THE ENGLISH COMMON LAW.

IN approaching the subject of English common law, we come nearer to our own special interests. Twenty years ago, I am safe, I think, in presuming that this law was the basis of all our legislation in regard to woman, if we except that in French or Spanish territory; and, in criticising its provisions, I shall criticise all that is objectionable, whether in the laws that have been changed, or in the laws that remain to be changed, in our own States.

If we were to examine the literature of England with reference to this subject, we should probably find from the beginning many protests against the present position of woman. It is never safe, for instance, to assume what poets may or may not have said. If Dryden could get so far as to say that there is "no sex in souls," one would think the gentle Chaucer and heavenly-minded Daniel doubtless discerned still deeper things; but of lawyers we may say with some truth, that their early protests were so quietly made as scarcely to be recognized, or were made for the most part by unread and anonymous writers.

In the "Lawe's Resolution of Woman's Rights," published in the year 1632, there seems to be a distinct recognition of the true nature of the law:—

"The next thing that I will show you," says the author, "is this particularity of law. In this consolidation which we call wedlock is a locking together. It is true, that man and wife are one person; but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little river incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the Thames, the poore rivulet looseth her name; it is carried and recarried with the new associate; it beareth no sway; it possesseth nothing during coverture. A woman, as soon as she is married, is called covert; in Latine, nupta,—that is, 'veiled;' as it were, clouded and overshadowed: she hath lost her streame. I may more truly, farre away, say to a married woman, Her new self is her superior; her companion, her master."

Still farther: "Eve, because she had helped to seduce her husband, had inflicted upon her a special bane. See here the reason of that which I touched before,—that women have no voice in Parliament. They make no laws, they consent to none, they abrogate none. All of them are understood either married or to be married, and their desires are to their husbands. I know no remedy, though some women can shift it well enough. The common lawe here shaketh hand with divinitye."

In this plain statement of the old black-letter book lies the root of the evil with which we contend: "All of them are married or to bee married, and their desires are to their husbands." Woman, single, widowed, or pursuing an independent vocation, never seems to have entered the head of the law, as a possible monster worth providing for. The world of that day believed in the sea-serpent, but not in her. This book, "The Lawe's Resolution of the Rights of Woman," was, so far as I know, first brought under our notice by Mrs. Bodichon's quotation, in her "Brief Summary of the English Law." Then a few copies found their way to this country, and into the hands of curious persons. People began to wonder who wrote the quaint old book. In pleading before our own Legislature in the spring of 1858, I was myself asked by the committee who was its author; and I think it but right to rescue from oblivion the probable name of this early friend to woman and justice. It is always difficult to trace an anonymous book, and, this time, more difficult than usual, as it was probably published after its author's death.

Sir John Doderidge, to whom my attention was directed by an eminent antiquarian, was an able lawyer, and an industrious compiler of law-books of a special kind. He was from Devonshire, and admitted as a barrister in 1603. He was successively appointed Solicitor-General, Judge of the Common Pleas and of the King's Bench. Among the works known to be his, yet not commonly included in the list of his works, are the "Lawyer's Light," published in 1629; and "The Complete Parson," with the laws relating to advowsons and livings, in 1670,—books of the same class, character, and appearance as the "Lawe's Resolution."

As he died in 1628, I was at first inclined to suspect the fairness of this inference: but a further examination showed that all his publications were posthumous; which accounts, perhaps, for the candor of their covert satire. A few particulars of his life and standing may be gained from the new Life of Lord Bacon, where Hepworth Dixon says that "the Solicitor-Generalship, vacant once more, is given, over Francis Bacon's head, to Sir John Doderidge, Serjeant of the Coif." In 1606, when Sir Francis Gawdy dies, "Coke goes up to the bench; and Doderidge, the Solicitor-General, ought, by the custom of the law, to follow Coke, leaving the post of Solicitor void: but Cecil raises Sir Henry Hobart, his obscure Attorney of the Court of Wards, over both Doderidge and Bacon's head, to the high place of Attorney-General." Since that day, Bentham and Catharine Macauley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and John Stuart Mill, have made the same complaint; sustaining it, however, by vigorous argument for woman's full emancipation, and a demand for the right of suffrage.

Let us look at this English law. So far as it affects single women, it is very simple.

A single woman has the same rights of property as a man; that is, she may get and keep, or dispose of, whatever she can. She has a right, like man, to the protection of the law, and has to pay the same taxes to the State.

"Duly qualified," she may vote on parish questions and for parish officers; and "duly qualified," in England, means that she shall have a certain amount of property, and so a vested interest in the prosperity of her parish. If her parents die without a will, she shares equally with her brothers in the division of the personal property; but her eldest brother and his issue, even if female, will take the real estate as heirs-at-law. If she be an only child, she inherits both personal and real, and becomes immediately that most pitiable of creatures, an heiress.

The church and all state offices are closed to women. They find some employment in rural post-offices; but there is no important office they can hold, if we except that of sovereign. This is sometimes spoken of as an inconsistency; but if we reflect upon the position of a constitutional sovereign, whose speeches are the work of her minister, and whose actions indicate the average conscience of a cabinet council, we shall find her legally but very little more independent than other women technically classed with minors and idiots.

There have been a few women governors of prisons, overseers of the poor, and parish clerks; but public opinion still effectually bars most women from seeking or accepting office.

The office of Grand Chamberlain was filled by two women in 1822. That of Clerk of the Crown, in the Court of Queen's Bench, has been granted to a female; and, in a certain parish of Norfolk, a woman was recently appointed parish clerk, because, in a population of six hundred souls, no man could be found able to read and write!

In an action at law, it has been determined that an unmarried woman, having a freehold, might vote for members of Parliament. Mr. Higginson tells us that a certain Lady Packington returned two.

In all periods, there have been women who have held exceptional positions, under peculiar influence of wealth or rank or circumstances; and though this has not affected the position of other women, or given them any more freedom, yet it is valuable in itself, because it has kept the possibility of their employment always open, and acted like a practical protest against the law.

The Countess of Pembroke was hereditary Sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised her office. In the reign of Queen Anne, Lady Rous did the same, "girt with a sword." Henry VIII. once granted a commission of inquiry, under the great seal, to Lady Anne Berkeley, who opened it at Gloucester, and passed sentence under it.

Some of the old legal writers averred, that a woman might serve in almost any of the great offices of the kingdom. Lately we find it stated that a woman may be elected as constable, since she can hire a man to serve for her; but she may not be elected overseer of the poor, because, in this case, substitution, if not impossible, would be difficult!

What were the peculiar political excitements which enabled Lady Packington to return two members of Parliament, we are not told; but it is quite certain that women of twenty-one, duly qualified, cannot and do not vote for members of Parliament by virtue of that decision. In rural districts, where personal influence weighed a good deal, such a vote might be courteously winked at. A woman of property and standing, in Nova Scotia, has in this manner, for more than forty years, cast her annual vote, without rebuke or interruption; but, should any number of women act on this precedent, a legal restraint would doubtless be laid.

No single woman, having been seduced, has any remedy at common law; neither has her mother nor next friend. If her father can prove service rendered, he may sue for loss of service.

In what "bosom of divinitye" does this law rest? Here is a remedy for the loss of a few hours, but no penalty held up in terrorem, to warn man that he may not trifle with honor, womanly purity, and childish ignorance or innocence.

