[35] Under Catholic form the bride promises to consecrate her body to the marital rite.

[36] Chiniquy.—The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional.

[37] “The clergy formerly, and to this very day, declare those women evil who desire to limit self-indulgence and procreation.”

[38] See Lecky.—Hist. European Morals.

[39] In a sermon laudatory of the preacher’s office, delivered in the May Memorial Unitarian Church, in Syracuse, N.Y., Sunday, Nov. 27, 1887, Rev. Mr. Calthrop, the pastor, said: “Noble words are your chief weapons of offense and defense. But remember it is not you that speak when you utter them, but the Holy Ghost.” From Report of Sermon, published in the “Daily Standard,” November 28th.

[40] Whoever wishes to gain insight into that great institution, Common Law, can do so most efficiently by studying Canon Law in regard to married women. Commentaries.

[41] Distinction of class appears most prominently in all the criminal laws for which the clergy are responsible. It was for the man of low estate, the slave, and for women, that the greatest atrocities were reserved. If the thief was a free woman she was to be thrown down a precipice or drowned (a precedent without doubt for dragging a witch through a pond). If the thief was a female slave, and had stolen from any but her own lord, eighty female slaves were to attend, each bearing a log of wood to pile the fire and burn the offender to death. Pike.—Hist. of Crime in England, 49-51.

[42] A correspondent of “The London Times” writes from Rome that he has not heard a single doubt expressed as to the paternity of the Countess Lambertini, and the line adopted by the Antonelli heirs tacitly confirms it. They strenuously oppose the production of any of the evidence the plaintiff has offered. They object to the depositions of the witnesses being heard and tested, and they have declared their intention of impugning as forgeries the documentary proofs tendered. These documents consist of some letters written by Antonietta Marconi to the Archpriest Vendetta, and particularly one dated April 1, 1857, wherein, asking him to prepare a draught of a letter to the Cardinal, she says that “Giacomo” does not send her money, although he knows that he has a daughter to support, and that Loretina is a cause of great expense. “Write to him forcibly,” she says, “or I shall do something disagreeable.” The extent of the scandal in Rome does not consist so much in the fact of a Cardinal in Antonelli’s position having had one or more children, as in the law-suit which has brought all the intimate details connected with the affair before the public. Antonelli was to all intents and purposes a layman, filling one of those civil departments of an ecclesiastical temporal Government to qualify for which it was indispensably requisite to assume the ecclesiastical habit. He accepted early in life those obligations without which no career would have been open to him, and, like many others, he regarded them as mere matters of form, for under the imperturbable mask of the ecclesiastical diplomat beat a heart filled with the warmest domestic affections and instincts; and how strong those feelings were in him was fully demonstrated in his will, and is clearly shown in every incident of the story now revealed.

Dame Gervasi has been subjected to a rigid cross-examination by the counsel of the brothers Antonelli. The proceedings were conducted with closed doors, but a Roman correspondent of “The Daily News” seems in some manner to have wormed out the essential facts. When the mysterious “foreign young lady” went to lodge at Dame Gervasi’s, Cardinal Antonelli—so the gossip runs—paid several visits to his protege. “I remember,” says the Dame, “that when I went to open the door to them I held in my hand a bowl of beef tea, which I was taking to the patient. Dr. Lucchini was the first to enter, and I soon recognized the second visitor to be Cardinal Antonelli, who wore a long redingote and a tall hat. He took the bowl, which I held in my hand. ‘This is for the patient,’ he said inquiringly, but before I had time to reply he had swallowed part of its contents.” Dame Gervasi then proceeded to relate how Dr. Lucchini left the Cardinal alone with the foreign young lady. The witness put her ear to the keyhole, and heard distinctly the sound of kisses alternating, with sobs between the two. His Eminence, to console the patient, told her he had taken every precaution against the matter becoming known. “Don’t be afraid,” he said, “nobody will be a bit the wiser. You will be able to marry. As for the baby, that’s my affair. I will take care of her, and I swear to you that she will never know the name of her mother.” Dame Gervasi gave the names of the persons who had come to her on behalf of the brothers Antonelli, and these emissaries, she said, tried to make her disclose all she knew, and promised her large sums of money to bind her to silence as to the clandestine part played by Signora Marconi, and as to the Cardinal’s relations with the “foreign lady.”—N.Y. Tribune, July 5, 1878.

[43] See Reeves.—Early English Law.

[44] Hollingshed’s Chronicles.

The foundation of old common law seems traceable to Martia, the widow of Guilliame, left regent of her husband’s kingdom, comprising a part of Britain, two hundred years prior to the christian era. This queen directed her attention to framing a system of laws which acquired for her the surname of “Proba,” or “The Just.” They were evidently one of the three parts under which the common law is divided, although under canon law the entire property of the wife became that of the husband upon marriage.

[45] In England, in 1538, or even earlier, it was calculated that besides the tithes, one-third of the kingdom was ecclesiastical property, and that these vast possessions were devoted to the support of a body of men who found their whole serious occupation in destroying the virtue of women. Lea.—Sacerdotal Celibacy.

