_Reprinted from the “Boston Times” of October 22nd, 1876._
WOMEN’S CO-OPERATIVE PRINTING UNION,
LONDON, ENGLAND.
1893.
THE REVIEW OF A CENTURY;
OR,
THE FRUIT OF FIVE THOUSAND YEARS.
Victoria C. Woodhull leaves this country shortly for Europe, and has
prepared a lecture, which will be her farewell utterance. Those who
heard Mrs. Woodhull recently at Paine Hall bear unanimous testimony to
the humanitarian character of her address; she is the advocate of
peculiar, because novel and original, views. A _Times_ reporter has
obtained a full report of her farewell address, and it is so full of
instruction, and presents new social ideas in so fresh and thoroughly
effective a manner, that no apology is needed for submitting it, _in
extenso_, to the public. It is entitled “The Review of a Century; or,
The Fruit of Five Thousand Years,” and is as follows:—
A hundred years ago, in an upper room in Philadelphia, five men were
gathered—men of noble bearing, of brilliant intellects, of undoubted
character. Their faces wore a look of stern determination, as if the
theme of their consideration was of matters of grave import; was of
matters destined to be the beginning of the most important era that had
ever dawned upon the earth. A century and eighty years before, a single
ship-load of men, women and children, had landed on this virgin soil at
Jamestown in Virginia; and a few years later, another one at
Plymouth-Rock in Massachusetts. To these, additions had been made until
the thirteen States then numbered fully three million souls, upon whom
“the king” had imposed onerous taxation, and over whom he had placed
obnoxious rulers. The tea had been destroyed in Boston harbour, and the
people were wrought up to the intensest pitch by their oppressions. They
had come from their native lands to escape from tyranny, and were not
disposed to brook it here. In this wild, free land, they had become
pregnant of liberty, and were even then struggling in the throes of
travail. These five men had met to find a way in which the delivery
might be safely made, so that both the mother and the child should live
to bless the world.