In the eye of this law, female chastity is only valuable for the work it can do. It must not be thought, however, that the English common law stands alone in this moral deformity. Under the French law, female chastity does not seem of any worth, even in consideration of the work it can do. In honest indignation, LegouvÉ exclaims,—

"Let a man, who has seduced a child of fifteen years by a promise of marriage, be brought before a magistrate. He has under the law a right to say, 'There is my signature, it is true; but I deny it. A debt of the heart is void before the law.'"

Thus everywhere, in practice and theory, in society and in law, for rich and poor, is public purity abandoned,—the bridle thrown upon the neck of all restive and depraved natures.

Manufacturers seduce their work-people; the heads of workshops refuse to employ girls who will not sell themselves, soul and body, to them; masters corrupt their servants. Out of 5,083 lost women counted by DuchÂtelet at Paris in 1830, there were 285 domestic servants seduced, and afterwards dismissed by their employers. Commission-merchants, officers, students, deceive the poor girls from the province or the country, drag them to Paris, and leave them to perish. At all the great centres of industry, as at Rheims and at Lille, are societies organized to recruit the houses of sin in Paris.

This is well known to be true of all the large English towns; yet the law is powerless, and philanthropy interferes with no other result than that of driving these societies from one post to another.

Can women be expected to believe that the law would be powerless, if there were a sound public opinion behind it to sustain the law; if there were any desire on the part of the majority of men that it should be sustained? "Punish the young girl, if you will," continued LegouvÉ; "but punish also the man who has ruined her. She is already punished,—punished by desertion, punished by dishonor, punished by remorse, punished by nine months of suffering, punished by the charge of a child to be reared. Let him, then, be struck in his turn. If not, it is no longer public modesty that you defend: it is the 'lord paramount,' the vilest of the rights of the 'seigneur.'"

In the laws which regard single women, we object, then,—

1. To the withholding of the elective franchise.

2. To the law's preference of males, and the issue of males, in the division of estates.

3. We object to the estimate of woman which the law sustains, which shuts her out from all public employment, for many branches of which she is better fitted than man.

4. We object to that estimate of woman's chastity which makes its existence or non-existence of importance only as it affects the comfort or income of man.

We do not mean that the present interpretation of the common law does not sometimes show a more liberal estimate than the law itself, but rather that the existence of this law, unrepealed, unchristianized, is a forcible restraint upon the progress of society.

"A legal fiction," says Maine in his "Ancient Law," "signifies any assumption which conceals, or affects to conceal, the fact, that a rule of law has undergone alteration, its letter remaining unchanged, while its operation is modified." Such fictions may be useful in the infancy of society; but, like absurd formulas and embarrassing technicalities, they should give way before advancing common sense, before the diffusion of general intelligence and a common-school system, which is destined to qualify the humblest man for a full understanding of the law under which he lives.

We have now to consider the laws concerning married women. "On whatsoever branch of jurisprudence may lie the charge," says a late reviewer, "of working the heaviest sum of suffering, perhaps we shall not err in saying that the sharpest and cruellest pangs are those which have been inflicted by our marriage-laws." In making our abstracts, we have need to avoid the absurd complications which confuse, not only simple-minded people, but lawyers themselves; and, to avoid any charge of ignorance or mistake, we will, as far as possible, adopt the language of Mrs. Bodichon's "Summary," which has stood for six years before the English public without impeachment.

We shall not discuss the question, as to what constitutes fitness for marriage in the eye of the law. In Scotland and in England, the consent of the parties is said to be the "essence of marriage;" but, alas! in how many cases is this "consent" taken for granted only, it being, in fact, the most baseless of legal fictions!

In commenting on the English law as compared with the Scotch, the reviewer adds, "A code so unsatisfactory, so unsettled, and by every alteration coming so palpably near to their own system, is one which Scotchmen may be pardoned for declining further to consider, and which certainly they cannot be expected to recognize as the model to which their own should be conformed."

The rule of the English law was, at the institution of the Divorce Court, that the wife should have the same domicile as her husband, and that within English territory. A dishonest domicile barred her claim to divorce; and the husband who abandoned his wife, and fixed his residence abroad, effectually bound her to him. Justice has of late been done, because it was justice, heedless of the question of domicile.

There are in relation to this subject many provisions which wrong men and women alike; and, if there are any which especially wrong woman, they wrong man in a still higher degree through her. As an example of the former class, we may take the impossibility of release from a hopelessly insane partner, which makes the point of the wonderful story of "Jane Eyre."

Now, several things are quite evident to the eye of common sense:—

First, That the insane partner should be properly provided for during life, in the upper classes, by the sane partner; in the lower, by the parish or state.

Second, That as it is a sin against God and society to bring children into the world, born of a hopelessly insane parent; so, on the other hand, it is a sin against God and society to compel any man or woman to a life of hopeless celibacy.

Third, That, if the law does use this compulsion, it is responsible for the vicious connections that inevitably grow out of it; "car les mauvaises lois produisent les mauvaises moeurs."[35] I should not turn aside from my main point to consider this, even for a moment, if it were not a striking instance of the want of common sense which afflicts the common law, and if I had not in my own experience been made aware of its frightful results. Within the limits of one small parish in the city of Toronto, Canada West, I found four instances in which men of the middle class had taken the right of divorce into their own hands, and were illegally married a second time. These persons, if not markedly religious, were respectable, orderly members of society, living properly in their families, supporting the wives they had left, and justifying the course they had taken. Two of them had left England on account of the hopeless insanity of their wives, and two on account of their hopeless immorality; the latter, cases in which the law would have granted a divorce, but at an expense which the husband could not pay. When I first heard this account of one person, I resented it as a slander, and went to console the afflicted wife, who was overwhelmed by the supposed rumor.

The husband met me at the door, with an honest, unabashed, but distressed face. "Don't deny it to her," said he. "I never committed but one sin, and that was when I kept it from her. She was a sweet, pious creature; and I feared she would not consent."

This man told me that he sent six hundred dollars yearly to his insane wife; that this kept her better than he could afford to keep himself and his family: "but," said he, "her station was always higher than mine."

In the other cases, the men had told their stories, and the wives had consented to the arrangement. It is obvious, that, if a wife wished to withdraw from a husband in this manner, she could not do it, on account of property restrictions, and the common unfitness for self-support.[36]

In the marriage of a minor, the consent of the father, or of a guardian appointed by him, is necessary, but not that of the mother: another indication of the estimate the law puts upon woman, as compared with man; and this estimate, whenever and wherever it shows itself, has the effect to depress every woman's desire to fit herself to be a good citizen; and, when she fails in citizenship, man must fail also, as is ably shown by De Tocqueville.

"A hundred times in the course of my life," he says, "I have seen weak men display public virtue because they had beside them wives who sustained them in this course, not by counselling this or that action in particular, but by exercising a fortifying influence on their views of duty and ambition. Oftener still, I have seen domestic influence operating to transform a man, naturally generous, noble, and unselfish, into a cowardly, vulgar, and ambitious self-seeker, who thought of his country's affairs only to see how they could be turned to his own private comfort or advancement; and this simply by daily contact with an honest woman, a faithful wife, a devoted mother, from whose mind the grand notion of public duty was entirely absent."[37]

A man and wife are one person in law: a wife loses all her rights as a single woman. Her husband is legally responsible for her acts: so she is said to live under his cover. A woman's body belongs to her husband. She is in his custody, and he can enforce his right by a writ of habeas corpus.