[46] The pagan laws during the Empire had been continually repealing the old disabilities of women; and the legislative movement in their favor continued with unabated force from Constantine to Justinian, and appeared also in some of the early laws of the barbarians. But, in the whole feudal legislation, women were placed in a much lower legal position than in the Pagan Empire. In addition to the personal restrictions which grew necessarily out of the Catholic Christian doctrines concerning divorce, and the subordination of the weaker sex, we find numerous and stringent enactments, which rendered it impossible for women to succeed to any considerable amount of property, and which almost reduced them to the alternative of marriage or a nunnery. The complete inferiority of the sex was continually maintained by law; and that generous public opinion which in Rome had frequently revolted against the injustice done to girls, in depriving them of the greater part of the inheritance of their fathers, totally disappeared. Wherever the canon law has been the basis of legislation, we find laws of succession sacrificing the interests of daughters and of wives, and a state of public opinion which has been formed and regulated by these laws; nor was any serious attempt made to abolish them till the close of the last century. The French Revolutionists, though rejecting the proposal of Sieyes and Condorcet to accord political emancipation to women, established at least an equal succession of sons and daughters, and thus initiated a great reformation of both law and opinion, which sooner or later must traverse the world. Lecky.—Hist. Morals, Vol. II, pp. 357-359.

[47] Sheldon Amos.—Science of Law.

[48] Ibid.

[49] Our laws are based on the all-sufficiency of man’s rights. Society exists for man only; for women merely as they are represented by some man; are in the mundt or keeping of some man.—Descriptive Sociology of England.

[50] This slavish condition of the wife yet prevails in over one-half the states of the union.

[51]. The relations in respect to property which exist between husband and wife in England, is solely grounded on her not being assumed at common law to have sufficient command of her purse or of her future actions wherewith to procure the materials for making a contract. The legal presumption then is, that she did not intend to make one, and therefore the allegation that she did make a contract would simply on the face of it be a fraud. Amos.—Science of Law.

[52] The jurisconsults had evidently at this time assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle to the code of equity. The situation of the Roman woman, whether married or single, became one of great personal and proprietary independence; but Christianity tended somewhat from the very first to narrow this remarkable liberty. The prevailing state of religious sentiment may explain why modern jurisprudence has adopted those rules concerning the position of woman, which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilization. No society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by middle Roman law. Canon law has deeply injured civilization.—Sir Henry Maine.

[53] Under the Commonwealth, society assumed a new and stern aspect. Women were in disgrace; it was everywhere declared from the pulpit that woman caused man’s expulsion from Paradise, and ought to be shunned by Christians as one of the greatest temptations of Satan. “Man,” said they, “is conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity; it was his complacency to woman that caused his first debasement; let man not therefore glory in his shame; let him not worship the fountain of his corruption.” Learning and accomplishments were alike discouraged, and women confined to a knowledge of cooking, family medicines and the unintelligible theological discussions of the day. Lydia Maria Child.—History of Woman.

[54] Many women made their entrance into literature through the medium of a cook book, thus virtually apologizing for the use of a pen.

[55] The slavish superstition under which church teaching still keeps the minds of men was no less shown by the thousands who visited the St. Anne relic in the United States. Nor are Protestants but little less under the same superstition, accepting the teaching of the church without investigation. An educated Protestant girl, upon her return from Europe, recently, gravely declared that during her absence she had seen the spear which pierced the Saviour’s side.

[56] The most interesting of all to Americans is the copy of the American Constitution that President Cleveland sent to the Vatican by Cardinal Gibbons. It is printed on vellum in richly illuminated English characters, and bound in white and red. It is enclosed in a case of purple plush with gold hinges, and bears this autographic inscription by President Cleveland:

Upon the next page, beneath an American eagle printed in gold, is this inscription:

The page bearing this inscription and all the fly leaves were of exquisite watered silk.

[57] “Owing to the pope’s refusal to accept the gifts of the king and queen of Italy on the occasion of his jubilee, all the members of the House of Savoy, including the Duke d’Aosta and the Princess Clotilde, have omitted to send offerings. This is the fly in the jubilee ointment of Pope Leo XIII., and settles the question of concessions of temporal power. Nevertheless, the day is passed when the claim of ‘imprisonment in the Vatican’ will further avail the pope.”

[58] When Linnaeus published his sexual system of plants, in the eighteenth century, he was ridiculed and shunned as one who had degraded nature.

[1] In the dominion of the Count de Foix, the lord had right once in his lifetime to take, without payment, a certain quantity of goods from the stores of each tenant. Cesar Cantu.—Histoire Universelle.

[2] Two women seized by German soldiers were covered with tar, rolled in feathers, and exhibited in the camp as a new species of bird.

[3] Among the privileges always claimed, and frequently enforced by the feudalry, was the custom of the lord of the manor to lie the first night with the bride of his tenant.—Sketches of Feudalism, p. 109.

By the law of “Marquette” under the feudal system (which rested on personal vassalage), to the “lord of the soil” belonged the privilege of first entering the nuptial couch unless the husband had previously paid a small sum of money, or its equivalent, for the ransom of his bride; and we read that these feudal lords thought it was no worse thus to levy on a young bride than to demand half the wool of each flock of sheep. Article on Relation of the Sexes.—Westminster Review.

[4] The custom of Borough-English is said to have arisen out of the Marchetta or plebeian’s first born son being considered his lord’s progeny.—Dr. Tusler.

[5] “It is not very likely that Louis XIV thought the time would ever come when the peasant’s bride might not be claimed in the chamber of his seigneur on her bridal night. Those base laws, their revocation has been written in the blood of successive generations.”

[6] See Feudal Dictionary.

[7] The interests of ecclesiastics as feudal nobles were in some respects identical with those of the barons, but the clergy also constituted a party with interests of its own.

[8] M. Gerun, as quoted by Grimm, gives curious information upon this subject.

[9] Par example, dans quelques seigneuries, oÙ le seigneur passent trois nuits avec les nouvelles marriees, il fut convenu qu’il n’en passant qu’une. Dans d’autres, ou le seigneur avant le premiere nuit seulment, on ne lui accordes plus qu’une heure.

