This rapid survey suggests, it seems to me, that, instead of being "a legitimate outgrowth of the fundamental principles of our government," woman suffrage is really incompatible with true republican forms. Pre- civilized conditions, aristocratic tendencies, the forces that would destroy government--these appear to be its natural allies. We must study more closely its connection with representative government the better to comprehend this portentous truth. CHAPTER III. WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. The writers of the "History of Woman Suffrage" give the following account of the founding of their Association. In July, 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Martha O. Wright, and Ann McClintock issued an unsigned call for a convention, which was asked to consider the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman; and in preparation for the meeting, they wrote a "Declaration of Sentiments," which was adopted by the assembly. They say, in describing the writing of this declaration:-- "The reports of Peace, Temperance, and Anti-Slavery conventions were examined, but all alike seemed too tame and pacific for the inauguration of a rebellion such as the world had never before seen. We knew women had wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty, and this was increased from the fact that we ourselves were fortunately organized and conditioned.... After much delay, one of the circle took up the Declaration of 1776, and read it aloud with spirit and emphasis, and it was at once decided to adopt the historic document, with some slight changes. Knowing that women must have more to complain of than men under any circumstances possibly could, and seeing the Fathers had eighteen grievances, a protracted search was made through statute books, church usages, and the customs of society to find that exact number." In such solemnly puerile fashion did they work out a travesty on one of the most august utterances ever penned. A young man who was present remarked: "Tour grievances must be grievous indeed when you are obliged to go to books in order to find them out." He might have added, "And they must be false indeed when you have to found most of your charges on dead- letter statutes and outgrown usages and customs." The Preamble of their Declaration reads: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course."