This last is one of the points in which the public feeling is so far before the law, that the latter could never be wholly enforced.

If a woman were unlawfully restrained of her liberty, her husband might take advantage of a habeas corpus to get possession of her; but it is not probable that any court, in England or this country, would now grant one to compel a wife to live with her husband against her will. Still, the estimate of the marriage relation which such laws sustain is so low, that one never can tell what will happen.

In the year 1858, a curious but unintentional satire on the judicial position of the husband occurred in one of the London courts. A delicate, much-abused woman, unmarried, but who had been, in her own phrase, "living for some time" with a man, brought an action against him for assault. Erysipelas had inflamed her wounds, and endangered her life.

"Had she died, sirrah," said the magistrate, addressing the criminal, "you must have taken your trial for murder. What have you to say in your defence?"

"I was in liquor, sir," pleaded the man. "I gave her some money to go to market. I told her to look sharp; but she was gone more than an hour, your worship: so, when she came back, I—I was in liquor, your honor."

The magistrate leaned over his desk, and, speaking in the most impressive manner, thus endeavored to cut short the defence:—

"This woman is not your slave, man. She is not accountable to you for every moment of her time. She is not," he continued with increasing fervor, but a growing embarrassment,—"she is not—she is not"—

He paused; but the throng of wretched women who crowded the court interpreted the pause aright, and were not likely to forget the lesson.

A suppressed titter ran through the court: for every married man knew that the words, "she is not your wife," were those which had sprung naturally to the worthy magistrate's lips; and must have passed them, had not honest shame prevented.

The man then attempted to defend himself on the ground of jealousy: but this was instantly set aside; the unmistakable impression left on the mind of the court-room being, that the illegality of the relation was wholly in the woman's favor.

Since the war, freed-women at Beaufort, S.C., have refused marriage for this very reason.

Women long ago understood this, and literary gossip gives us a late instance in a maiden aunt of Sir Charles Morgan. This woman, descended from Morgan the buccaneer, has more than once turned the scales of an Irish election. When she once arrested a robber on her own premises, and held him fast till the arrival of an officer, the gentlemen of the neighborhood advised her not to prosecute.

"It is well known," they argued, "that you refuse to employ a single man on your premises, and you may be marked out for the revenge of the gang."

"Justice is justice," she exclaimed in reply; "and the villain shall go hang!"

It was quite natural that we should find this woman telling Lady Caroline Lamb that no man should ever have legal rights over her, or her property. A wife's money, jewels, and clothes become absolutely her husband's; and he may dispose of them as he pleases, whether he and his wife live together or not. Her chattels real—that is, estates held for a term of years—and presentations of church livings become absolutely his; but, if she survive him, she may resume them.

Under such a common law as this, it is not surprising to find something needed which is called equity. Therefore, if a wife, on her marriage, gives all her property to her husband, the said equity (Heaven save the mark!) will, under certain circumstances, oblige him to make a settlement upon her. That is, when the wife has an interest in property which can only be reached by the husband through a court of equity, that court will aid him to enjoy it, only on condition that such part as it thinks proper shall be settled on the wife.

The civil courts in England cannot compel a man to support his wife: that is left to the action of the church, and her own parish.

A husband has a freehold estate in his wife's lands as long as they both live.

Money earned by a married woman belongs absolutely to her husband.

By her husband's particular permission, she may make a will; but he may revoke his permission at any time before probate,—that is, before the will is exhibited and proved,—even if after the wife's death.

The custody of a child belongs to the father. The mother has no right of control. The father may dispose of it as he sees fit. If there be a legal separation, and no special order of the court, the custody of the children (except the nutriment of infants) belongs legally to the father.

Except the nutriment of infants! Here is a hint from the good God himself. Should we not think, that the first time these words were written down, and men were compelled to see the natural dependence of the child upon the mother,—to detect the obvious laws of nurture, natural and spiritual,—the right of a good mother to her child would have made itself clear?

Yet, to this day, there are many States of our own Union where a mother can better authenticate her right to a negro slave than to the young daughter who is bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh!

If the direct influence of Christianity did not, in some measure, modify the influence of the law in social life, there would be no such thing as a mother's exercising maternal authority over a son. No matter how wise, how old, how experienced, she may be, she never possesses, in the eye of the law, the dignity of a boy who has just attained his majority. Sufficiently instructed in legal maxims, he can always resist her, under the influence of the most besotted or unprincipled of fathers.

The word of a married woman is not binding in law, and persons who give her credit have no remedy against her.

The moral results of such a law are sufficiently obvious, not only in England, but in our own country. The statute-book does not, cannot, stand absolved, because public opinion in the present day abhors and contemns the woman who assists her husband to defraud his creditors, or takes refuge from her own debts behind this disgraceful cover. Yet, if the law gives her husband her property, it ought surely to hold him responsible for her debts. And this is what society calls protection!

As a wife is always presumed to be under the control of her husband (numerous instances to the contrary notwithstanding), she is not considered guilty of any crime which she commits in his presence.

When a woman has consented to a proposal of marriage, she cannot give away the smallest thing. If she do so without her betrothed husband's consent, the gift is illegal; and, after marriage, he may avoid it as a fraud on him: a strong temptation to any woman, one would think, to give away her all. You see here what estimate the law puts on property, as an inducement to marriage. This provision evidently grew out of the exigencies of the time, when marriage among the Anglo-Saxons was a pure matter of bargain.

As a protection against the common law, it is usual to have some settlement of property made upon the wife; and, in respect to this property, the courts of equity regard her as a single woman. Such settlements are very intricate, and should be made by an experienced lawyer.

The wife's property belonging to the husband, should her scissors, thimble, or petticoats be stolen, the indictment must describe either of these articles as his!

Of divorce it is only necessary to say, that a divorce from the bonds of matrimony in England could be obtained only by act of Parliament; the right of investigation resting with the House of Lords alone. Until the passage of the New Divorce Bill, only three such divorces had ever been granted to a woman's petition. The expense of the most ordinary bill was between three and four thousand dollars.

Nor need we dwell long on such laws as relate to widows. You may be interested to hear, that, after her husband's death, the widow recovers her right to her own clothes and jewels; also that the law does not compel her to bury him, that being the duty of his legal representative.

The indignation which we might naturally feel at the suggestion that a wife could forsake her unburied dead, cools a little as the law goes on to state, that a husband can, of course, deprive a wife of all share in his personal estate. Very graciously, also, the widow is permitted to remain forty days in her husband's house, provided that she do not re-marry within that time!

The result of a great deal of reading of a great many law-books is only this,—that we are more firmly convinced than ever, that the most necessary reform is a simple erasure from the statute-book of whatever recognizes distinctions of sex. You should make woman, in the eye of the law, what she has always been in the eye of God,—a responsible human being; and make laws which such beings, male or female, can obey.