[10] Collins de Plancy.

[11] Feudal Dictionary, p. 179.

[12] Claiming the right of the first night with each new spouse.—Boems Decisions 297, I-17.

[13] Raepsaet, p. 179.

[14] The popes anciently had universal power over the pleasures of marriage.—Feudal Dictionary, 174.

[15] In the transaction the alternative was with the husband; it was he who might submit, or pay the fine, as he preferred or could afford. Relation of the Sexes.—Westminster Review.

[16] These (courts) powerfully assisted the seigneur to enforce his traditional privileges at the expense of the villeins.—H. S. Maine.

[17] Sometimes the contumacious husband was harnessed by the side of a horse or an ox, compelled to do a brute’s work and to herd with the cattle.

[18] He is followed by bursts of laughter, and the noisy rabble down to the lowest scullion give chase to the “cuckold.”—Michelet.

[19] The oldest born of the peasant is accounted the son of his lord, for he, perchance it was, that begat him. When the guests have retired, the newly wedded husband shall permit his lord to enter the bed of his wife, unless he shall have redeemed her for five shillings and four pence.—Grimm.

[20] Droit de cuissage c’est le droit de mettre une cuisse dans le lit d’une autre, ou de coucher avec le femme d’une vassal ou d’une serf.

So much scandal was caused that finally the archbishop of Bourges abolished this right in his diocese.—Feudal Dictionary.

[21] A yoke of cattle and a measure of wheat was afterwards substituted for a money ransom, but even this redemption was in most cases entirely beyond the power of the serf.

Under the feudal system the lord of the manor held unlimited sway over his serfs. He farther possessed the so-called Jus Primae Noctis (Right of the First Night), which he could, however, relinquish in virtue of a certain payment, the name of which betrayed its nature. It has been latterly asserted that this right never existed, an assertion which to me appears entirely unfounded. It is clear the right was not a written one, that it was not summed up in paragraphs; it was the natural consequence of the dependent relationship, and required no registration in any book of law. If the female serf pleased the lord he enjoyed her, if not he let her alone. In Hungary, Transylvania, and the Danubian principalities, there was no written Jus Primae Noctis either, but one learns enough of this subject by inquiry of those who know the country and its inhabitants, as to the manners which prevail between the land owners and the female population. That imposts of this nature existed cannot be denied, and the names speak for themselves. August Bebel.—Woman in the Past, Present and Future.

[22] In a parish outside Bourges the parson as being a lord especially claimed the first fruits of the bride, but was willing to sell his rights to the husband.

[23] The infamous noble who accompanied a certain notorious actress to this country in the fall of 1886, possessed forty livings in his gift.

[24] No greater proof of this statement is needed than the rapidity with which the disease brought by the sailors of Columbus spread over Europe; infecting the king on his throne, the peasant in the field, the priest at the altar, the monk and nun in the cloister.

[25] In deference to that public sentiment which required the ruler to pose before the world as a libertine, Friedrich Wilhelm I., of Prussia (1713-1740), although old and in feeble health, kept up the pretense of a liason with the wife of one of his generals, the intimacy consisting of an hour’s daily walk in the castle yard.—August Bebel.

[26] Down to Pius IX. See The Woman, the Priest and the Confessional.

[27] When the Emperor Charles II entered Bourges, he was saluted by a deputation of perfectly naked women. At the entrance of King Ladislaus into Vienna, 1452, the municipal government sent a deputation of public women to meet him the beauty of whose forms was rather enhanced than concealed by their covering of gauze. Such cases were by no means unusual.—Woman in the Past, Present and Future.

[28] Memoirs of the Princess of Bareith, a sister of Frederick the Great.

[29] In Russia the nobles have such rights by law over the women of their lands that the population scarcely resent the sale by auction of all the young peasants of their village. These nobles, a race once proud and mean, extravagant and covetous, full of vice and cunning, are said to be a class superior to the people. Yet they are working the ruin of their influence by multiplying in the masses the number of individuals, already very considerable, to whom they have transmitted their genius with their blood.—A. R. Craig, M.A.

[30] London, February 1.—The Odessa correspondent of “The Daily News” says: Hunger typhus is spreading alarmingly. In large towns in this region all the hospitals are filled, and private buildings are being converted into hospitals. This is the state of affairs in Moskovskia and Viedomosti. A correspondent writing from Russia declares that the more fanatical and superstitious portion of the peasantry believe that Count Tolstoi is Antichrist, and decline to accept his bounty for fear they will thus commit their souls to perdition.

[31] Two celebrated women, Augusta, of Koningsmark, and Madame Dudevant (George Sand), traced their descent to this king.—Letters to “New York Tribune.”

[32] Adam Badeau.—Aristocracy in England.

[33] The at one time famous “Alexandra Limp,” affecting the princess of Wales, and copied in walk by ultra-fashionable women, was said to be due to the effects of an infamous disease contracted by the princess from her husband.

[34] Rev. Dr. Varley.—“New York Sun,” July, 1885.

[35] At the beginning of the Christian era, Corinth possessed a thousand women who were devoted to the service of its idol, the Corinthian Venus. “To Corinthianize” came to express the utmost lewdness, but Corinth, as sunken as she was in sensual pleasure, was not under the pale of Christianity. She was a heathen city, outside of that light which, coming into the world, is held to enlighten every man that accepts it.

[36] Les Cuisiniers et les marmitons de l’archeveques de Vienne avaient impose un tribut sur les mariages; on croit que certains feuditaires exigeaient un droit obscene de leur vassaux qui se mariaient, quel fut transforme ensuite en droit de cuissage consistant, de la part du seigneur, a mettre une jambe nue dans le lit des nouveaux epoux. Dans d’autres pays l’homme ne pouvait coucher avec sa femme les trois premieres nuits sans le consentement de l’eveque ou du seigneur du fief. Cesar Cantu.—Histoire Universelle, Vol. IX. p. 202-3.

