THE UNITED-STATES LAW, AND SOME THOUGHTS ON HUMAN RIGHTS.

"Men often think to bring about great results by violent and unprepared effort; but it is only in fair and forecast order, 'as the earth bringeth forth her bud,' that righteousness and praise may spring forth before the nations."—John Ruskin.

IN passing last to the United States of America, one is tempted to ask, with Anna Brewster when rehearsing the hardships of Helvetian women, "Can it be true, as the advocates of despotic government often say, that under no government are women so harshly treated, so stripped of all independent rights, as under a republic? In republican Helvetia, the Vaudois peasant woman leaves all household care, to stand, spring, summer, and autumn, in her vineyard; but not a bunch of grapes can she gather for the market, without her husband's leave. He may have loitered and smoked through every sunny day, while she has dug and dressed and watered; but she may not sell one grape to buy bread for her children."

And this is a picturesque statement of the English common law, on which the common law of the United States still rests in the main, and on which it has rested entirely until within the last ten years.

A few passages from Chancellor Kent will indicate,—

I. The estimate of woman formed by this law, and the property-laws built upon this estimate.

II. The laws which regulate divorce. We shall have to consider,—

III. Woman's general civil position; and,—

IV. The right of suffrage.

Fortunately for us, Chancellor Kent talks plain English. He tells us exactly what the law means, and sets it forth as if it were written to be understood; which is not exactly the case with all his predecessors.

As to the estimate of woman on which the laws are based, we have, in connection with what we have already quoted from English law-books, the following statement:—

"But as the husband is the guardian of the wife, and bound to protect and maintain her, the law has given him a reasonable superiority and control over her person; and he may even put gentle restraints upon her liberty, if her conduct be such as to require it. The husband is the best judge of the wants of the family, and the means of supplying them; and, if he shifts his domicile, the wife is bound to follow him."—Kent's Commentaries, vol. ii. p. 180.

The best comment on this is found, I think, in a story told by Mrs. Stowe, who says that she once saw a little hut perched on a barren ledge of the Alps, out of reach of human help, and without pasture; but a little below it were stretches of sweet Alpine grass, inviting to eye and foot, and capable of affording sustenance to goats and sheep. "How long have you lived here?" asked Mrs. Stowe of the old woman. "Above forty years."—"And what made you come so far up? Don't you like the meadow?"—"I don't know," was the reply: "it was the man's notion."

It is somewhat questionable, whether this man would be the best judge of the wants of his family, Chancellor Kent to the contrary notwithstanding; as also what might be his idea of "gentle restraint," in case the wife had refused "to shift her domicile." As to property, Kent proceeds:—

The general rule is, that the husband becomes entitled, on the marriage, to all the goods and chattels of the wife, and to the rents and profits of her lands; and he becomes liable to pay her debts and perform her contracts.

1. If the wife have an inheritance in land, he takes the rents and profits during their joint lives. He may sue in his own name for an injury to the profits of the land; but, if the husband himself chooses to commit waste, the wife has no redress at common law.

2. If the wife, at the time of her marriage, hath an estate for her life, the husband becomes seized of such an estate, and is entitled to the profits during marriage.

3. The husband also becomes possessed of the chattels real of the wife; and the law gives him power, without her consent, to sell, assign, mortgage, or otherwise dispose of, the same as he pleases. Such chattels real are liable to be sold on execution for his debts (vol. ii. p. 133). If he survive his wife, the law gives him her chattels real by survivorship.

4. If debts are due to the wife before marriage, and are recovered by the husband afterward, the money becomes, in most cases, absolutely his own.

On the other hand, the husband is,—

1st, Obliged to provide for his wife out of his fortune, or her own that he has taken into his custody, of what the court calls "necessaries,"—these again, of course, to be dependent on the "man's notion"! and,—

2d, Becomes liable for her frauds and torts during coverture,—the law understanding, as well as a merchant, that it is useless to "sue a broken bench."

The indulgence of the law toward the wife, we are then told, is founded on the idea of force exercised by the husband; a presumption only, which may be repelled. What this indulgence is, we may well be puzzled to guess, unless the phrase indicate that she is not to be prosecuted for theft, where both are guilty; and yet, if the presumption that he compelled her to steal be repelled, she may be prosecuted, and found guilty.