Even Christian, in his edition of Blackstone, said long ago, that there was no reason why civil rights should be refused to single women. In every respect but this, the single woman is independent; but let her take to herself a husband, and the law steps in to protect her, and she finds herself in a position of what is called "reasonable restraint." He may give her, says Blackstone, moderate correction; he may adopt any act of coercion that does not endanger life; he may beat her, but not violently. She may, by her labor, support him: but she cannot prevent him from bestowing her earnings, should he happen to die, upon those who have most wronged her in life; his mistress, it may be, or his illegitimate children. Do you tell me that men of good feeling never act on such laws? Why, then, should men of good feeling be unwilling to wipe them from the statute-book?

For the most part, it is upon women of the lower class that the property-laws most hardly press. It was the suffering of this class, years ago, when the common law of Massachusetts was the same as that of England, that first roused my interest, and excited my indignation; but the story which the Hon. Mrs. Norton tells us shows that this class of women are not the only sufferers.

"I have learned the law piecemeal," she says, "by suffering all it could inflict. I forgave my husband's wickedness again and again, and found too late, that, in the eye of the law, practical Christianity, the forgiving unto seventy times seven, was a condonation which deprived me of all protection. My children were stolen from me, and put into the vilest custody, where one of them afterwards died for want of a mother's commonest care. My husband brought an action against his kindest friend, of whom he borrowed money and received office. The jury listened with disgust, and gave their verdict against him. Then I was told that I might write for my bread, or my family might support me. My children were kept away, as their residence with me would make him liable for my debts.

"When my mother died, and left me, through my brother, a small income, he balanced the first payment by arbitrarily stopping his own allowance. For the last three years, I have not received a farthing from him. He retains all my personal property which was left in his home, the gifts of the royal family on my marriage, articles bought with my own earnings, and presents from Lord Melbourne. He receives from my trustees the income which my father bequeathed to me, which the 'non-existent' wife must resign to the 'existent' husband.

"I have also the power of earning by literature; but even this power, the gift of God, not the legacy of man, bears fruit only for him. Let him subpoena my publishers, and enjoy his triumph: he has shown me that I was not meant to write novels and tales, but to rouse the nation against such men as he, and such laws as they sustain. Let him eat the bread I earn; but it shall be bought with the price of his own exposure. If law will not listen to me, to literature I will devote my power, and secure for others what I have not been able to secure for myself."

No wonder that provident parents circumvent such a common law by a settlement before marriage! There is no chance for a partnership of gains or losses in England.

As we have already said, all sexual laws ought to be wiped off the statute-book; but the Hungarian law which was in force until 1849, when the German law was introduced into Hungary, is a comment on the absurdity of the English.

"No countrywoman of mine," said a proud sister of Kossuth, "would ever submit to such a marriage settlement as is common in England." In Hungary, inherited property could not be devised by will, and all unmarried women were considered minors. As soon as she married, a woman came of age, and into the full control of her estates. She could make a will, and sign deeds; and was not responsible for her husband's debts or the family expenses. As a widow, she was guardian of her children, and administrator on her husband's property. So long as she bore his name, she could exercise all his political rights. She could vote in the county elections, and for deputies to the Diet. Trained up under such a law, what could the Hungarian woman think who found herself for the first time in the power of the English law?

Among the refugees whom the misfortunes of a leading Hungarian family drove to these shores was one woman of the highest natural gifts, the best social station. She was married to a man, handsome, accomplished, and reckless, but hardly patriotic enough to have need to fly with her. In the city of New York she opened a boarding-house of the highest class, by which she strove to support herself and her children. A fascinating hostess, a skilful manager, she succeeded, as might be expected. Soon her improvident husband followed her. At first, he did not attempt to annoy her; but, in time, some one was found cruel enough to expound to him the English common law. He stared, refused to believe; but finally entered his wife's house, seized her earnings, compelled her boarders to pay their money into his hands, stripped her of all power to pay her rent and provide for her family, and then took himself off, enraptured, doubtless, with his brief experience of English and American liberty. Stripped of peace, position, and property, the injured wife had no longer courage to struggle. In underhand ways, to evade the unjust law, her personal friends settled her upon a little farm, where her shattered hopes found a short repose.

A few years ago, an American woman of captivating address gained great reputation in Paris as a milliner. She had a profligate husband, whom she invited to tea every Sunday, supplying him at that time with a sum for his weekly expenses. In an evil day, seduced by promises of high patronage, she went to London. She was very successful; but in a few months her husband surprised her, seized all she possessed, and, turned adrift on the streets, she went back to a country where the law would protect her industry. Marriage has been sought only to legalize a theft,—to apply the words of Wendell Phillips, when "union was robbery." A respectable servant, who had laid by a considerable sum, was sought in marriage by an apparently suitable person. On the day before the marriage, she put her bank-book into his hands. After the ceremony, he said to her, "I am not well in health, and do not feel equal to supporting a family: you had better go back to service." Naturally indignant, she responded, "Give me, then, my bank-book."—"I am too feeble to spare the money," he replied. She went back to service, and has never seen him since; but, of course, she has been often obliged to change her name and residence to protect herself from a long succession of extortions.

We see thus, that if a woman is able to conquer her fate, and to gain a livelihood in spite of a dissolute or incompetent husband, her home is not her own. Her husband's folly may, at any moment, deprive her children of bread.

I have said that there was no woman so pitiable as an heiress. I said it advisedly. I thought of the long persecution she must bear from unwelcome suitors,—of all appreciation of her personality, ever so lovely or gifted or individual, sunk, as it must be, in the mire of her money.

Mrs. Reid says, justly, that this money is not so much her own as a perquisite attached to her person for the benefit of her future husband; the larger portion of which will eventually pass to his heirs, whether of her blood or not. If forced from ill treatment to leave his roof, the law will return her but a scanty pittance.

The nature of the law itself, and that estimate of woman on which it is based, are so identical, that we are compelled, as we turn over its pages, to treat these two points as one.

"For one-half the human race," said Mrs. Reid years ago, "the highest end of civilization is to cling like a weed upon a wall;" a curious instance of the power that the use of language has over a fact. There is nothing captivating in clinging like a "weed to a wall;" but most women are satisfied to hang like the "vine about the oak."

It is a great misfortune, that this estimate of woman not only governs the courts in their decisions, but enters into and moulds all the movements of society. Such an estimate leads to constant contradictions; being, as it is, directly the opposite of the fact in so many cases, and of the Divine Will in all. In a book on woman recently published by a lawyer in England, I found a pithy paragraph to this point, concluding some observations on the comparative longevity of the sexes: "The wife," he says, "fitly survives the husband, both to take care of his premature infirmity, and to consummate the rearing of their offspring"!—a creative effort of the imagination which certainly entitles the writer to the laurels of the century.

One reason that the wages of women are kept down is, that, for the most part, women do not begin to labor early; do not devote themselves in youth to any trade or profession, so as to compete with men who have. The plodding and steady habits of the man of business, he has acquired in his early years; and they are developed by the fact, that he is sole master of what he can earn, and can dispose of it as he thinks proper: but his wife has been brought up in no such school,—has no such motive to industry. Should she toil on for ever, she cannot possess what she acquires, nor lay out the smallest part of it, without another's leave. Even when man says to her with the sanction of the church and in the presence of God, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow," it means only that she is invited to enjoy, not possess them. This estimate of her rights, her position, and her ability, made manifest in every law-book, in the church itself, and obvious in every social form, discourages her whenever she would devote herself to any lucrative employment; so that it is only in desertion and despair, for the most part, that she becomes a laborer. She is not always conscious of this discouragement. She quiets the Cerberus within by a three-times-repeated "It is not proper," without pausing to analyze the conventional instinct. Here we find the real significance of the proverb, "A man of straw is worth a woman of gold;" for the "man of straw" is, at least, worth such money as he may hereafter earn, which the "woman of gold" is not.