[37] Moral History of Women.

[38] There are those who to enrich themselves would not only rob their sisters of their portion, but would sell for money the honor of those who bear their name. The authority of the son during the feudal period was so absolute that the father and mother themselves often winked at this hideous traffic.—Ibid, p. 46.

[39] Unless an heiress, woman possessed no social importance; unless an inmate of a religious house no religious position. There are some records of her in this last position, showing what constant effort and strength of intellect were demanded from her to thwart the machinations of abbots and monks.—Sketches of Fontervault.

[40] See page 193.—Fleta.

[41] Bracton, 26, 195, 208. Littleton’s Tenures, 55, 174, 209.

[42] Gratain, Canon for Spain in 633, says the nuptial robe was garnished with white and purple ribbons as a sign of the continence to which young married people devoted themselves for a time.

[43] Eight young men, living in the vicinity of North Rose, Wayne County, have been held to await the action of the grand jury for rioting. A young married couple named Garlic were about to retire for the night when they were startled by the appearance of a party of men in the yard. The party immediately commenced beating on pans, discharging guns and pistols, pounding with clubs, screaming and kicking at the doors of the house. The bride and groom were terrified, but finally the groom mustered enough courage to demand what the men wanted there. Shouts of “Give us lots of cider or we’ll horn you to death,” were the answers. An attempt was made to break in a rear door of the house. The bride and groom and John Wager, who was also present in the house, braced the doors from the inside to prevent a forcible entrance, and the inmates had to defend the property nearly all night. The horning party, at last weary of calling for cider, left the premises giving an extra strong fusillade of firearms and a series of yells as they departed. The eight young men were arrested a few days later on suspicion of being in the horning party.—Press Report, Jan. 14, 1887.

[44] Whenever we discover symbolized forms, we are justified in inferring that in the past life of the people employing them there were corresponding realities. McLennon.—Studies in Ancient History, p. 6.

[45] He was thrown into the moat to cool his ardor, pelted with stones, derided as a proud and envious wretch.—Michelet.

[46] The maids redeeme their virginities with a certain piece of money, and by that Terme their lands are held to this day. Heywoode.—History of Women, London, 1624; Lib. 7,339.

[47] Margaret was canonized in 1251, and made the Patron Saint of Scotland in 1673. Several of the Scotch feudalry, despite royal protestation, kept up in the famous practice until a late date. One of the earls of Crawford, a truculent and lustful anarch, popularly known and dreaded as “Earl Brant,” in the sixteenth century, was probably among the last who openly claimed leg-right, the literal translation of droit de jambage.—Sketches of Feudalism.

[48] The feeling is common in the north that a laird, or chieftain, getting a vassal’s or clansmen’s wife or daughter with child, is doing her a great honor. Burke.—Letters from an English Gentleman, about 1730.

[49] Pres de cet etang, et devant sa maison.

[50] In days to come people will be slow to believe that the law among Christian nations went beyond anything decreed concerning the olden slavery; that it wrote down as an actual right the most grievous outrage that could ever wound man’s heart. The Lord Spiritual had this right no less than the Lord Temporal. The parson being a lord, expressly claimed the first fruits of the bride, but was willing to sell his rights to the husband. The courts of Berne openly maintain that this right grew up naturally. Michelet.—La Sorciere, p. 62.

[51] Among the rights asserted by the Protestant clergy in the middle ages, and which caused much dispute, was exemption from lay jurisdiction even in cases of felony.

From the throne downward every secular office was dependent upon the church. Froude.—Times of Erasmus and Luther.

[52] Among these de coucher avec leur femmes, d’enlever les premices de leurs filles.

[53] H. S. Maine.

[54] In Babylon every young woman was obliged once in her life to offer her person for sale, nor was she permitted to leave the temple, where she sat with a cord about her waist, until some stranger taking it in hand led her away. The money thus obtained passed into the treasury of the temple as her “purchase money, or redemption, releasing her from farther prostitution, and permitting her marriage, which was forbidden until such sale had been consummated.”

[55] Although a similar custom is said to have prevailed in India under Brahaminical rule, it must be remembered that wherever found it is an accompaniment of the Patriarchate, and under some form of religion where the feminine is no longer considered a portion of the divinity, or woman allowed in the priesthood.

[56] It has been too readily believed that the wrong was formal, not real. But the price laid down in certain countries exceeded the means of almost every peasant. In Scotland, for instance, the demand was for several cows, a price immense, impossible.

[57] Christian History, First Period, by Joseph Henry Allen.

[58] In the history of Julius Caesar there is something peculiarly curious and mythical. Caesar had all the honors paid to him as to a divine person. At the end of five years a festival was instituted to his honor, as to a person of divine extraction. A college of priests was established to perform the rites instituted for the occasion. A day was dedicated to him, and he had the title also of Julian Jove, and a temple was erected to him.—Anacalypsis, I, 611.

[59] Law of the first night.

[60] The lord’s right.

[61] Leg right—the right to place a naked leg in bed with the bride.

[62] Droit de cuissage, c’ele droit de mettre une cuisse dans le lit d’une autre, ou de coucher avec le femme d’un vassal, ou d’un serf.

[63] Droit d’afforge, the right to prey upon the bride.

[64] Droit de marquette, took its name in Scotland from the redemption piece of money, a demi-mark, marquette, or little mark, a weight of gold or silver used in Great Britain and many other European countries.

