Volume I Part 52 (1/2)
The following earnest and friendly letter from William Howitt, was highly prized by Mrs. Mott:
LONDON, _June 27, 1840_.
DEAR FRIEND:--....I regret that I was prevented from making a part of the Convention, as nothing should have hindered me from stating there in the plainest terms my opinion of the _real grounds_ on which you were rejected. It is a pity that you were excluded on the plea of being women; but it is disgusting that under that plea you were actually excluded as heretics. That is the real ground, and it ought to have been at once proclaimed and exposed by the liberal members of the Convention; but I believe they were not aware of the fact. I heard of the circ.u.mstance of your exclusion at a distance, and immediately said: ”Excluded on the ground that they are women?” No, that is not the real cause; there is something behind. And what are these female delegates?
Are they orthodox in religion? The answer was ”No, they are considered to be of the Hicksite party of Friends.” My reply was, ”That is enough; _there_ lies the real cause, and there needs no other. The influential Friends in the Convention would never for a moment tolerate their presence there if they could prevent it.
They hate them because they have dared to call in question their sectarian dogmas and a.s.sumed authority; and they have taken care to brand them in the eyes of the Calvinistic Dissenters, who form another large and influential portion of the Convention, as Unitarians; in their eyes the most odious of heretics.”
But what a miserable spectacle is this! The ”World's Convention”
converting itself into the f.a.g-end of the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends! That Convention met from various countries and climates to consider how it shall best advance the sacred cause of humanity; of the freedom of the race, independent of caste or color, immediately falls the victim of bigotry; and one of its first acts is to establish a caste of sectarian opinion, and to introduce color into the very soul! Had I not seen of late years a good deal of the spirit which now rules the Society of Friends, my surprise would have been unbounded at seeing _them_ argue for the exclusion of women from a public a.s.sembly, _as women_. But nothing which they do now surprises me. They have in this case to gratify their wretched spirit of intolerance, at once abandoned one of the most n.o.ble and most philosophical of the established principles of their own Society.
That Society claims, and claims justly, to be the first Christian party which has recognized the great Christian doctrine that THERE IS NO s.e.x IN SOULS; that male and female are one in Christ Jesus. There were Fox and Penn and the first giants of the Society who dared in the face of the world's prejudices to place woman in her first rank; to recognize and maintain her moral and intellectual equality. It was this Society which thus gave to woman her inalienable rights, her true liberty; which restored to her the exercise of mind, and the capacity to exhibit before her a.s.sumed ancient lord and master, the highest qualities of the human heart and understanding; discretion, sound counsel, sure sagacity, mingled with feminine delicacy, and that beautiful innate modesty which avails more to restrain its possessor within the bounds of prudence and usefulness than all the laws of corrupt society. It was this Society which, at once fearless in its confidence in woman's goodness and sense of propriety, gave its female portion its own meetings of discipline, meetings of civil discussion and transaction of actual and various business.
It was this Society which did more; which permitted its women in the face of a great apostolic injunction to stand forth in its churches and preach the Gospel. It has, in fact, sent them out armed with the authority of its certificates to the very ends of the earth to preach in public; to visit and persuade in private.
And what has been the consequence? Have the women put their faith And philosophy to shame? Have they disgraced themselves or the Society which has confided in them? Have they proved by their follies, their extravagances, their unwomanly boldness and want of a just sense of decorum that these great men were wrong? On the contrary, I will venture to say, and I have seen something of all cla.s.ses, that there is not in the whole civilized world a body of women to be found of the same numbers, who exhibit more modesty of manner and delicacy of mind than the ladies of the Society of Friends; and few who equal them in sound sense and dignity of character. There can be no question that the recognition of the moral and intellectual equality of the most lovely and interesting portion of our Society has tended, and that very materially, to raise them greatly in value as wives, as bosom friends and domestic counselors, whose inestimable worth is only discovered in times of trial and perplexity.
And here have gone the little men of the present day, and have knocked down in the face of the world all that their ancestors, in this respect, had built up! If they are at all consistent they must carry out their new principle and sweep it through the ancient const.i.tution of their own Society. They must at once put down meetings of discipline among their women; they must call home such as are in distant countries, or are traversing this, preaching and visiting families. There must be no appointments of women to meet committees of men to deliberate on matters of great importance to the Society. But the fact is, my dear friend, that bigotry is never consistent except that is always narrow, always ungracious, and always under plea of uniting G.o.d's people, scattering them one from another, and rendering them weak as water.
I want to know what religious opinions have to do with a ”World's Convention.” Did you meet to settle doctrines, or to conspire against slavery? Many an august council has attempted to settle doctrines, and in vain; and you had before you a subject so vast, so pressing, so momentous, that in presence of its sublimity, any petty jealousy and fancied idea of superiority ought to have fallen as dust from the boughs of a cedar. You as delegates, had to meet this awful fact in the face, and to consider how it should be grappled with; how the united power of civilized nations should be brought to bear upon it! The fact that after nearly a century of gradually growing and acc.u.mulating efforts to put down slavery and the slave trade, little has been done; that there are now more slaves in the world than ever, and that the slave trade is far more extensive and monstrous than it was when Clarkson raised his voice against its extinction; that is a fact which, if the men who now take the lead in warring on the evil were truly great men, it would silence in them every other feeling than that of its enormity, and the G.o.dlike resolve that all hands and all hearts should be raised before Heaven and united in its spirit to chase this spreading villainy from the earth speedily and forever. But men, however benevolent, can not be great men if they are bigots. Bigots are like the peasants who build their cabins in the mighty palaces of the ancient Caesars.