We hear a great deal about laws for the protection of women; but we cannot urge too often the remark of James Davis in his Prize Essay of 1854, "that all early legislation for woman was founded, not on her own rights, but on those of her husband and children, and the State over her."

When one remembers that the "seat of the law is the bosom of God," it strikes one strangely, that moral consequences to character have so little to do with what one may call "sexual legislation."

In speaking of the frequenting of disreputable houses, neither Montesquieu, nor Dr. Wood in his "History of Civil Law," finds a single word to say as to the moral degradation of the race, of the special degradation of woman involved in it, but both grow eloquent concerning the ruin of the State. It requires a sounder mode of thinking than most men possess to see the relation between the ruin of the State and their own bad habits, the loss of one man's purity. Thus the laws concerning adultery, or divorce for that cause, bring the heaviest penalties, social and legal, upon the head of an offending woman. The legal excuse for this positive injustice is the safety of the family and the State,—the great crime of imposing upon a family false representatives of its name and honor; but a woman's brain and conscience are too clear to rest in this masculine decision.

If a man cannot bring a false representative into his own family, he can carry it into his neighbor's, when his profligate life violates the social compact; and, as to his own family, his vices may injure it far more than the infidelity of his wife. At the worst, her misconduct will only bring into the shelter of his home a child who grows up protected socially by her fraud; but, if he choose to "spend his substance in riotous living," his wife and children may, while the law gives him exclusive right to their common property, be deserted, or driven from their homes, to make room for those who are the companions of his guilt. It is quite possible, it will be seen, therefore, to show another side to this matter, in no better light than that of expediency. One canton of Switzerland (the Canton Glarus) possesses laws in regard to such matters, in marked contrast to those of the whole civilized world. The consequence is, that the falsehood and crime so common elsewhere are here unknown.[38]

"Perhaps it would be just," says Poynter on "Marriage and Divorce," in 1824,—"perhaps it would be just, that where the husband violates the matrimonial compact, and the property originally belonged to the wife, he should give back the whole of it. Courts, however, have never gone that length."

One would think, nevertheless, that husbands themselves might go that length, and that men who aspire to the credit of decency would be ashamed to eat the bread of her they have betrayed and wounded. How is it that they have deceived themselves from the beginning, and have fancied that God requires of woman a fidelity and purity that was not of the smallest consequence to themselves?

In the late debate in Parliament on the New Divorce Bill, when a member objected to the introduction of a clause equalizing the relief of divorce to both sexes, he asked, "If this clause were adopted, I should like to know how many married men there would be in this house?" He was answered by shouts of laughter.

Would these men have laughed, think you, if they had been asked how many pure wives could be found in their family circles? and, if not, would it have been because they were capable of estimating the value of womanly virtue? No: he cannot estimate that who has never known the worth of manly purity. The spectres of illegitimacy and civil ruin are what would stare them in the face, and turn their very lips so white.

In France, says the "Westminster Review," fidelity on the part of the husband is considered a sort of imbecility. What is thought of it in England? Does this scene in Parliament, printed for all our girls to read, suggest any higher view?

"The frequenting of disreputable places," says Davis, "was once an indictable offence in a man; but that is now obsolete." Obsolete? and why? A lawyer once told me, that the most obscene publication he had ever read was a book upon divorce. I can well believe it. I thought I knew how corrupt modern society could be; but I did not know how unsoundness had darted to its very core, till I began to read law, and to understand the estimate which that puts upon woman and chastity.

When I think of these things, I wonder that this platform is not thronged with the ghosts of dead and ruined women, crowding here to second my appeal to beseech you to grant human justice, to require human virtue! And all this sin is sheltered under the plea of protection! "How many delicious morsels I should miss if it were not for thy care, O most excellent jackal!"

"Lawyers," says Johnson in 1777,—"lawyers often pay women the high compliment of supposing them proof against all temptations combined."

Certainly, whatever the lawyers may do, the law itself confidently expects of them a superhuman strength. It gives them no defence but immaculateness. It offers them no shelter but God's temple, no robe but spotless ermine; and then, turning the page, it says, "A husband is expected to be vigilant, and so prevent his own dishonor:" as if his vigilance and quick-wittedness could save the woman whom his love had not blessed.

Ah! these lawyers are but blind guides, after all. Centuries of discomfiture and defeat have not sufficed to teach them how little security is to be found in suspicion and scepticism. If I do not want my groceries stolen, I must leave my storeroom open. The very servant who would not scruple to pick my locks will know better than to pick that of her own heart. "A thorough-bred woman," says Mrs. Reid, "is good only so far as her husband suggests and allows;" and, so long as this is the standard, woman's duplicity may well match man's utmost expectation, and there is not a privilege of his open vice that she will not secure by stealth.

There was a time when all the women at the court of France blushed for one of their number who unluckily made use of a hard word in a proper place. In like manner, the woman who reads law blushes to find herself even tolerably sincere and modest. It is not expected of her. Why has she never done any of the bad things the law so confidently predicts?

All thinking people must see how easily we turn from the consolidated law of ages, with its false views, its untrue estimate of woman and duty, to the question of the right of suffrage.

In 1848 and 1850, we used to hear a great deal of three objections to conferring this right upon women:—

1st, Its incompatibility with household care and the duties of maternity.

2d, Its hardening effect on the character; politics not being fit for woman.

3d, The inexpediency of increasing competition in the already crowded fields of labor and office.

To these three points we gave short and summary answers:—

1st, There are a great many women who will never be mothers and housekeepers; and, if there were not, suffrage is no more incompatible with maternity and housekeeping than it is with mercantile life and the club-room.

2d, If it hardens women, it will harden men; and the politics which are not fit for her are not fit for him, nor will they become so till her presence gives men a motive to purify them.

3d, At the worst, competition could only go so far, that a man and a woman would earn as little together as the man now does alone. This would be better than the present condition of things; for they would then be equal partners, and no longer master and slave. Both would work, and neither need pine.

These answers, whether logical or not, have practically silenced the objections. We hear no more of this nonsense. But, on the other hand, a respectable daily says, "As to the abstract right of a woman to vote because she is a human being and pays taxes, there is no such abstract right in any human being, male or female: the extent of the elective franchise is, and must ever be, limited by considerations of expediency."

Then a distinguished review goes on to say, "that while the question of suffrage stands where it now does, so unsettled that every Congress and Parliament discuss it anew, we are glad that any thing should prevent the discussion as to conferring on woman a duty, the grounds of which are very vague and undetermined so far as regards men;" and a critic of Rosa Bonheur's magnificent pictures advises the "sad sisterhood of women's-rights advocates to visit the exhibition, and sigh to think how much one silent woman's hand outvalues for their cause the pathos and the jeers of their unlovely platform."

Such remarks as these are easily met. To the first objector, who declares, although the professed advocate of a republican government, that there is no such thing as any abstract right to vote, we reply, that in this particular discussion we don't care about abstract rights: what we want is our own share of the tangible acknowledged right which human governments confer. If in England this right depends on a property qualification, then we claim that there the property qualification shall endow woman as well as man with the right of suffrage. If in America it depends upon an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then we demand that our government recognize woman as so endowed, and receive her vote.