[65] Mrs. Josephine Butler, so stating.

[66] A government license reads: “Chinese women for the use of Europeans only.”

[68] The Emancipation of Women, January, 1888.

[69] “The penal code provides for the punishment of a man who commits mischief by injuring an animal of the value of ten rupees or upwards, with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both. If the animal be worth fifty rupees, the punishment may be for five years. If a man induces his neighbor’s dog, by bait or otherwise, to follow him with the intention of dishonestly taking the dog out of his neighbor’s possession, he may be punished with imprisonment for three years, or with fine, or with both. But while a man’s dog, his horse, his elephant are taken care of by legislation; while the very plants in his garden are protected; his young daughter, the light of his eyes and the joy of his home, may be ruined and her fair fame stolen with impunity, provided she has attained the age of ten years and is unmarried, and proof is wanting that she has resisted her seducer.”

[70] The New York Society for the “Prevention of Diseases.”

[71] Of Berlin, August Bebel says: “Now things are neither better nor worse in Berlin than in any other large town. It would be difficult to decide which most resembled ancient Babylon; orthodox Greek St. Petersburg, Catholic Rome, Christian Germanic Berlin, heathen Paris, puritan London, or lively Vienna.—Woman in the Past, Present and Future.

[72] The latest attempt for licensing vice in the United States was made in New Orleans, 1892, in the form of an ordinance proposing to grant to Dr. Wm. Harnon the privilege of levying an inspection tax upon those known as “Public Women” of a.50 a week for fifteen years.

The “Louisiana Review” said of it:

“A more revolting proposition than this has never come under our notice, and we are amazed that the health committee failed to detect its character, however artfully it may have been screened by the pretext that it was intended to lessen the harm of the social evil.”

The “New Delta,” in its issue of August 31, said: “The queer and ill-favored monopoly which the ordinance for the regulation of houses of bad repute sought to establish has not been successful on the first effort. It goes back to a committee. Let us hope that it will remain buried there forever, and decent people be saved the infliction of a public discussion of the miserable scheme. Such systems of ‘regulation’ would disgrace the devil, and the proposition for the city to share in the plunder of these poor wretches would shame a Piute village.”

The Woman’s Journal, September 19, said:

“It is well that this measure has failed on the first attempt; but to refer a matter to a committee is not necessarily to kill it, and its fate in the committee should be closely watched. The laws establishing the state regulation of vice in England were smuggled through Parliament about 1 o’clock in the morning, when half the members were absent or asleep; but it took seventeen years of painful and distasteful agitation to repeal them. Prevention of bad legislation is better than cure.”

This attempt was finally defeated through the energetic opposition and work of Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon.

[73] The reporter, while the committee was still in session, went to a procuress and ordered a pretty girl, 14 years of age, certified by a physician to be good, to be delivered to his order as “agent for gentlemen of 60.” The madame accepted the order, and in a short time produced the girl certified. The reporter investigated the child’s history, and ascertained that her father was dead and her mother was a poor working woman. The girl was dressed in an old black frock. Having completed the purchase of the girl, the reporter hastened to arrange for her delivery anywhere and to any person designated by the committee.

[74] A committee composed of Cardinal Manning, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop of London and two laymen, examined the evidence respecting criminal vice in London, becoming satisfied that the statements made by the “Pall Mall Gazette” were substantially true.

[75] The Rev. Mr. Spurgeon preached a powerful sermon upon the patrician iniquity of London, comparing it to the worst sins of ancient nations, one sure, sooner or later, to bring destruction upon both individual and nation.

[76] When you see a girl on the street you can never say without inquiry whether she is one of the most-to-be-condemned or the most-to-be-pitied of her sex. Many of them find themselves where they are because of a too trusting disposition; others are as much the innocent victims of crime as if they had been stabbed or maimed by the dagger of the assassin.... These women constituted a large standing army, whose numbers no one can calculate. Gen. Booth.—Darkest England, 51-56.

[77] Children as they go to and from school are waited for and watched until the time has come for running them down.—Report of the Secret Commission.

[78] It seemed a strange inverted world, that in which I lived those terrible weeks, the world of the streets and brothel. It was the same, and yet not the same as the world of business and the world of politics. I heard of much the same people in the house of ill-fame as those of whom you hear in caucuses, in law courts and on ’change; but all were judged by a different standard, and their relative importance was altogether changed. Mr. Stead.—“Pall Mall Gazette.”

[79] Report of Secret Commission.

[80] An immense number of public women congregated at Nice during the time of its Historic Council, which settled the genuineness of the books of the Bible.

[81] So fast has this class of pecuniarily independent single women increased within the past two and a half decades, women who prefer a single life with its personal independence, to a married life with its legal dependence and restrictions, as to call from the “London Times” the designation of “Third Sex.”

[82] The statistics of prostitution show that the great proportion of those who have fallen into it have been impelled by the most extreme poverty, in many instances verging upon starvation.—Hist. European Morals, 2, 203.

[83] Belgium and Holland entered into an agreement a few years since for its suppression.

[84] When Hon. Henry Blair presented a petition, asking for the better protection of girls, he said: “Our civilization seems to have developed an almost unknown phase of crime in the annals of the race, and today the traffic in girls and young women in this country, especially in our large cities, has come to be more disgraceful and worse than ever was that in the girls of Circassia.”

This Christianity of ours has much to answer for.—Woman’s Tribune.

[85] It was at one time proposed to arrest all women out alone in the city of Syracuse, N.Y., after 9 o’clock in the evening. Had the ordinance been enacted, a lady of mature years and position was prepared to test its legality.

