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Yes, for one, I rejoice that man is the law maker of this Republic, fully satisfied as I am that woman's cause could not be in better or safer hands, were she allowed to be her own protector. Nature and the Bible, both harmonize with this most manly feature of Connecticut's espousal of woman's cause, and thus being in the track of Nature, we are sanguine of ultimate success.

Yes, sanguine, that Connecticut is to secure to herself Use high honor of being the van of this great American Republic, by being the pioneer State in woman's Emancipation.

"Woman's Emancipation! What! Is woman a slave in Connecticut? Have we not emancipated all our slaves long ago?

Yes, thank heaven! Connecticut was one of the pioneer states in negro emancipation, and she now intends to secure to herself the highest kind of honor, as a State, in being the honored pioneer in emancipating woman from the chains of married servitude!

"Chains of married servitude! Are our women, in Connecticut, in chains?

"Away with such an idea! Our wives are our companions, our partners, the best part of ourselves, how then is it, Mrs. Packard, that you can call them our slaves?"

Bear with me, my gallant brothers, and I will tell you, for your ignorance is a sure passport to your gallantry, in that you have never used your power, as a master, over your slave. "They are, socially, as you say, your companions, your partners, your better halves; but legally, they are your slaves, and it is to break their fetters, to legally emancipate woman, that your petitioners have sent up this petition.

Let us test this question. What is a slave?

A slave is a dependent, one mancipated to a master, one in the power of another, one who has lost the power of resistance; and married woman, being legally a "nonentity," on the principle of "common law," throughout the United States, is therefore an American slave, while she is a married woman, in that she loses all power of resistance when she becomes, legally, a wife; for henceforth, she is wholly at the mercy and will of one man, with no sort of legal power to resist this will, than the slave has to resist the will of his master. He has the same legal power to subject his wife, that the master has to subject his slave.

And now, since America has emancipated the negro slave from bondage to a one man power, we married slaves fondly hope that our emancipation draws near -- yea, may quickly follow in the wake of negro emancipation!

But, gentlemen, in securing our emancipation you will have to encounter the same pro-slavery arguments and spirit, as their emancipators did, viz.:

"That the slaves are better off as they now are -- that they are taken better care of by their masters than they could take of themselves -- that the interest of the master demands the good treatment of his slave -- that public sentiment is a sufficient law of protection to the slave's interest -- that the subjection of the wife is the Bible law of marriage -- and besides, there is not one married woman in a thousand who even knows that she is a slave.

Blissful ignorance! Would that there were no exceptions! But alas! the exceptions are fast becoming the rule, looking from the stand-point of applications for a divorce.

Indeed, gentlemen, there is a cause for this terrible upheaving of the social element. Our divorce laws are destroying the very structures of civilized society. Yes, the monogamic principle of Christianity and civilization is being rapidly supplanted by the polygamic principles of barbarism.

And you know, gentlemen, that it is an infallible principle of ethics, that all effects have a cause, somewhere. And now I wish to present this one great question to you -- the lawmakers of this Republic -- for your candid, calm consideration, viz.:

Does not the radical cause for these divorces lie in the nonentity principle of the wife? that is -- in your holding her legally, as a slave, with no power of resistance to this "one man power," and no protection, from its abuse, except the law of divorce? And, besides, since the principle of slavery is wrong, and the principle of freedom is right, is it not right in itself, that woman should be legally emancipated?

The only right I came here to claim for woman is her right to be protected by our man government. Not protected as a slave, wholly dependent upon the will of one man: but protected as a woman, as a companion of her husband, as one who has rights, as a woman equally dear and sacred to her, as man has rights, as a man equally dear and sacred to himself. Our rights are not man's rights, neither are man's rights woman's rights. Both are different, yet both are inalienable, and both equally sacred.

Man has rights as the head of the family which the wife has not. Even nature and the Bible both teach, that man is the head of the marriage firm.

As I view the subject, the different spheres of man and woman are definitely defined in the Bible. It seems to me to be the appointment of God, that man should bear the toil, and woman bear the children.