ measure for themselves; that no father, brother, or husband can have all the privileges ordained for him of God, till mother and sister and wife are set free to secure them according to instinctive individual bias. The subject would have no interest for me, if it were but a selfish clamor of one class for advantages over another; but it does interest me,--interest beyond all earthly debate,--because, in its evolution, there unfolds also the highest interest of our common humanity. That public opinion has been somewhat conquered, the reception given to women in the lyceum is alone sufficient to show. When a woman of good social standing struggles with convention on the one hand, and womanly affection on the other, she still stands _on the platform_ somewhat as she _did at the stake_; but, on the other hand, the awakening public interest has nurtured a class of women who owe all that they have and are to the platform itself. With no oppressive restrictions in their circumstances,--endowed with strong good sense and a vigorous talent,--they have won their way to the public esteem; and are stronger and healthier than most women, only because they have had an object for life and thought to grasp. What will most help women in the matter of labor, and, through labor, to their "civil rights," is a new conception of the dignity of labor on the part of the educated classes, men as well as women.