of their fathers and their husbands, from whose tyranny, however revolting it may have been to humanity, there was no appeal. Their tears fell unheeded; the ears of their tyrants were deaf to their sighs and lamentations; their sufferings excited no sympathy in the bosom of the oppressor; and for their wrongs there was no remedy, no mitigation or redress! Such is the portrait of female subjugation, under the heathen system of antiquity. But the evil did not stop here; for where the person is enslaved, the mind becomes either morbid and melancholy, or corrupt and depraved: The moral sense is blunted or totally destroyed: And hence it is, that notwithstanding a few boasted names, like the Roman LUCRETIA and CORNELIA, a true portrait of Female Manners in ancient Greece and Rome, could not be drawn by any writer who regards the laws of delicacy and decorum, to say nothing of Christian purity and piety. In fact, as to Greece, we look in vain for an illustrious woman, though Gillies pretends to draw a favorable picture, after Homer, of the conjugal virtues of the women of that country, during a certain epoch in her history, when lacerated by the furies of civil discord; yet the strongest instance of female excellence, with which he presents us, carries with it its own refutation; and proves not only the degradation of the sex, but the vile and abominable superstition of the age. We should not indeed think of looking to HOMER for a portrait of female excellence, such as would suit the taste and the moral

sense of a modern Christian, or even those of a refined and honorable sceptic, of the present day.

Under the Mahometan system, women are nothing more than the mere passive instruments or objects of the brutal passions of their lords and masters, from the Grand Turk, down to the meanest of his Janissaries, or the most insignificant of his enslaved and degraded vassals. To be the slave of the Grand Tyrant of his country, is a condition too base to be borne with ease by any human being; but to be the slave of slaves, is still more humiliating and beyond endurance, especially to a virtuous and noble spirited woman.

But if such be, or has been, the wretched condition of women under those foreign auspices, what are we to think or feel, when we behold them, under the Braminical System, cast into the Ganges, in their infancy, as food for the monsters of the deep, and under the cruel pretext that they cannot be provided for in this life, on account of the overgrown population and consequent poverty of the country: And if saved from this cruel fate, we see them still doomed to be dragged alive to a horrible martyrdom on the funeral pile of their deceased husbands!—or voluntarily, through a gross superstition, yielding to the inhuman and barbarous rite!

Again, in the Savage State, as we are acquainted with it, where neither the Gods of Greece and Rome, nor the Arabian Impostor, nor the creed of the Grand Lama, or Braminical creed, bear sway, but where some dark and barbarous notions of the

"Great Spirit" prevail, they are still doomed to misery and degradation the most painful and humiliating. What a disgusting and shocking picture of female existence, is presented in the wife of an American Savage—(a Red Jacket, a Tecumseh, or a Black Hawk)—carrying her offspring on her back, and esteeming herself fortunate if that be her only burthen, through thorny paths, and over rugged precipices; or doomed to some other equally painful and laborious exertion, by the stern tyranny of her uncivilised, unchristianised, and consequently unfeeling husband.

It is, in short, only where the bright beams of the Sun of Righteousness irradiate the intellectual and moral world, that WOMAN enjoys the privileges to which she is justly and richly entitled, and becomes the equal and endeared friend and companion of MAN, instead of the slave of his power and his caprice, and the victim of his ill-humor and brutality: And yet, to the regret and astonishment of every rational being, every sound head and pure heart in the country, we have lately seen a WOMAN, so much the enemy of her sex, without being sensible of it, as to prostitute her fine talents, talents of the highest order indeed, in the unhallowed attempt to destroy our faith in the divinity and pre-eminent necessity and utility of the Christian Revelation! And alas! we have seen men-men of boasted superiority-following this accomplished, but deluded, female in her mad and mischievous career!

It was never my disposition to become an alarm-ˆ

ast without just cause. I have seen, however, more than one era in the history of my country, (during a long and somewhat eventful life,) when it became my duty, as well as that of others, to sound the alarm. I now see clearly another such crisis approaching, if it has not already arrived: But it is a crisis, in which the Rights of Women are liable, in a temporal sense, to be more seriously affected, more deeply endangered, than those of men, because whatever tends to destroy or impair the sacred obligations of Christianity and morality, which are inseparably connected, bears necessarily harder upon women than it does upon men. Men, to a certain extent, live apart from, and independent of each other. Each man has his own domicil, over which he exercises more or less control, agreeably. to the laws of his country, or the force of moral and religious restraint, where the law does not apply: Not so with women; for although the mild spirit of modern laws, influenced by, or growing out of, the milder spirit of Christianity, has greatly meliorated their condition; still they not only live. under the same roof with the men, but are, generally speaking, dependent upon them for support and protection: And this fact alone shows clearly, that the more powerful the influence of moral and religious feeling and principle in men, the more security is there for the temporal rights, welfare and happiness of women.

If these remarks be just, and certain I am that every rational mind will perceive that they are so,

can I offer a purer homage to the Female Sex, or better express the respect and veneration which ought ever to be cherished for them, than to dedicate this work To THE LADIES OF THE UNITED STATES; and especially to the virtuous matrons of my country, to whose fostering care we are to look for the Saints and Sages, who shall hereafter, under Divine Providence, wield her destinies, and perpetuate her freedom, her happiness, and her glory: I say Saints and Sages, because, if I do not live to see it; yet I hope and pray to God, that the day may not be far distant, when the name of Hero or Soldier will become obsolete: when the pure and holy faith of our Redeemer shall be practised as well as profess ed by all nations; when, in short, the beautiful and sublime vision or prophecy of Isaiah shall be fulfilled, and consequently the principle of war, the traffic in human blood and carnage, the offspring of the wiles of the Arch Apostate, operating on rude and barbarous times, shall be banished from the earth, and find no, refuge but in its native hell!

To you, my fair countrywomen, rely upon it, the Christian Religion is indeed the choicest, the best, the brightest gift of Heaven: And in proportion as it has showered down blessings upon your heads, in like proportion will curses be heaped upon them, should it be eclipsed, in our happy land, by the dark cloud of INFIDELITY, which has lately made its appearance in our political horison. If that black cloud, emerging from the vile regions of eternal darkness, shall spread over our hemisphere,