Sara A. Underwood

“ She had wealth, leisure, friends, character: these she offered up a willing sacrifice to the interests of humanity. There stand the records; there is no gainsaying, no denying them. Nor will the idea of overweening vanity, or desire for popularity, cancel any part of her just praise. Had that been her aim, she took a strange and devious course to gain it. Nay, further, her own eloquent words carry conviction of her heartfelt earnestness. I believe in Frances Wright, as a true, self-sacrificing soul, of whom the Freethinkers of all countries should be proud. ”

“ Such was the invocation which Madame Roland addressed to the Deity she worshiped, at a time when, death by violence seeming unavoidable, she contemplated defeating the cruel guillotine by suicide. There is in it, as in all the acts of her life, the undaunted tone of the truly brave in spirit. Conscious of her own nobility of soul, there is in it no mock humility, no cowardly trusting to the blood of an innocent person to save her from the consequences of her own acts, no weak doubts expressed as to her own merit ”

“ No woman has ever, perhaps, received so rich a recompense of reward; and why? I think because her spirit and influence have been in harmony with the spirit of the age. Miss Martineau, with a single eye to the general good, has devoted herself, not to the intellectual amusement or advancement of the gifted and educated, but to make bread more plentiful in the husbandman’s dwelling, and to still the cry of hunger forever in the poor man’s cottage. ”

“ Let us hope that when that day comes, it will find her with the strong ‘intellect’ undimmed by the long years of waiting, and the brave heart as fresh in its love for liberty as it is to-day. When we remember that Mrs. Rose is by birth a Pole, and by descent and education a Jew—a people that has been wronged and trampled upon, and a faith which has been for ages persecuted and maligned—we can understand whence comes her ardor for freedom, her eloquent earnestness in the cause of liberty and equality. ”

“ Pathetic as his "Father, forgive them!" is thy sorrowful "O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!"
The coming woman—our ideal—can never come in nobler guise than that of Madame Roland. Uplifted by the force of her pure moral character even above the sanguinary waves of that "Reign of Terror" — waves which left their defacing stain upon many of the fairest names that flashed meteor-like across that dismal panorama—the worst which even her Christian biographers have found to say of her is, that she was morally brave enough to avow herself a Deist. ”

“ Life was full of promise; the world a theater of interesting observation and useful exertion. There existed a country consecrated to Freedom, and in which man might awake to the full knowledge and full exercise of his powers.”
Henceforth, America became her ideal land, a new Utopia in which all wrong would be righted, and all truth triumphant, and she devoured eagerly everything she could learn of its history, heroes, and institutions. ”

“ In this last-mentioned lecture I urged that a state of society be instituted in which youth and maiden should be better educated than they now are, so that both may better understand themselves and what is requisite to their happiness in their intended partners in marriage; in which they should be educated for marriage, and have more direct moral education than they now have; in which they should be taught that the one enduring, wisely and virtuously formed marriage would produce the greatest amount of happiness that could arise from any union of man and woman ”

“ Beautiful in expression, quick in wit, strong in will, eloquent in speech, coherent in conviction, and of a stainless character, she was incomparable among public women. She was one of the few among the early advocates of English Socialism who saw that the combat against religion could not be confined to an attack on forms of faith—to a mere comparison of creeds—and she attached only a secondary importance to the abuses of Christianity, when she saw that the whole was an abuse of history, reason, and morality. ”

“ That life must be well worth living which is permitted to see its most advanced and cherished convictions realized. Such a life is likely to be Harriet Martineau's, and, when her “summons comes to join the innumerable caravan,” she will not need to cry in anguish, “all is vanity and vexation of spirit”! for she has lived to see negro slavery abolished, and English women, under certain restrictions, entitled to vote. Let us dare also to hope that, old as she is, she may yet live to see American women entitled to the same privilege. ”

“ In 1789, events preceding the Revolution had thrown France into a state of ferment. Every one in whose soul one spark of the divine fire of liberty burned felt himself forced to take an interest and a part in the events and politics of the times. Political meetings were held over all France, and the slow-burning fires of insurrection and revolution broke out here and there into sudden and no-longer-to-be repressed flame.
Among the first to declare themselves admirers and advocates of a new and republican form of government, as a panacea for the national distress, were M. and Madame Roland. ”

“ THE word Freethinker in times past has implied a censure of the person so designated, and especially if the one so called chanced to be a woman. But, in spite of this fact, here and there in the history of Freethought has appeared a woman strong enough of heart and brain to understand and accept Liberal truths, and brave enough to avow publicly her faith in the “belief of the unbelievers.” Among these courageous souls we find the names of some of the most brilliant lights of feminine literature. ”