A wife cannot devise her lands by will; nor can she make a testament of chattels, except it be of those which she holds en autre droit, without the license of her husband. It is not strictly a will, then, only an appointment, which the husband is bound to allow (vol. ii. p. 170).

The laws are essentially the same in Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, and New York; in the latter State, of course, only as applicable to marriages contracted before the passage of the new bill. It is the same in all the States, with one or two Western exceptions; because the passage of a new law never annuls pre-existing contracts. In consequence, practice becomes contradictory and intricate; and most lawyers not only feel, but show, a great dislike to new laws on that account.

In regard to marriage and divorce, Kent says that the English practice was, not to grant divorce for unfaithfulness on the part of the husband; and the early settlers of Massachusetts made the same distinction, creating a difference at the very outset in the moral responsibility of the two, fatal alike to happiness and civilization.

In 1840, the policy of South Carolina continued so strict, that there had been no instance, since the Revolution, of a divorce pronounced by a court of justice, or an act of the legislature.

In Massachusetts, the law was, that divorce could only be had for criminality. In Vermont, New Jersey, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Michigan, divorce from "bed and board" may be had for extreme cruelty; and, in Michigan, for wilful desertion for three years.

In Indiana, it is rendered for any cause, at the judgment of the court.

In Illinois, divorce may be had for the usual causes, and for drunkenness or cruelty, or such other cause as the court shall think right; and, in such cases, the wife does not lose her dower. These differences in statute law indicate, one would think, a variety sufficient to test in time all the theories of reformers and experimentalists.

As to the consistency of the law, Poynter says,—

"It is singular to see a marriage annulled on account of the misspelling or suppressing of a name, which would be held valid against the lasting misery of the parties."

By cruelty is meant "reasonable apprehension of bodily hurt." Mere austerity of temper, petulance of manners, rudeness of language, a want of civil attention, even occasional sallies of passion, do not amount to that cruelty which the law can relieve. The wife must disarm her husband by the weapons of kindness!

I have shown you upon what estimate the general common law of the United States is based, as regards both property and divorce. It is needless to say that this estimate is very little to be preferred to that of older countries; but, when the reformers of our cause are tauntingly asked what good they have done, they may reply proudly, though they should point to the changes of legislation during the last ten years alone. Since 1850, the laws have been changed in at least nineteen States. The credit of this change should certainly rest with the men and women of this reform; for, in every State, its sympathizing friends helped to frame the new laws.

Whether justly or not, Rhode Island claims the honor of leading the way in such changes. In 1844, the Hon. Wilkins Updike introduced a bill into her legislature, securing to married women their property under certain regulations. The step was in the right direction. In 1847, Vermont passed similar enactments. In 1848-9, Connecticut, New York, and Texas followed; in 1850, Alabama; in 1853, New Hampshire. In 1855, Massachusetts passed an act of a still more comprehensive kind. It was essentially the same as that introduced into her Senate, in 1852, by the Hon. S.E. Sewall. It was not wholly satisfactory to those who prepared it, but was the best it was thought possible to pass.[42] In 1856 and 1857, the Legislatures of Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Maine, altered their property-laws,—Rhode Island advancing somewhat on her first step.[43] Wisconsin and Iowa have followed; and it is not likely that any new States, unless they should be slave States, will repeat the old barbarisms.

I have given Rhode Island the precedence she claims; but there are certain statutes of the State of Illinois, as early in date as January, 1829, which deserve to be alluded to, on account of their unusual liberality.

If married, and over the age of eighteen years, a woman in Illinois may, in spite of her husband, devise her real estate, and bequeath her personal estate, to any one for ever.

The wife may administer on her deceased husband's estate, in preference to all others, if she apply within sixty days. On her husband's death, she inherits one-half of his real estate in fee-simple, absolute; and the whole of his personal estate, with her rights of dower in addition.

The wife has not legally the first title to the guardianship of her child on the demise of her husband; but she has it by a kind of comity, the consent of public opinion and the courts.

In reference to the wife's inheriting from the husband, my correspondent, the Hon. William H. Herndon, says,—

"You will perceive a difference in the two sections relating to the wife and husband as inheriting from one another, favorable to the wife apparently. In the twenty-second section you will find, that, in case of the wife's death without children, the husband inherits one-half of her real estate in fee-simple, absolute; but nothing is said about her personal. This is because the common law has already given him her personal estate on her marriage."