The Caesars who raised the past fabrics are gone, and the power in which they raised them is gone with them. Poor and little men raise their huts within those august palace walls, and fancy themselves the inhabitants of the palaces themselves. So in the mighty fane of Christianity, bigots and sectarians are continually rearing their little cabins of sects and parties, and would fain persuade us, while they fill their own narrow tenements, that they fill the glorious greatness of Christianity itself!
It is surely high time that after eighteen hundred years of Christ's reign we should be prepared to allow each other to hold an opinion on the most important of all subjects to ourselves! It is surely time that we opened our eyes sufficiently to see what is so plain in the Gospel: the sublime difference between the Spirit of Christ and the spirit of His disciples when they fain would have made a bigot of Him. ”We saw men doing miracles in thy name; and we forbade them.” ”Forbid them not, for they who are not against us are for us.” It is not by _doctrines_ that Christ said His disciples should be known, but by their fruits; and by the greatest of all fruits--love.
You, dear friend, and those n.o.ble women to whom I address myself when addressing you, have shown in your own country the grand Christian testimonial of love to mankind in the highest degree.
You have put your lives in your hands for the sake of man's freedom from caste, color, and mammon; and the greatest disgrace that has of late years befallen this country is, that you have been refused admittance as delegates to the Convention met ostensibly to work that very work for which you have so generously labored and freely suffered. The Convention has not merely insulted you, but those who sent you. It has testified that the men of America are at least far ahead of us in their opinion of the discretion and usefulness of women. But above all, this act of exclusion has shown how far the Society of Friends is fallen from its ancient state of greatness and catholic n.o.bleness of spirit.
But my time is gone. I have not said one-half, one-tenth, one-hundredth part of what I could say to you and to your companions on this subject; but of this be a.s.sured, time and your own delegators will do you justice. The true Christians in all ages were the heretics of the time; and this I say not because I believe exactly as you do, for in truth I neither know nor desire to know exactly how far we think alike. All that I know or want to know is, that you have shown the grand mark of Christian truth--love to mankind.
I have heard the n.o.ble Garrison blamed that he had not taken his place in the Convention because you and your fellow-delegates were excluded. I, on the contrary, honor him for his conduct. In mere worldly wisdom he might have entered the Convention and there made his protest against the decision; but in at once refusing to enter where you, his fellow-delegates, were shut out, he has made a far n.o.bler protest; not in the mere Convention, but in the world at large. I honor the lofty principle of that true champion of humanity, and shall always recollect with delight, the day Mary and I spent with you and him.
I must apologize for this most hasty and I fear illegible scrawl, and with our kind regards and best wishes for your safe return to your native country, and for many years of honorable labor there for the truth and freedom, I beg to subscribe myself,
Most sincerely your friend, WILLIAM HOWITT.
Harriet Martineau, who had visited Mrs. Mott when in America, and was prevented from attending the Convention by illness, wrote as follows:
I can not be satisfied without sending you a line of love and sympathy. I think much of you amidst your present trials, and much indeed have I thought of you and your cause since we parted.
May G.o.d strengthen you. It is a comfort to me that two of my best friends, Mrs. Reid and Julia Smith, are there to look upon you with eyes of love. I hear of you from them, for busy as they are, they remember me from day to day, and make me a partaker of your proceedings.... I can not but grieve for you in the heart-sickness which you have experienced this last week. We must trust that the spirit of Christ will in time enlarge the hearts of those who claim his name, that the whites as well as the blacks will in time be free.
After the Convention, Mrs. Mott visited Miss Martineau, who was an invalid, staying at Tynemouth, for the benefit of sea air. And on her return to London, she received another letter, from which we extract the following:
I felt hardly as if I knew what I was about that morning, but I was very happy, and I find that I remember every look and word. I did not make all the use I might of the opportunity; but when are we ever wise enough to do it? I do not think we shall ever meet again in this world, and I believe that was in your mind when you said farewell. I feel that I have derived somewhat from my intercourse with you that will never die, and I am thankful that we have been permitted to meet. You will tell the Furnesses (Rev. Wm. H.) where and how you found me. Tell them of my cheerful room and fine down and sea. I wish my friends would suffer for me no more than I do for myself. I hope you have yet many years of activity and enjoyment before you. My heart will ever be in your cause and my love with yourself.
In James Mott's published volume, ”Three months in Great Britain,” he speaks of many distinguished persons who extended to them most gracious hospitalities, for although Mrs. Mott had been ostracised by some of the more bigoted ”Friends,” others were correspondingly marked in their attentions. Among such was that n.o.ble-hearted young woman, Elizabeth Pease, of Darlington, who was one of the first to call upon them on their arrival in London, and the last to bid them farewell on the morning they sailed from Liverpool; having in company with her father gone from Manchester for that purpose. Her cultivated mind and fine talents were devoted to subjects of reform, with an energy and perseverance rarely equaled.
Ann Knight, another sincere friend and advocate of human rights, was quite indignant, that a Convention called for such liberal measures should reject women on the flimsy plea, ”that it being contrary to English usage, it would subject them to ridicule and prejudice their cause.” She was unremitting in her attentions to the American women, doing many things to make their visit pleasant while in London, and afterward, entertaining several as guests in her own ”quiet home.”
Amelia Opie, with her happy face and genial manners, was in constant attendance at the Convention. On entering one of the sessions, she accosted Mrs. Mott, saying, ”though in one sense the women delegates were rejected, yet they were held in high esteem, and their coming would have immense influence on the action of future a.s.semblies.”