To this end Mrs. Willard prepared an address to the public, which in 1819, when she resided in New York, she presented to the New York Legislature. As the views set forth mark a distinct departure in educational demands for women, however familiar or antiquated they may now seem, they are quoted and summarized here. She published them only after long and thoughtful deliberation, and said, “I knew that I should be regarded as visionary, almost to insanity, should I utter the expectations that I secretly entertain.” She asks that as the State has endowed institutions for its sons it shall do the same for its daughters, and “no longer leave them to become the prey of private adventurers, the result of which has been to make the daughters of the rich frivolous and those of the poor drudges.” She laments that “the end of education of one sex has been to please the other ... until we have come to be considered the pampered and wayward babies of society, who must have some rattle put into our hands to keep us from doing mischief to ourselves or to others. But reason and religion teach that we, too, are primary existences; that it is for us to move in the orbit of our duty around the Holy Center of Perfection, the companions, not the satellites of men.” Mrs. Willard fears that “should the conclusion be almost admitted that our sex, too, are the legitimate children of the Legislature, and that it is their duty to afford us a share of their paternal bounty, the phantom of a college-learned lady would be ready to rise up and destroy every good resolution in our favor.” To show that it is not a masculine education that is here recommended, Mrs. Willard sketches her ideal of a female seminary. She desires it “to be adapted to the female character and duties, and her first plea is that to which the softer sex should be formed.” “To raise the female character will be to raise that of men.... It would be desirable that the young ladies should spend part of their Sabbaths in hearing discussions relative to the peculiar duties of their sex. The difficulty is not that we are at a loss what sciences we ought to learn, but that we have not proper advantages for learning any.... Many writers have given us excellent advice in regard to what we should be taught, but no Legislature has provided us the means of instruction.... In some of the sciences proper to our sex the books written for the other would need alteration, because in some they presuppose more knowledge than female pupils would possess, in others they have parts not particularly interesting to our sex, and omit subjects immediately relating to their pursuits. Domestic instructions should be considered important. Why may not housewifery be reduced to a system as well as other arts?