To the reviewer we say also, If the grounds of suffrage are vague and undetermined in theory, they may remain so, so far as our interference is concerned. What we ask to share is the steady right to vote, which has been actually granted, and never disputed, since our government was founded; and sufficiently pressed, we might add, that, if there is ever any chance of limiting the right of suffrage, we shall do all we can to secure its dependence on a certain amount of education, in preference to a certain amount of wealth.

As to the art critic, we thank him for calling us the "sad sisterhood." We should be sorry to be otherwise, when pleading for women before men; sorry to find matter for jesting in those purlieus of St. Giles and Five Points and the Black Sea, beating up remorselessly against these very doors, which lie at the very heart of our effort. As to the matter of going to see the Horse Fair and the Highland Cattle, it will probably be found to be a fact, that, in every city where those great pictures have been exhibited, "women's-rights women" have been their earliest visitors; and, standing before the canvas, have thanked God, with an earnestness the art critic never dreamt of, for that silent woman's hand, that glorious woman's life. It was not necessary for him to remind us of what Solomon had said so much better three thousand years ago; namely, that "speech is silvern, and silence is golden." Nathless, silver is still current in all markets; and, God willing, we are not ashamed to use it.

We intend to claim, in words, the right of suffrage; and why?

Turning from that wretched estimate of woman, and of man's duty toward woman, which the law-books have just offered us, we claim the right of suffrage, because only through its possession can women protect themselves; only through its exercise can both sexes have equality of right and power before the law. Whenever this happened, character would get its legitimate influence; and it is just possible that men might become rational and virtuous in private, if association with women compelled them to seem so in public.

It is noticeable, that every man disclaims at his own hearth, and in the presence of women, whatever there is of disgraceful appertaining to political or other public meetings. Somebody must be responsible for these things; and yet, if we are to believe witnesses, nobody ever does them. The bare fact of association must take all the blame.

The laws already existing prove conclusively to woman herself, that she has never had a real representative. What she seeks is to utter her own convictions, so that they shall redeem and save, not merely her own sex but the race.

That the right of suffrage would be a protection to women, we see from this fact, that it would at once put an end to three classes of laws:—

I. Those that protect her from violence.

II. Those made to protect her from fraud.

III. Those that protect society from the passions of both sexes.

The moment woman began to exercise this right, I think we should see moral significance streaming from every statute. We should no longer hear that seduction was to be sued as "loss of service:" it would become loss of honor to more than one. We should no longer hear that consent or temptation excused it: we should find that God demanded chastity of both sexes, and had made man the guardian of his own virtue. We should find, that, if its punishment admitted of degrees, it should be heaviest where a man committed it in defiance or abuse of a positive trust.

Let us look at a single decision in the light of these principles. Let us take the case of Harris versus Butler, reported in the notes to Davis's Prize Essay.

A man named Harris had apprenticed his daughter to a milliner named Butler, paying as an entrance-fee a sum equivalent to a hundred and fifty dollars. After a short time, the girl was seduced by her mistress's husband. She became seriously ill, and was returned to her father, who lost not only his hundred and fifty dollars, but all the benefits of her apprenticeship, and was obliged to provide her with board, medicine, and nursing.

Why the father became liable for the care of his child under such circumstances does not appear. Common sense would suggest that the court might have required this at the hands of the Butlers; but, unfortunately, law has very little to do with common sense.

The father brought an action against Butler: but the defence urged, that he could only sue for "loss of service;" that her "services" were not his after she was apprenticed to Mrs. Butler; that Mrs. Butler and her husband were "one person in law;" and that, if Butler chose to deprive himself of her services for his own ends, the law had no remonstrance to make, no redress to afford.

The prosecution urged, that the "care of morals" was one of the duties involved in the very system of apprenticeship; but the court denied the claim, unless it were distinctly set forth on the articles signed.

This is but one case out of hundreds accessible to you all. The moment woman becomes a law-maker, such records will be wiped out of your life. They may make a certain sort of show in your law-books; but what have the unbending laws of God to do with this "one person in law," this plea for "loss of service"? At the eternal bar, no man will dare to echo that plea, no judge rehearse that verdict. Such law rests not in the "bosom of God;" its voice chimes not in keeping with the harmony of his countless spheres.

You object to seeing women in Parliament. English lords tell us that delicate matters have to be discussed there, with which women would hardly care to meddle. The natural growth of society opens the area of all proprieties. Delicate matters come to be discussed in most households; and it is reasonable to suppose that they would be more delicately and rationally discussed if they were sometimes publicly met. It is my opinion, that no subject is fit for discussion at all that cannot be discussed between men and women. It is separating the sexes in such cases, that opens the way to indecency. All great themes of human thought and human virtue, men and women ought to be trained to consider seriously together; and where better than in the Congress or the Parliament? Think only of the debate which I have quoted on the New Divorce Bill! Could such a scene have taken place in the presence of women? Recur to the trial of Queen Caroline; or to that of the Duke of York, when accused of conniving at the corrupt sale of military commissions by his mistress, Mrs. Clarke.

Under date of Feb. 16, 1809, Freemantle writes: "The scene which is going on in the House of Commons is so disgusting, and at the same time so alarming, that I hardly know how to describe it to you. Of course, while this ferment lasts (and God knows when it is to end), no attention will be paid to the business of the country."

In these instances, high-bred men showed a taste for low scandal; battening day after day on the same loathsome details, which the presence of a single woman must have checked. Here was a woman, too, this very Mrs. Clarke, somewhat debased and hardened, who had never a seat in Parliament, who had never dreamed of exercising the right of suffrage, yet was quite equal, as the evidence showed, to any political venality, striving in her way to outdo the very jobbers of Downing Street itself! Why should elections be scenes of tumult, or parliaments free fields for imbecile improprieties? Why should not a peeress feel herself as properly placed among her peers as the Queen seated at her Council?

We are not likely to withdraw our claim while it is sustained by such a man as John Stuart Mill, who, in his late essay on "Political Representation," advises this extension of the suffrage: "All householders, without distinction of sex," he says, "might be adopted into the constituency, on proving to the registrar's officer that they have fifty pounds a year, and can read, write, and calculate."

"The almost despotic power of husbands over wives," Mr. Mill adds in his "Essay on Liberty," "needs not to be enlarged upon here, because nothing more is needed for the complete removal of the evil than that wives should have the same rights, and should receive the protection of the law in the same manner, as all other persons; and because, on this subject, the defenders of established injustice do not avail themselves of the plea of liberty, but stand forth openly as the champions of power."

The dedication of this "Essay on Liberty" ought to be preserved in these pages; for it is full of historic significance:—

"To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that has been best in my writings; the friend and wife, whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest excitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward,—I dedicate this volume.

"Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work, as it stands, has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful re-examination, which they are now never destined to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one-half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it than is ever likely to arise from any thing that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom."