So we see that the State of Illinois did not quite divest itself of the barbarisms of the common law.

In a later letter, Mr. Herndon continues:—

"Our Illinois Legislature has this winter (1860-61) enacted a law, allowing women (married women) all their property,—real, personal, mixed,—free from all debt, contract, obligation, and control of their husbands. This law puts man and woman in the same position, as far as property-rights and their remedies are concerned. This is right,—just as it should be. For my life, I cannot see why there should be any distinction between men and women, when we speak of rights under government. A woman's rights are identical with a man's. Where he is limited, she should be; where she is limited, he should be."

In Rhode Island, the civil existence of the husband and wife is but one; and, though the letter of the law considers her property acquired by trade or inheritance as technically her own, still it is no longer under her single control. If, as a wife, she sells merchandise, the buyer becomes a debtor to her husband and herself. If she makes a purchase, her note is good for nothing, unless her husband's signature is affixed to it. He can dispose of the whole of her personal estate, unless the buyer has been previously notified by her, in writing, that the property is exclusively her own. Her real estate the husband cannot sell: but even of this she cannot dispose by will; so, perhaps, it might as well be sold. The absurdity becomes ludicrous, when we remember that the law makes her competent to devise any number of millions, so long as it is invested in bank-stock or merchandise.

In the State of Vermont, there are three peculiar provisions:—

First, If the husband abscond without making sufficient provision for his wife, she is permitted (!) to use her own property and earnings, or the earnings of her minor children, to secure a support. This permission indicates the tender mercies of the common law, and reminds us of the Helvetian peasant-woman.

Second, She is exempted from personal restraint during the pendency of a divorce suit.

Third, A mother and her illegitimate child may inherit from each other.

A married woman may devise her real estate, and it is exempt from attachment for the sole debts of her husband. She may have her husband's life insured, the insurance to be made payable to her or her children. If he should be put into the penitentiary, she may transact business as if she were a feme sole.

The laws of inheritance are liberal; and the common law prevails by statute, when not repugnant to any recorded statute.

In Connecticut, in 1855, all the real estate owned at the time of marriage, or subsequently inherited by the wife, rests absolutely in her. All her personal estate passes to her husband; but all that she may afterward receive remains in her right, her husband being only her legal trustee. Her earnings are subject to his trusteeship, and nothing more. She is the guardian of her own children; and the court always confirms this right, unless she is incapacitated. In case of divorce, the father is entitled to the children, unless objection is made. On the decease of the husband childless, one-half of his personal estate goes to the wife, and a life-interest in one-third of the real; or the whole, if it be needed for her support.

In New Hampshire, the common law prevails for the most part. What express enactments she passed in 1853 seem to refer rather to making the position of a deserted wife equivalent to that of a feme sole than any thing else.

As regards Massachusetts, it is common to say that the legislation of 1855 leaves very little to be desired, beside the right of suffrage; but a keen eye still detects more than one shortcoming. The custody of the wife's person still vests in the husband.

With reference to the guardianship of children, the custom is in advance of the law; while her power to make a will is so carefully guarded, that it might as well be surrendered.

A married woman in Massachusetts can make no contract to bind her, except one strictly relating to her trade, business, or property. She cannot, for instance, indorse a note, or be a surety for another person in any way.

In Maine, since 1857, a wife may hold the wages of her own labor.

In Ohio, at the same date, the law gave this right only under conditions. Long before any such changes took place, however, the current of public opinion often forced courts to decide against the common law, and in accordance with equity,—equity not technically, but divinely, considered.

Judge Graham, of the Court of Common Pleas in Perry County, Penn., made such a decision in a suit where a wife claimed return of earnings loaned by her to her husband, and accumulated after marriage. The legal question brought before Judge Graham was, "Can a wife maintain a suit against her husband?" He decided that she could legally hold him to a contract of the kind under consideration; and a verdict was rendered for the woman, in the sum of $2,508.

In August, 1859, Mrs. Dorr put in a claim for $40,000 on her husband's estate, in the Court of Insolvency in Worcester County. The court objected to entertaining the claim until after the choice of an assignee. The hearing was never completed; some private adjustment taking its place. The claim was said to be the first of the kind in the Commonwealth.