[86] Eighteen women were arrested on Monday night in the fifteenth and twenty-ninth police precincts, and after being held in confinement over night, were taken before Justice Duffy at the Jefferson Market Police Court Tuesday morning.

“What were these women doing?” asked the justice.

“Nothing,” replied the officer.

“Then why did you arrest them?”

“We have to do it, sir. It is the order of the police superintendent when we find them loitering on the streets.”—New York “Sunday Sun,” June 28, 1885.

[87] Mr. Breen said the horrors of the camps into which these girls are inveigled cannot be adequately described. There is no escape for these poor creatures. In one case a girl escaped after being shot in the leg, and took refuge in a swamp. Dogs were started on her trail, and she was hunted down and taken back to her den. In another case a girl escaped while a dance was going on at the shanty into which she had been lured. After several days and nights of privation she made her way to an island near the shore in Lake Michigan, where a man named Stanley lived. But the dogs and human bloodhounds trailed her, Stanley was overcome, and the girl was taken back. The law now provides for imprisonment of only one year in case of conviction of any connection with this traffic, and it is proposed to amend it.—Telegraphic Report.

[88] Tales of a horrible character reach us from Michigan and other northern lumber districts of the manner in which girls are enticed to these places on the promise of high wages, and then subjected to brutal outrages past description. Some three hundred of these dens are located. These girls are sold by the keepers, passing from one den to another, from one degree of hellish brutality to another (we beg pardon of all brutes), all escape guarded against by ferocious bloodhounds. The maximum of life is two months.—“Union Labor Journal.”

[89] Tony Harden used to keep dives in Norway and Quinnesic, and it is said of him that after paying a constable a2 to bring a girl back who had tried to escape, he beat her with a revolver until he was tired, and was about to turn a bull-dog loose at her, when a woodsman appeared and stopped him. The next spring Harden was elected justice of the peace.—“Woman’s Standard.”

[90] The Rev. Mr. Kerr, of the Protestant Church, Colon, recently discovered three young girls brought to the Isthmus for improper purposes. He took the children away, and with the assistance of others returned them to their parents in Jamaica.

[91] Quebec, April 11.—Wholesale trading in young and innocent girls for purposes of prostitution has come to the notice of the authorities. Disreputable houses in Chicago, New York, Boston and other cities in the United States have agents here, who ingratiate themselves with young women and induce them to go to the states, where they are drawn into a life of infamy. The trade has been carried on to an alarming extent, sometimes fifteen girls being shipped in a week. The prices paid to agents depend on the looks of the girls and vary from $20 to $200. It is stated that over fifty girls have been sent to one Chicago house within a year.—“Daily Press.”

[92] The startling revelations within the past few days as to the traffic at Ottawa in young girls of from 12 to 14, in which a number of prominent citizens as well as several leading politicians are implicated, have caused the greatest indignation. Tuesday night a meeting was held under the auspices of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, with a view to devising some means by which the great stain on the capital’s good name might be removed. It was decided that the matter must become the subject of special legislation at the next session of Parliament, before the guilty scoundrels can be punished. Opposition is expected from the members of Parliament who are implicated in the outrages.—“Daily Press.”

[93] “Topeka Leader.”

[94] In Troy, N.Y., in the fall of 1891, discovery was made of an organized plan to ravish little girls. It numbered in its ranks married men, members of the police force, and men well known in business and church circles. With this discovery came the statement from other cities that like offenders were common.—“The Daily Press.”

[95] Persistent efforts have been made by women to stop these great wrongs, but having no power in legislation, her prayers and petitions have met with but scant success.

[96] Married at Thirteen Years.—Maud Pearl Johnson, a thirteen-year-old girl of Fulton, who was married to Franklin Foster of that place on Monday, has been placed in the State Industrial School in Rochester under sentence by Police Justice Spencer of Fulton. Foster is a widower with three children. The minister at Fairdale who performed the ceremony is said to have been fined $3 for cruelty to children. The poor authorities arrested the young wife for vagrancy.

[97] Africa, Australia, India, Canada, the United States among the number.

[98] Who gave seventeen years of her life to work for the overthrow of government legislation of vice in England.

[99]—1. To treat all women with respect, and endeavor to protect them from wrong and degradation.

2. To endeavor to put down all indecent language and coarse jests.

3. To maintain the law of purity as equally binding upon men and women.

4. To endeavor to spread these principles among my companions, and try to help my younger brothers.

5. To use every possible means to fulfill the command: “Keep Thyself Pure.”

[100] The women claimed the right to baptize their own sex. But the bishops and presbyters did not care to be released from the pleasant duty of baptizing the female converts. Waite.—Hist. of Christian Religion to A.D. 200, p. 23.

The Constitution of the Church of Alexandria, which is thought to have been established about the year 200, required the applicant for baptism to be divested of clothing, and after the ordinance had been administered, to be anointed with oil.—Ibid, p. 384-5.

The converts were first exorcised of the evil spirits that were supposed to inhabit them; then, after undressing and being baptized, they were anointed with oil.—Bunsen’s Christianity of Mankind, Vol. VII, p. 386-393; 3d Vol. Analecta.

Women were baptized quite naked in the presence of these men.—Philosophical Dictionary.

Some learned men have enacted that in primitive churches the persons to be baptized, of whatever age or sex, should be quite naked. Pike.—History of Crime in England. See Joseph Vicecomes.—De Ritibus Baptismi. Varrius.—Thesibus de Baptisme.

[101] Undisguised sensuality reached a point we can scarcely conceive. Women were sometimes brought naked upon the stage. By a curious association of ideas the theater was still intimately connected with religious observance. Rationalism in Europe, 2-288.