I said that this dedication ought, for many reasons, to be preserved in these pages. What is better fitted than such a tribute to check the jeering scepticism of the crowd as to the ability and purity of the sex? What could lay a better foundation for a better estimate on the part of the law? Necker, in his report to the French Government, publicly awarded to his wife the credit of the recent retrenchment in the expenses of the Government; Bowditch dedicated his translation of the "MÉcanique CÉleste" to the wife who aided him to prepare, and by her self-denial opened a way for him to publish it: but where, in the records of the past, shall we find such a tribute offered by such a man, as honorable in itself to the first political economist of our time as it is a gracious adornment to the name of the woman he loved? Does it not promise in itself the dawning of a brighter future for woman, when no "sad sisterhood" shall be needed either to proclaim woman's rights or redress her wrongs?[39]

About two years since (1858), the Stockholm "Aftonblad," a Swedish newspaper, stated that "the authorities of the old university-town of Upsal had granted the right of suffrage to fifty women owning real estate, and to thirty-one doing business on their own account. The representative that their votes assisted in electing was to sit in the House of Burgesses."

This is the way the matter is to begin. By and by, the interests of labor and trade will force the authorities of Bristol and Manchester, Newcastle and Plymouth, to do the same thing; and, after women have gone on for some twenty years electing members of Parliament, no one of us will be surprised to find some women sitting in that body. "But," objects somebody, "if that ever happens, we shall have women on juries, women pleading at the bar, women as attorneys, and so on." And this is exactly what we want. Women are very much needed on juries, and female criminals will never be tried by their peers until they are there. It is very seldom that a criminal case in which women are implicated is brought forward, when women could not be of immense service in clearing up evidence, and showing to the male jurors on the panel the absurdity or impossibility of some of the statements. The recent instance of Miss Shedden, who took up, at a moment's notice, a case which five well-feed lawyers of distinction declared themselves unprepared to defend, might be quoted in confirmation of our view. Mr. Russell said at the Liverpool Assizes lately, in a case which involved some peculiar evidence, "The evidence of women is, in some respects, superior to that of men. Their power of judging of minute details is better; and when there are more than two facts, and something be wanting, their intuitions supply the deficiency." And precisely the qualities which fit them to give evidence, fit them to sift and test it. Women often have occasion to smile, sometimes sadly, sometimes mischievously, at the verdicts passed upon their own sex. If women were to enter into the practice of law, or become law-makers, an immense change would take place in all that relates to it. Absurd technicalities would be swept off its papers. One hundred words would no longer do duty for one. Simple, common-sense forms of expression would take the place of obsolete Latin and Norman-French. Daylight would be let into indictments, and flaws would soon be hard to find. No woman ever existed, whose patience would stand, in cases where meaning and law are evident, the absurd delays of chancery courts, or the still absurder "filing of objections," or "defining of terms," with which lawyers amuse a jury, and which Sir Leicester Dedlock, we are told, considered as the bulwarks of the English Constitution. This impatience of woman might not be very valuable, if she were to legislate alone; but, controlled by man's conservative caution, it will be of the greatest service.

We are perpetually met by the opposition extended to any thing that is new. It ought to be our object, therefore, to show, that for woman to claim and possess the right of suffrage is by no means a new thing. It is easy to show from the records of most nations, that women held and exercised political power so long as power was supposed to inhere chiefly in property, and so long as women, either single or in association, possessed property not represented by men. Thus the suppression of religious houses in England put an end to the representation of abbesses. "Truly, we think more of money than of love," said one of the St. Simoniens: "we have more consideration for bags of dollars than human dignity. We emancipate women in proportion as they are property-holders; but, in proportion as they are women, our laws declare them inferior to us." It was only when the republican idea had crept to a certain extent into monarchical governments themselves, that women gradually dropped a recognized public influence which had depended on rank and wealth. What men have to do is, not to reconcile themselves to a woman's right to vote,—a right acknowledged hundreds of years ago, which is still covertly acknowledged when woman means property,—but to reconcile themselves to the idea that woman is a human being, and that humanity has a right to vote. Wherever governments decide that every individual has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they must admit the right of the individual woman to vote, or deny the fact of her humanity. There is the dilemma. In support of this statement, I should have shown you, that in France, as early as the reign of Louis XIV., the political rights of property were respected in the persons of women. At the present day, the remains of the old feudal and communal system still secure a kind of political influence to certain women in the provinces, and often confer upon their husbands a right of franchise. In the reign of Louis XIV., the women who hawked and vended fish took up the business of the "insolvent fishmongers," and managed so well, that they acquired wealth, married their children into the first families, and finally became an estate of the realm.

"Les Dames de la Halle," or "Dames of the Market," as they are called, have a corporate existence; and, if corporations have no souls, they ordinarily possess franchises! They have their queen, their laws, and a language peculiar to themselves. They take part in revolutions, and send deputations to the foot of the throne. Nor am I alluding now to long-past feudal or re-actionary crises. Louis Napoleon treats them as civilly as he does the clergy. When he was married, and when the young prince was born, they went to the Tuileries in their court-dress. Their princesses—and we are told that their blood-royal claims the higher privilege of beauty also—their princesses took the front rank in the procession, and offered bouquets to their imperial majesties. In response, Louis Napoleon gave to them what he gives to all corporations,—a very diplomatic speech.

I have told you what was granted at Upsal in 1858. It is a curious fact, that, just at the moment when this question of suffrage was first agitated by the women of the United States assembled in convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, Pauline Roland and Madame Moniot publicly claimed their civil rights in Paris. Pauline went herself to the ballot, and, when her vote was refused, published a protest after the fashion of our tax-payers. Very absurd English society found woman's first demand for the suffrage; yet what Englishmen refuse contemptuously to give to woman, certain men of the mean sort, yet calling themselves respectable, have not been ashamed in that very country to borrow of her. Even "Blackwood" helps out our argument, when it says, in November, 1854, "I believe, Eusebius, I speak of a notorious fact, when I say, that it is less than a century since, for election purposes, parties were unblushingly married in cases where women conveyed a right of freedom, a political franchise to their husbands, and parted, after the election, by shaking hands over a tombstone, as an act of dissolution of the contract, under cover of the words, 'Until death do us part.'"[40] The men who looked calmly on this profane and absurd fraud may well dread the moral influence of woman on elections. As to the historical argument for England, ladies of birth and quality, we are told, sat in council with the Saxon Witas. The Abbess Hilda presided in an ecclesiastical council. "In Wightfred's great council at Benconceld in 694," says Gurdon in his "Antiquities of Parliament," "the abbesses sat and deliberated; and five of them signed decrees of that council, with the king and bishops:" and that illuminated prebendary of Sarum, old Thomas Fuller, thus further chronicles the same event:—

"A great council (for so it is titled) was held at Becanceld (supposed to be Beckingham in Kent) by Withred, King of Kent, and Bertuald, Archbishop of Britain, so called therein (understand, him of Canterbury), wherein many things were concluded in favor of the church. Five Kentish abbesses—namely, Mildred, Ethelred, Æte, Wilnolde, Heresinde—were not only present, but subscribed their names and crosses to the constitutions concluded therein; and we may observe, that their subscriptions are not only placed before and above all presbyters, but also above that of Botred, a bishop present in this great council. It seems it was the courtesy of England to allow the upper hand to the weaker sex, as in their sitting, so in their subscription."