We come now to the consideration of the Property Bill, passed in the spring of 1860 by the State of New York. Not only as the latest act of specific legislation, but as the most complete provision ever made by any government to outwit the common law, it demands our attention. After it was passed, a deficiency relating to the rights of guardianship was discovered, and a supplement was added. By these two acts, the "New-York Tribune" tells us that at least five thousand women in that State are redeemed from pauperism, and established in peaceful homes.

But the supplement bears on one important point, which should be alluded to. According to the common law, as I showed in referring to England, a daughter owes service only to her father. The mother, who bore and nursed her; who has trained her up, it may be by painful sacrifices, to habits of propriety and thrift,—has no claim upon her service, even in her minority. By conferring on the mother, in case of the father's decease, all the rights, remedies, privileges, and responsibilities in law appertaining to the father, the new act meets the difficulty.

Before quitting the subject, we cannot refrain from alluding to the fact, that, as early as 1849, the State of New York had passed a qualified measure in regard to property; and directing your attention to the manifest truth, that every imperfect act of legislation constitutes a new set of exceptions to general rules, and very undesirably complicates legal practice.

If reforms are not to be unpopular, they should be simple and complete.[44]

In commenting on the passage of these bills, advocated by Mrs. Stanton before the committees of the Assembly and the Senate, the "New-York Tribune" says,—

"Mrs. Stanton talked forcibly. It is needless for me to say that she talked earnestly of woman's sufferings, sweetly of her endurance, eloquently of her rights. When she talked of her right to be protected in the enjoyment of her property, of her right to be released from the bondage of an ill-assorted marriage, she was listened to with marked favor. She pleaded these demands with the feeling of a true woman; and she carried the conviction, that she was not asking more than policy, as well as justice, demanded should be conceded. When she claimed that her voice should be heard on the hustings, and her vote be received at the ballot-box, she was earnest and eloquent and plausible; but she must have felt that she was not convincing her audience, and she did not."

Here the single word plausible vitiates, as cunning reporters well know how to do, the whole effect of the sentence. Far more reasonably, the "Tribune" might have said she was earnest, eloquent, and sensible; and so have spurred its readers to thought instead of ridicule. His criticism, however, launches fairly our last subject of discussion. It is needless to say, that nowhere in the United States has woman the full power of suffrage.

In New Jersey, women formerly possessed, and often exercised, this right. By the Constitution, adopted July 2, 1776, the privilege of voting was accorded to all inhabitants, of full age and clear estate, who had resided for a certain time in the country, and who had fifty dollars in proclamation-money.

In 1790, a Quaker member of the Assembly had the act so drawn as to read "he or she." Until 1807, women often voted, especially in times of great political excitement; at such times, for the most part, "under influence," we may presume. Many voted in the presidential contest of 1800; and a newspaper of that period thanks them for unanimously supporting John Adams in opposition to Jefferson. So they were supposed, at times, to act independently. At an election in Hunterdon County in 1802, the ballots of some colored women elected a member of the legislature. Probably this fact, by stimulating the local prejudice against color, and the fading-out of all aristocratic distinctions, which left no property qualifications on the statute-book, led to a change; for, in 1807, an act was passed, limiting the right of suffrage to "free white male citizens of twenty-one years."[45]

In later times, committees of intelligent men, in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio, have reported in favor of granting to women the right of suffrage; but the question was lost in the ballot which followed.

If the constitution prepared for Kansas should be accepted by the people, single women will be empowered to vote there. In Nebraska, the lower house passed a vote, conferring the privilege; but it was too late in the session for the question to come before the upper branch.

In 1858, a proposition to amend the Constitution of the State of Connecticut, so as to extend the franchise to women, received eighty-two votes in the House of Representatives. It was defeated by a majority of forty-five. In 1852, the Kentucky Legislature, in providing for the election of school-trustees, enacted that "any widow, having a child between six and eighteen years, may vote in person or by proxy."

A provision thus limited by public opinion and prejudice would probably have very little force. I have understood that such a provision has taken effect in some parts of Michigan, and it has also been recommended to the State of Massachusetts. Very early in the history of our government, its inconsistencies became a matter of comment among women themselves. How could it be otherwise? How can she be said to have a right to life, who has never consented to the laws which may deprive her of it, who is steadily refused a trial by her peers, who has no voice in the election of her judges? How can she be said to have a right to liberty, whose person, if not yet in custody, almost inevitably becomes so on her maturity, who does not own her earnings, who can make no valid contract, and is taxed without representation? How can that woman be said to possess either the right or the reality of happiness, who is deprived of the custody of her own person, of the guardianship of her children, of the right to devise or share her property?