[102] Catharine, the first wife of Peter the Great, was received into the Greek Church by a rite nearly approaching the primitive customs of the Christian Church. New converts to that church are plunged three times naked in a river or into a large tub of cold water. Whatever is the conditions, age or sex of the convert, this indecent ceremony is never dispensed with. The effrontery of a pope (priests of the Greek Church are thus called), sets at defiance all the reasons which decency and modesty never cease to use against the absurdity and impudence of this shameful ceremony. Count Segur.—Woman’s Condition and Influence in Society.

[1] Black was hated as the colors of the devil. In the same manner red was hated in Egypt as the color of Typhon.

[2] At what date then did the witch appear? In the age of despair, of that deep despair which the guilt of the church engendered. Unfalteringly I say, the witch is a crime of their own making.—Michelet.

[3] “It is not a little remarkable, though perfectly natural, that the introduction of the cat gave a new impulse to tales and fears of ghosts and enchantments. The sly, creeping, nocturnal grimalkin took rank at once with owls and bats, and soon surpassed them both as an exponent of all that is weird and supernatural. Entirely new conceptions of witchcraft were gained for the world when the black cat appeared upon the scene with her swollen tail, glistening eyes and unearthy yell.”—Ex.

[4] Steevens says it was permitted to a witch to take on a cattes body nine times.—Brand, 3, 89-90.

[5] Mr. E. F. Spicer, a taxidermist of Birmingham, whose great specialty is the artistic preparation of kittens for sale, will not purchase black ones, as he finds the superstition against black cats interferes with their sale.—“Pall Mall Gazette,” Nov. 13, 1886. But the United States, less superstitious, has recently witnessed the formation of a “Consolidated Cat Company” upon Puget Sound for the special propagation of black cats to be raised for their fur.

[6] City of God, Lib. XVIII. Charles F. Lummis, in a recent work, Some Strange Corners of Our Country, the Wonderland of the Southwest, refers to the power of the shamans to turn themselves at will into any animal shape, as a wolf, bear or dog.

[7] Italian women usually became cats. The Witch Hammer mentioned a belief in Lycanthropy and Metamorphosis. It gave the story of a countryman who was assaulted by three cats. He wounded them, after which three infamous witches were found wounded and bleeding.

[8] For a full account of this madness, and other forms that sometimes attacked whole communities during the middle Christian ages, see “Hecker.—Epidemics of the Middle Ages.”

[9] The conventicle of witches was said to be held on Mt. Atlas, “to which they rode upon a goat, a night crow, or an enchanted staff, or bestriding a broom staff. Sundry speeches belonged to these witches, the words whereof were neither Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, nor indeed deriving their Etymology from any known language.”

[10] St. Gregory of Nyassa, a canonized saint, the only theologian to whom the church (except St. John) has ever allowed the title of “The Divine,” was a member of that council, aiding in the preparation of the Nicene Creed. It is a significant fact that a great number of public women, “an immense number,” congregated at Nice during the sessions of this council.

[11] In Guernsey a mother and her two daughters were brought to the stake; one of the latter, a married woman with child, was delivered in the midst of her torments, and the infant, just rescued, was tossed back into the flames by a priest with the cry, “One heretic the less.”

[12] “Old writers declared that women have been more addicted to these devilish arts than men, was manifest by ‘many grave authors,’ among whom Diodorus, Sindas, Pliny and St. Augustine were mentioned. Quintillian declared theft more prevalent among men, but witchcraft especially a sin of women.”

[13] Lea.—Superstition and Force.

[14] Certain forms of ordeal, such as the ordinary ones of fire and water, seem to have owed their origin to the trials passed by the candidate for admission into the ancient mysteries, as Lea has also conjectured. During the mysteries of Isis, the candidate was compelled to descend into dark dungeons of unknown depth, to cross bars of red-hot iron, to plunge into a rapid stream at seeming hazard of life, to hang suspended in mid-air while the entrance into other mysteries confronted the candidate with howling wild beasts and frightful serpents. All who passed the ancient ordeals in safety, were regarded as holy and acceptable to the Deity, but not so under Christian ordeal, its intention being conviction of the accused. Those who proved their innocence by carrying red-hot iron uninjured for three paces and the court was thus forced to acquit, or who passed through other forms of torture without confession were still regarded with suspicion as having been aided by Satan, and the sparing of their lives was to the scandal of the faithful.

[15] Woman was represented as the door of hell, as the mother of all human ill. She should be ashamed at the very thought she is a woman. She should live in continual penance on account of the curses she has brought upon the world. She should be especially ashamed of her beauty, for it is the most potent instrument of the demon.—Hist. European Morals, Vol. 2, p. 358.

[16] Witchcraft was supposed to have power of subverting religion.—Montesquieu.

[17] The question why the immense majority of those who were accused should be women, early attracted attention; it was answered by the inherent wickedness of the sex, which had its influence in pre-disposing men to believe in witches, and also in producing the extreme callousness with which the sufferings of the victims were contemplated.—Rationalism in Europe 1, 88.

[18] 18 mo. An unusually small size for that period.

[19] (Witch Hammer.)

[20] The Court of Rome was fully apprized that power cannot be maintained without property, and thereupon its attention began very early to be riveted upon every method that promised pecuniary advantage. All the wealth of Christendom was gradually drawn by a thousand channels into the coffers of the Holy See. Blackstone.—Commentaries 4, 106. “The church forfeited the wizard’s property to the judge and the prosecutor. Wherever the church law was enforced, the trials for witchcraft waxed numerous and brought much wealth to the clergy. Wherever the lay tribunal claimed the management of those trials, they grew scarce and disappeared.”