King Edgar's charter to the Abbey of Crowland, in 961, was with consent of the nobles and abbesses who signed that charter. In Henry the Third's and King Edward the First's time, four abbesses were summoned to Parliament; namely, of Shaftesbury, of Winchester, of Berking, and of Wilton. In the thirty-fifth year of Edward the Third, were summoned—by writ of Parliament, to sit in person or by their proxies—Mary, Countess of Norfolk; Alienor, Countess of Ormond; Anna Despenser; Philippa, Countess of March; Johanna Fitzwater; Agneta, Countess of Pembroke; Mary de St. Paul; Mary de Roos; Matilda, Countess of Oxford; Catharine, Countess of Athol.

As to the offices which women can hold in Great Britain, we have already quoted something from Mr. Higginson, in speaking of the prohibitions of the law. Lady Packington's estate has probably, by this time, passed into male hands: so she elects no more members of Parliament. Those who have read the plea of Lady Alice Lille, when she was forbidden to speak by attorney, will find no great difficulty in imagining that a woman could manage a government debate.

Such women as have purchased or inherited East-India stock have always had the privilege of voting at the meetings of the company, and so have assisted to govern that unhappy country. In the provincial English towns, if I may judge from the indirect testimony of novels and newspapers, women appear to attend all stockholders' meetings; certainly those held by the banks. In the United States, they are notified, but not expected to attend; a cool kind of insult, which I wish some women might astonish them by retaliating. If any bank were established by, or had a majority of, female stockholders, it would be quite easy to notify men, without expecting them to attend; and the alternative of trusting their own property to the judgment of women might possibly open the eyes of men to the absurdity of the present custom.

As we withdraw our eyes from the past, it is natural to inquire, What late changes have taken place in Great Britain? and what is the strength of the reform tendency? I have often said, yet I must repeat it here, that nothing has ever promised such noble usefulness for woman, nothing has ever occurred to change the popular estimate of her character, in the same degree as the formation of that out-of-door Parliament,—the Association for the Advancement of Social Science. It offers a position of entire equality to woman. It encourages her to express herself in the presence and with the sympathy of the wisest men, and gives her an opportunity to speak to the actual Parliament through her own influence exerted on its best members. It has been well said (I think, by Mrs. Mill), that the very best opportunities of education will be opened to woman in vain, until she is practically invited to turn them to account. Here, in this association, is her first practical invitation in Great Britain. God grant that she may understand the responsibility it involves, and bear it well! But the formation of this association in 1857 was preceded by other steps. It was on the 13th of February, 1851, that a petition of women, agreed to by a public meeting at Sheffield, and claiming the elective franchise, was laid before the House of Lords by the Earl of Carlisle; and, in July of the same year, Mrs. Mill's admirable article on the "Enfranchisement of Women," now become commonplace on account of the extensive and thorough use that has been made of it, appeared in the "Westminster."

The examination of Florence Nightingale before a commission of inquiry bore witness no less to the surpassing ability of the woman than to the increasing value of such ability to all governments. In connection with it, one could not but smile at the distress felt by certain journals over a single mistake on the part of the lady as to the proper title of a subordinate officer.

In the month of March, 1856, the "London Times" published a petition to both Houses of Parliament in behalf of an amendment of the English property-laws. This petition was signed by many women whose names are well known and dear to us,—by the late Anna Jameson, so well known to the world as an accomplished critic in literature and art; by the wife and sister of the poet Browning,—Elizabeth Browning, herself the first poet among women, so far; by Bessie Raynor Parkes and Matilda Hayes, the editors of the "Englishwoman's Journal," the establishment of which of itself constitutes an era in the progress of human thought; by Barbara Bodichon, the well-known artist; by Harriet Martineau, distinguished in political economy; by Mary Howitt, the womanly story-teller and ballad-maker; and Mrs. Gaskell, the author of "Mary Barton." The petition was supported in the House of Lords by Lord Brougham, and in the House of Commons by Sir Erskine Perry.

After the close of the session in April, 1857, a dinner was offered to Lord Brougham in acknowledgment of the distinguished ardor with which he had pressed this bill,—the Married Woman's Property Act of 1857. This bill did not apply to Ireland or Scotland, nor to pre-existing contracts; that is, to marriages solemnized before the first day of January, 1858. It was not passed; but a clause for the protection of the earnings and savings of married women was introduced into the New Divorce Bill, and has already proved a blessing to hundreds. This clause, however, operates only in cases of desertion,—a charge easily evaded.[41]

The New Divorce Bill passed in 1858: the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act Amendment Bill passed in July, 1858; and since then, the Divorce Court Bill in August, 1859; both of these last having been made necessary by the first change in the law. It was in April, 1858, that Mr. Buckle delivered his lecture on "Civilization;" an important contribution to that estimate of woman, which is beginning to act powerfully on all legislation. The Law-Amendment Society also published a report, urging a thorough reform of the law.

In connection with the reforms effected in the mother-country, it may be well to state, that similar reforms are being effected in Canada. Legislators there turn for their precedents to England; but there can be no doubt that the agitation in the United States largely contributes towards these changes.

A Married Woman's Property Act passed the Council in May, 1858; but as these changes are still in progress, and a progress much interrupted by political fluctuations, it seems hardly worth while to enter into their details.

In one respect, the statutes of Canada are marked by a singular inconsistency. They record the only instance, within my knowledge, in which a government distinctly forbids women to vote; and almost the only instance of a government conferring that right, even to a limited extent. In the twelfth year of Victoria, the Canadian Government passed a statute in these words: "No woman is or shall be entitled to vote at any election for any electoral division whatever." What spasm of autocratic terror, what momentary rebellion against their liege lady, inspired this act, we are left uninformed. For the most part, in all countries, women wait to be told that they may vote; and their ineligibility is decided by the introduction of the word "male," or the popular construction of the word "citizen," which, it is quite evident, does not mean a woman. But it was in Canada also that a distinct electoral privilege was conferred by intention in 1850; an intention, however, which indicated no enlargement of views, nor desire of reform, nor recognition of woman at her human value: it was simply an intention on the part of the Protestants to secure a little more political power. Not humane, then, but interested motives dictated the omission of the word "male" in that section of the statutes which provides for the election of school trustees. It was desired thus to bring the influence of female property-holders and Protestants to check the Roman-Catholic demand for separate schools. Three things made it easy for Canadian women to vote under this provision:—

1st, The great degree of individual independence seen everywhere in English-born women, as compared with American.

2d, The respect felt, in all countries where distinctions of rank exist, for the mere property-holder.

3d, The political excitement of the local Protestant Church, which sustained them to the uttermost.

They have voted for ten years; and a four-years' residence among them was sufficient to convince me, that no greater derangement to society would occur if the full right were conferred. In connection with English government and English colonies, I ought to speak of the government of Pitcairn's Island. It was the mutinous crew of his majesty's ship "Bounty" that settled Pitcairn's Island. Adams, the boatswain, was the father of the little community, and drew up the simple code of laws by which the islanders are still governed. On Christmas Day, a magistrate and councillor are elected for the ensuing year; men and women over sixteen being allowed to vote. The women assist in the cultivation of the ground, and take no inconsiderable share in the municipal debates. The fate of this experiment is not yet decided; so I have thought it worth while to preserve the statement. You will have already seen, that in England, as elsewhere, so long as the right of suffrage depended upon possession of property, upon hard pieces of eight, or broad acres of land, there was no dispute of woman's privilege. It is no new thing for woman to vote in England: it is a very old thing. It is only a question whether she shall vote upon the ground of her humanity.

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