The government is tyrannical which leaves a single citizen in this predicament. What is to be said of a government which enforces it upon half its subjects?

It is not strange then, that, half in jest, half in earnest, the wife of John Adams wrote to him in 1776 to ask if it "were generous in American men to claim absolute power over wives at a moment when they were emancipating the whole earth." Nor was it strange, that, in a more serious mood, Hannah Corbin of Virginia should write to her brother, Richard Henry Lee, on the same subject.

The American Colonies were struggling against the mother-country, on the ground that taxation and representation should be inseparable.

The "National Intelligencer" has to confess, when it tells the story, that it was not strange if "strong-minded" women of that era, finding themselves taxed, should wonder why they could not vote.

Mr. Lee wrote from Chantilly in reply, March 17, 1778:—

"I do not see," he says, "that any thing prevents widows, having large property, from voting, notwithstanding it has never been the case either here or in England. Perhaps it was thought unbecoming for women to press into tumultuous assemblies.... Perhaps it was thought, that, as all those who vote for taxes must bear the tax, none would be imposed, except for the public good.

"For both the widow and the single woman," he continues, "I have the highest respect; and would, at any time, give my consent to secure to them the franchise, though I do not think it would increase their security.

"The Committee of Taxation," he adds, "are regularly chosen by the freeholders and housekeepers; and, in the choice of them, you have as legal a right to vote as any person."

Mr. Lee thinks, that, in a few minutes' conversation, he could "content" his sister upon the subject; but eighty years have passed away, and the question is still unsettled.

What he calls a "woman's security" is proved to be no security, even in the small matter of money; for men are constantly imposing taxes, the burden of which they are never to bear. As I have shown, in treating of labor, what position women hold toward the State in the matter of employment, I will not repeat the statement here. Let these pages bear no other burden than that of woman's civil rights,—"woman's rights,"—a phrase which we all hate; which soils the lips that use it; which women speak with such unction as a slave might clank his chains!

Soil the lips? Not because it is a phrase which stirs the ridicule and the contempt of the weak-minded; not because you consider it only the second term of the Bloomer equation: but because the necessity to use it shows how little has yet been done; shows that men still dwell on distinctions of sex, in preference to identities of duty; that women are play-things still in the popular estimate,—creatures of the nursery and the drawing-room, but not angels of God, joint-heirs of immortality.

We have not laid a secure foundation for any statement on this subject, unless we have made it clear that "woman's rights" are identical with "human rights;" that what men do for women, they do in far wider measure for themselves; that no father, brother, or husband can have all the privileges ordained for him of God, till mother and sister and wife are set free to secure them according to instinctive individual bias.

The subject would have no interest for me, if it were but a selfish clamor of one class for advantages over another; but it does interest me,—interest beyond all earthly debate,—because, in its evolution, there unfolds also the highest interest of our common humanity.

That public opinion has been somewhat conquered, the reception given to women in the lyceum is alone sufficient to show. When a woman of good social standing struggles with convention on the one hand, and womanly affection on the other, she still stands on the platform somewhat as she did at the stake; but, on the other hand, the awakening public interest has nurtured a class of women who owe all that they have and are to the platform itself.

With no oppressive restrictions in their circumstances,—endowed with strong good sense and a vigorous talent,—they have won their way to the public esteem; and are stronger and healthier than most women, only because they have had an object for life and thought to grasp.

What will most help women in the matter of labor, and, through labor, to their "civil rights," is a new conception of the dignity of labor on the part of the educated classes, men as well as women.

Harriet Hosmer comes back from Rome to queen it over our men; Rosa Bonheur drives a tandem of Flemish horses through a square of canvas, and over the very necks of her critics: but we want women who shall turn the trades into fine arts. Do you smile at the expression? It is legitimate. France has already answered my demand. A finer statue than the "Moses" of Michael Angelo would be one womanly model of patient thoroughness. A finer picture than the glowing pencils of Titian and Claude ever fused into a canvas would be the prospective elevation of manual labor.