“ Ernestine L. Rose —eloquent, pungent, cogent, and clear-sighted; before her thought, oppression recoils like demons before the armies of light, shrieking for help, and crying ‘torment us not.'" In all her earnest labor for the liberty she loved, and the increase of that knowledge which she knew to be so essential to the dissemination of the first principles of that liberty, Mrs. Rose has yet never truckled to popular opinion, or tried to win popular applause at the expense of the cause she advocated. ”

“ Young men and old, looking upon that face in its defiance of the power of death, listening to the brave words of that unflinching soul, grew strong to meet the martyrdom they had dared for dear Liberty's sake, and learned to smile gravely even under the grim shadow of the guillotine, feeling that, after all, their lives had not been lived in vain, when they were to give them up in sacrifice to freedom in such glorious companionship. ”

“ AS pure-hearted and true a philanthropist as any whose name has ever adorned the pages of history, or glorified humanity, was Frances Wright, a woman who independently stepped forth from the quiet of a peaceful, happy life to dare the sneers, reproaches, and calumnies of those for whose advancement and enlightenment she sacrificed wealth, friends, and reputation. ”

“ The English Communists, the first considerable body in England who ever professed Materialism, and the only party, perhaps, that never possessed it, made their first practical settlement in Hampshire, at a time when society was hard and cold, taxation heavy, the people ignorant, and workingmen homeless. Robert Owen—the first to bring a breath of courage upon those evil days with which the present generation opened—and his disciples sect up a propagandism, and subscribed money to create that situation in which it should be impossible for men to be depraved or poor. ”

“ Another interesting sign of the times is the influence exercised by two women, Miss Martineau and Miss Barrett (Mrs. Browning) , from their sick-rooms. The lamp of life which, if it had been fed only by their affections, depending on precarious human relations, would scarce have been able to maintain a feeble glare in the lonely prison, now shines far and wide over the nations, cheering fellow-sufferers and hallowing the joy of the faithful. “These persons need not health, nor youth, nor the charms of personal presence, to make their thought available. ”

“ To-day we stand at the opening of a grand vista of civil and religious liberty. Science has sealed as the truth many of the hitherto vague questionings of those who, in honest search of the truth, had long ago come to doubt creeds and dogmas. ”

“ It was part of the programme she had marked out for herself in life to make America the chief field of her labors for humanity, and she returned here in 1824. The strange anomaly of negro slavery being advocated, as well as merely allowed, in a country ostensibly sworn to cherish and protect the true liberty of mankind, surprised and shocked this woman, who believed sincerely that “all men are born free and equal, with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” ”

“ Indeed, Harriet Martineau was not one to allow her friendships, or any like selfish consideration, to overbalance her “fidelity to conscience,” and the knowledge of her uncompromising honesty of character could not fail to make her friends respect and admire her, however much they might dissent from her conclusions on theology.
All through this book (“Laws of Man's Nature and Development”) there runs a tone of glad defiance of what the world may choose to think of her, and of restful triumph over her own educational prejudices. ”

“ Without me, Roland would have been quite as good a Minister, for his knowledge, his activity, and his integrity were all his own; but I infused into his writings that mixture of spirit and gentleness, of authoritative reason and seducing sentiment, which is only found in the language of a woman who has a clear head and a feeling heart.”
At the time of Roland’s second ministry, the tide of anarchical revolution had already begun to overflow unhappy France. The rotten barriers of an effete monarchy gave way before the surging waves of that seething sea of infuriated men and women. ”

“ The London National Reformer thus notices her address at a Conference of the Woman’s Suffrage movement in that city:
“The speech of the meeting was, however, made by a lady whose name will be familiar to all readers of the Boston Investigator. We mean Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose, of New York. The good old lady with her white curls, her erect, healthy-looking body, her clear, distinct voice, her occasional quaint phrases, her stern determination, and her real genius as a speaker, won from those present a far more hearty and lengthened tribute of applause than was accorded to anyone else.” ”

“ HARRIET MARTINEAU. "FEELING, as I do, daily comfort in the knowledge of some things which I should once have shrunk from supposing, it would be weak—as foolish as cowardly— ever again to shrink from knowing anything that is true, or to have any preferences whatever among unascertained matters of speculation or fact. ”

“ In time to come they who first dared to pioneer the way to perfect freedom of thought will be looked upon as the benefactors of those whom at first they only shocked. Among these benefactors must be counted the isolated women whose life-sketches make up this little volume. In selecting the subjects for these sketches, regard was had only to the thorough Radicalism of the views they held. There are many noble women of Liberal tendencies of thought, whose names are well known, who have done good and effective work for Freethought so far as they understood it ”