The fine arts are already obedient to woman's will. To what woman is it reserved to make the useful arts pay tribute? Dependent upon the "right to labor," as we have already seen, is "woman's civil equality." If all the fields of human labor are thrown absolutely open (and you admit that they ought to be); if women enter and grow wealthy therein; if every second woman, for instance, were an intelligent property-holder,—is it credible that she, or her husband for her, would remain contented in her present minority? Would she not want a seat in the legislature to protect her property, a vote to control appropriations and taxes? There are no revolutionists like the industrial classes.

It was the discontent of merchants and artisans which hunted Charles Stuart to the block, and paved the way for English freedom. It was the discontent of trade, a long-entertained moral disgust, culminating in indignant contempt at a Stamp Act, which secured American independence,—I wish we could say, American freedom as well. Create, then, a class of wealthy working women, you who are ambitious of a female franchise, and society will be forced to give you your desire.

Wendell Phillips says, that, when woman is once brought to the ballot-box, men will cry out, "Educate her!" in self-preservation. If this be true (and I am not sure that it is; for a great many popular elections are at this moment carried in the Middle and Southern States, to come no nearer home, by the uneducated class, partly by the dram-shops indeed),—if this be true, however, it is a "poor rule which does not work both ways;" and we may go farther than Mr. Phillips, and say, he will also cry out, "Give her something to do!" that she may understand the interests of property, and be qualified to plead for them. Mr. Phillips plants himself upon the right of suffrage, and goes back to secure education and free labor, for State reasons. He has every right to do it; but, on the other hand, we may rest upon our undoubted right to education, and go forward, with safe, strong steps, to claim the right of suffrage. When a majority of women find the means of thorough education open, then a much greater number will seek actual employment, and immediately the interests of property will compel them to clamor for suffrage. Do not misunderstand me. It is not a nation of paid underlings, of ever so intelligent clerks and apprentices, men or women, that will control the springs of government, and overthrow institutions as well as prejudices, if they stand in their way: it is the heads of firms, the movers in great undertakings, the proprietors of mills, the builders of ships, the contractors for supplies, persons conversant with large interests, and quick to see their jeopardy, which, as women no less than men, must secure the elective right.

How I should rejoice to see a large Lowell mill wholly owned and managed by women! What is to make it possible?—only, that the unoccupied women of wealth and rank, at this moment in the Commonwealth, should combine to build or buy such a mill. Suppose it well managed, representing ultimately a million of dollars: do you believe it would long remain without political power? Just as the testy trade of Upsal demanded the franchise for its eighty-one women, so would the Lowell mill.

Every year, these ten years, our sturdy friend Dr. Hunt has sent up her protest to the city assessors. She has not quite had the heart, as I wish some woman had, to let them sell her household goods over her head, for non-payment of taxes; but the City Government sits as serene and patient under her inflictions as if she had never spoken. Her protests probably go back to the pulp of the paper-mill; and, but for the newspaper, we should never know that they were written. But five thousand female property-holders, calling their own caucus, and storming the City Hall with well-concerted words, would compel any government to listen; would compel committees to sit, and departments to act. Let it be your first duty, then, to add to the number of intelligent female workers.

Last summer, I heard one of our friends say, that the reason that men did not wish women to enter medical societies, and receive medical diplomas, was, that they were unwilling to be detected in their own double-dealing and malpractice. I should not be willing to indorse a statement so broadly made. Mean men may justify it: but the men I have known, the men who have been at once my inspiration and my strength,—these men were not mean; yet among them even the bravest doubted, at first, as to the expediency of our discussion.

These men have felt a tender reverence for moral purity in woman. They have seen laborers of the lower class fall as if smitten by a pestilence. They had not faith to save the world at such a cost. From the malpractice and guilty dread of mean men, then; from the sensitive horror of the noblest, let us learn, at least, that the duty woman owes the State is a moral duty. A full understanding of this will give her courage to press her claims. It is the power of conscience and love which she is to bring to bear on the ballot-box, and which is to mould, with her aid, questions and interests hitherto untouched by any higher impulse than the love of gain.

I cannot leave this statement of human rights, without claiming for woman one right of which men very commonly deprive her; in behalf of which society makes no clamor, and about which the most radical reformers say very little. I mean woman's right to find man in his proper place, as counsellor and friend.

As father, to find him interested, equally with his wife, in the spiritual custody and training of his daughters; giving thus some portion of each day to imbuing young womanly souls with manly strength.

As brother, to find in him wise respect for womanhood, and helpful free communion.

As husband, to find him, unless there is manifest interposition of Providence, always at the head of his family, always the support and counsellor of his wife, as she in turn is to be his; making his love her shelter, his strength her dependence, his experience her guide, his manliness the complement of her womanliness.

As a son, to find him always anxious and ready to minister, provident to think, patient to bear, and willing to act; never shirking, from idleness, the duty which an active mother does not shrink from bending, perhaps breaking, beneath.

Society sets man free from every conceivable family duty, without a word. On the other hand, it binds women down to them with cords of iron, and is pitiless if a single one be snapped. I do not ask society to require less of woman, but more of man. There is an immense amount of cant, intentional and unintentional, talked upon this subject. Last January, I heard one of our wisest and best public teachers speak upon the constitution of the family; and, when he had spoken whole pages of solid sense, he said this foolish thing,—that the life of the family rested in the mother; that, when she died, the children must scatter, the father could not hold them alone, but that the father might be faithless or dissipated, might abide in foreign countries, might wander for years a stranger, and still the family sacredness be unbroken. I do not believe it. I protest against such a view of the family, as a great public evil, and one which no public teacher should strengthen by any heedless or sentimental words.

No man has a right to ask any woman to be his wife, who means to sacrifice her life to his own love of business or pleasure or vagrancy; who does not mean to stand strong at her side till death. I speak for the heart of all womanhood when I say, that no good woman would ever accept such an offer, if she supposed she were to be idly left to fulfil its duties alone. If God had intended to rear women independent of manly influence, he would never have constituted the family. It is because every woman needs every man that its laws are absolute. If the physical legitimacy of the family depend upon the mother, the spiritual legitimacy depends upon the holy faithfulness of the father. When death or sickness or imperative duty takes her beloved ones from her, God sends to woman the Comforter, who helps her to bear and do her double duty. Yet even this angel is born of a voiceless sorrow. It was in recognition of this human need, as much as of the divine love, that Theodore Parker was accustomed to pray to Him who is both Father and Mother.

Do you object, that, under the present constitution of society, man cannot find time for this fidelity? When woman becomes an active worker, adding to the resources of the household, man is set free from a portion of his care. The future offers him ample time; the present, more than he uses. I wish I could see him as anxious to make acquaintance with his own young children as with the gay society of his neighborhood.

The actual guardianship of society is now thrown into woman's hands. It does not belong to her: it belongs to men and women.[46]

Individual men shrink from the idea of being "governed by their wives." From traditional indolence, however, and that sentimental respect which does not permit a man to sit in a woman's presence, the "world" has certainly come to be governed by "its wife." Worst of all, nobody punishes it even by a sneer.

The historical development of woman's social progress corresponds to the logical statement upon which I have insisted.

Nearly two centuries ago, Mary Astell would have established a college for women; but the bigotry of Bishop Burnet defeated her plans. The niece of a beneficed clergyman, she had not the courage to press her schemes against the open opposition of the church. Many other efforts, like hers, to secure and make use of education, led the way to a recognition of a decided bias in the individual: so when, a century later, Mary Wollstonecraft was born, the way was open for the assertion of the right to labor. This assertion is hardly indicated in her most celebrated work; but it gives pungency and effect to the dreariest pages of her novels.

In Australia, when a female child is born, the natives break her finger-joints; an artificial distinction, which they seem to think more decisive and enduring than God's own limit of sex.

Mary Wollstonecraft saw, that civilized society, enslaved by tradition and custom, imposed conditions quite as arbitrary, and, to all practical purposes, broke every joint in a woman's body; leaving her helpless, to depend on the strength and skill and affection of man.

A passionate and thriftless father, who spent more than three daughters could earn, and whom she nevertheless protected to her dying day, did not give her a very high idea of the security of such dependence. The response to her appeal was heard in a myriad of distinguished voices, and seen in the consecutive, chosen, and persevering labors of Harriet Martineau in political economy, of Anna Jameson in artistic criticism, of Mary Carpenter in the reformation of criminals, of Florence Nightingale in sanitary reform, of Caroline Chisholm in emigration, of Mrs. Griffith in marine botany (a special study, which she may almost be said to have created), of Janet Taylor in practical philanthropy among seamen, and nautical astronomy.

This selection of duty shows the advance of the movement. Formerly a woman might be literary in a general sense: now she had the oversight of the field, and might choose the place and kind of her work.