“ Marie Jeanne Phlipon, daughter of the drunken engraver, child of the people, wife of the just and conscientious philosopher Roland—in thee we find our ideal woman, as Christendom finds in Jesus its ideal man! Virtuous, loving, lovely, intellectual, self-sacrificing woman, could any Christ live an holier life, or die more nobly than thou didst? As he was put to death by a rude rabble because of his brave utterance of pure principles, so also wast thou. If his crucifixion was a more protracted bodily anguish, the horrible outlines of the blood-begrimed guillotine were no less terrible to thee ”

“ The same stern, unyielding love of truth, the same strict integrity of conscience, which caused her progenitors to give up home, friends, and wealth, and led them to try their fate in a foreign and uncongenial land, appears again in a somewhat different form in this brave, conscientious woman, their descendant, who has dared “for conscience’ sake” to avow in the face of a shocked Christianity her disbelief of an unproven revelation, her honest doubts of the so-called proofs of a creative, designing, and constantly interfering power called God. ”

“ All whose great desire is to ‘stand well with the people’ know full well that the secret of their success consists in swimming with the current—in not being too far in advance of society; and so in their writings and speeches they give the people, not what they most need and ought to hear, but what would be most acceptable to the pride, vanity, or interest of their hearers or readers. At times a step in advance is very desirable to attract by the novelty of the position, but they take good care not to go too far, lest existing prejudices should throw them off the track. ”

“ Writing about public men, I am not willing to exclude myself from the opportunity of saying something about the celebrated women who have figured in American history. Prominent among my own recollections, was the versatile and original Frances Wright. She excited much comment by her leveling doctrines and extravagant language. I shall always remember the effect produced by the lectures of this indefatigable and really gifted woman as she traveled through Pennsylvania many years ago. ”

“ Madame Roland, filled with enthusiastic energy, wrote from Lyons to the Paris journals political letters of the most radical stamp, thus unwittingly helping to kindle the blaze which lit her own funeral pyre. But in joining the Revolutionists she had declared, "We must be ready for everything, even to die without regret!" Whatever may have been the mistakes which made the French Revolution so terrible a failure, it is certain that most of its original leaders were at first animated by only the purest and most devoted patriotism and love of liberty. ”

“ Slavery found in her "The Hour and the Man" a bitter denunciation and a vivid portrayal; and during the American Slaveholders’ Rebellion Miss Martineau’s pen supplied on the other side of the water the warmest, friendliest, and most earnest articles in behalf of the Union written by any one not a native-born American.
In every department of life, however high or humble, her searching mind, fertile brain, and ready pen have done good and effective service. She has written on the forest and game laws, on household education, and on health, husbandry, and handicraft. ”

“ And the day is not so far off as many imagine when she will be given full credit for the noble courage and purity of purpose which forced her to declare herself an Atheist, in days when that word was a bugbear to all religious people. ”

“ She was the rough pioneer of the Woman's Rights reform, that is so respected and so well supported at present. Never woman had to brazen herself as she did to initiate that movement. If there is any good in that movement, the world owes something to the courage of Frances Wright.” That she had her faults no one who understands human nature can doubt. Great public virtues have sometimes been allied to great private vices. Of Frances Wright’s private life I know nothing. ”

“ Probably no living English writer has been more active or more efficient in moulding British opinion, and certainly none has been more beneficent in lifelong influence. England would be less humane and enlightened than she is to-day, if the brave and wise heart of Harriet Martineau had not for nearly fifty years helped to push forward the good cause of popular progress. ”

“ But this venture came near being her last, as the ship in which she set sail was wrecked, and she arrived in England nearly destitute of everything save her strength, health, energy, and education. All these stood her in good stead in this emergency. She immediately sought employment as a teacher of languages in London, adding to her income from this labor by the sale of her perfumed paper. It was not long, either, before she found friends, even in the great London, who were as radical and liberty-loving as herself. ”

“ Much as I revere the character of the man Jesus, I doubt whether his death was more sublime than was hers. I doubt also whether any belief in his atoning virtues could have made this woman's death more heroic than did her faith in “all that was great, and good, and immortal,” within herself, and her belief of the truths she advocated, and for which she died.
As soon as M. Roland heard of her execution, filled with anguish and despair he emerged from his concealment at Rouen, and started on the road to Paris, probably with some vague thought of avenging her death ”

“ Being checked on one occasion by a deep and shrewd mathematician and physician, who observed that her questions were dangerous, she replied, ‘Can truth be dangerous?’ ‘It is thought so,’ was the answer. ”