All this prepared the way for the advent of Margaret Fuller, and brought about the condition of which she was the exponent. She caught the rumor which floated in subtle discord all around her. Her quick insight detected every true and living germ of thought in the confused social deposits and exhalations. Out of the discord, she wrought a quaint and scholarly music; out of the refuse, she enriched a fragrant garden: and this song, this outgrowth, had an essential music and beauty, and were caught at once to the popular heart.

That the division of labor was already taking place, was obvious enough to her: so she claimed, in advance, the right of suffrage. Society was already prepared to make this claim, but only discovered its readiness as it listened to her enthusiastic song. Like Deborah, our friend struck her cymbals; and, when the heart of the people shouted consent, they "made her a judge over them."

Although it was doubtless owing to many older causes, it seemed as if her statement of the "great lawsuit" in 1844 led to the first Woman's Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848; and, in 1850, the National Woman's-rights Association began the yearly work in which it has ever since persevered.

Man, as well as woman, has been forced to respect this work, moved by the moral destitution in the lowest, and the profane inanity in the highest, ranks of life, which is the result of our social depravity.

Profane inanity, I repeat; for every helpless woman is a living, intolerable blasphemy against the Most High. Not more a blasphemy than every helpless man; but society neither expects, defends, nor provides for, helpless men. It is only the helpless woman who is expected and approved.

Often do we hear it said, that no law forbids American women to work.

Neither, it has been responded, is there any law which forbids Chinese women to walk; but the careful ligatures, so closely pressed by unsuspecting mothers about those tender feet, do not do their work more surely than the inevitable restrictions of society.

In summing up this constantly accruing list of influences and changes, I must again direct your attention to the fact, that, from the earliest dawn of modern civilization, women have been, in some nations at least, invested with political power.

The mock-marriage, by which the woman's entailed suffrage served a fraudulent purpose; the abbesses called to Parliament in right of abbey-lands, the permission accorded to the eighty-one women of Upsal, the position of the French "Dames de la Halle," the female stockholders in the East-India Company, that one persistent female property-holder in Nova Scotia, the fifty-dollar proclamation-money in New Jersey,—all indicate that there never has been, and never will be, any serious difficulty about woman's voting in any age or any country where the right to vote depends upon the possession of property, and where she herself professes to desire it.

Understand, then, that the abstract right to vote is not the question for you to consider: that was settled some hundreds of years ago.

The practical question for American men to put to themselves is, whether their own democratic experiment is a failure. Will you go back to the property basis for your own franchise? or do you still profess to believe, that man—as man, as child of God—has a right to reign, which does not depend upon broad doubloons or broad acres? And, if man has this right upon a simple human ground, how can you deny it to woman?

Will you say that she is not human,—that she has no soul?

Even Mahomet did better than that. Some one once asked him if the marriage-tie were immortal, and if a husband might claim his wife in the next world:—

"If the man be the superior being," he replied, "he can claim his wife or not, as he chooses; but, if the woman be the superior, the decision must rest with her."

And what Mahomet thus prophesied of the world to come is clearly true of the world that is. There is no such thing as cheating either God or humanity.

Let him who aspires to rule make himself superior in understanding and moral purpose, and he will rule.

No possibilities, visible or invisible, need daunt him; but, let him be false by one hair's breadth, and he carries his doom in his own bosom as certainly as the flawed crystal at the approach of frost.

You are, then, to base your demand for woman's civil rights upon her simple humanity,—the value of the soul itself.

If you deny this foundation for her, you deny it for yourselves, and the Declaration of Independence is only an impertinent pretence.

It may not be easy to push this truth home, and force your friends and neighbors to consider it; but, once convinced in your own minds, you cannot escape from the responsibility.

Wendell Phillips once told us of an old catechism, printed, I think, at Venice in 1563, which contained the following question and answer:—

Q. How shall I show my obedience to God?

A. By never doing any thing which is disagreeable to my neighbor.

Is it possible that this catechism is still in general use?

Fashionable morality is of so loose a sort, that to do any thing disagreeable to one's neighbor is still, in the estimation of most people, the unpardonable sin. People who are capable of hesitating on that account need not be greatly anxious about their responsibility.

Our cause does not need them; resting, not on timid self-deceivers, but on immutable truth, and the hallowed recognition of woman herself.

Society still cries, like King John in the play,—

And woman, serener than Constance, may whisper back,—

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