[21] Burning Place of the Cross.

[22] A MS. upholding the burning of witches as heretics, written in 1450 by the Dominican Brother Hieronymes Visconti, of Milan, is among the treasures of the White Library, recently presented to Cornell University.

[23] It shall not be amiss to insert among these what I have heard concerning a witch of Scotland: One of that countrie (as by report there are too many) being for no goodness of the judges of Assize, arrayed, convicted and condemned to be burnt, and the next day, according to her judgment, brought and tied to the stake, the reeds and fagots placed around about her, and the executioner ready to give fire (for by no persuasion of her ghostly fathers, nor importunities of the sheriff, she could be wrought to confess anything) she now at the last cast to take her farewell of the world, casting her eye at one side upon her only sonne, and calls to him, desiring him verie earnestly as his last dutie to her to bring her any water, or the least quantity of licuor (be it never so small), to comfort her, for she was so extremely athirst, at which he, shaking his head, said nothing; she still importuned him in these words: “Oh, my deere sonne help me to any drinke, be it never so little, for I am most extremely drie, oh drie, drie:” to which the young fellow answered, “by no means, deere mother will I do you that wrong; for the drier you are (no doubt) you will burne the better.” Heywoode—History of Women, Lib. 9, p. 406.

[24] Lenormant.—Chaldean Magic and Sorcery, 385.

[25] Institutes of Scotland.

[26] At Bamburg, Germany, an original record of twenty-nine burnings in nineteen months, 162 persons in all, mentions the infant daughter of Dr. Schutz as a victim of the twenty-eighth burning. Hauber.—Bibliotheca Magica.

[27] In those terrible trials presided over by Pierre de Lancre, it was asserted that hundreds of girls and boys flocked to the indescribable Sabbats of Labourd. The Venetians’ record the story of a little girl of nine years who raised a great tempest, and who like her mother was a witch. Signor Bernoni.—Folk Lore.

[28] Some very strange stories of such power at the present time have become known to the author, one from the lips of a literary gentleman in New York City, this man of undoubted veracity declaring that he had seen his own father extend his hand under a cloudless sky and produce rain. A physician of prominence in a western city asserts that a most destructive cyclone, known to the Signal Service Bureau as “The Great Cyclone,” was brought about by means of magical formulae, made use of by a school girl in a spirit of ignorant bravado.

[29] These and similar powers known as magical, are given as pertaining to the Pueblo Indians, by Charles F. Lummis, in Some Strange Corners of Our Country, pub. 1892. A friend of the author witnessed rain thus produced by a very aged Iowa Indian a few years since.

[30] A Hindoo Scripture whose name signifies knowledge.—Max Muller.

[31] Isis Unveiled, I, 354.

[32] Of which the tricks of Halloween may be a memento.

[33] Anacalypsis, Vol. I. p. 35.

[34] Bacchus was not originally the god of wine, but signified books. Instruction of old, when learning was a secret science, was given by means of leaves. “Bacchus Sabiesa” really signified “book wise” or learned, and the midsummer day festival was celebrated in honor of learning. In the Anacalypsis Higgins says: “From Celland I learn that in Celtic, Sab means wise, whence Saba and Sabasius, no doubt wise in the stars. From this comes the Sabbath day, or day dedicated to wisdom, and the Sabbat, a species of French masonry, an account of which may be seen in Dulare’s History of Paris. Sunday was the day of instruction of the Druids, whence it was called Sabs.—Ibid, I. 716.

[35] From the preachment of the Sabs, or Sages, or wise Segent Sarcedos.—Ibid, I, 716.

[36] The only physician of the people for a thousand years was the witch. The emperors, kings, popes and richer barons had indeed the doctors of Salermo, then Moors and Jews, but the bulk of the people in every state; the world, it might as well be called, consulted none but the Sages or wise women. Michelet—La Sorciere.

[37] I make no doubt that his (Paracelsus) admirable and masterly work on the Diseases of Women, the first written on this theme, so large, so deep, so tender, came forth from his special experience of those women to whom others went for aid, the witches, who acted as midwives, for never in those days was a male physician admitted to the women.—Ibid.

[38] Within the past fifty years the death rate in childbirth was forty in a thousand, an enormous mortality, and although the advances in medical knowledge have somewhat lessened the rate, more women still lose their lives during childbirth than soldiers in battle.

[39] In childbirth a motherly hand instilled the gentle poison, casting the mother herself into a sleep, and soothing the infant’s passage, after the manner of modern chloroform, into the world.—Michelet.

[40] Poruchet Solenases.

[41] Alexander.—History of Women.

[42] You will hardly believe it, but I saw a real witch’s skull, the other evening, at a supper party I had the pleasure of attending. It was at the house of Dr. Dow, a medical gentleman of culture and great skill in his profession here. You will admit that a skull is not a pleasant thing to exhibit in a parlor, and some of the ladies did not care about seeing it; but the majority did, and you know one cannot see a witch’s skull every day. So, after a little hesitation and persuasion on the part of the doctor, he produced the uncanny thing and gave us its history, or rather that of the witch. She lived at Terryburn, a little place near here. One day it came to the ears of the kirk session of the parish that she had had several interviews with his Satanic Majesty. Strange enough, when the woman was brought before that body—which seems to have been all-powerful in the several parishes in those days—and accused of it, she at once admitted the charge to be true. The poor soul, who could have been nothing else than an idiot, as the doctor pointed out from the very low forehead and small brain cavity, was sentenced to be prevented from going to sleep; or in other words, tortured to death, and the desired end was attained in about five days, her body being buried below high-water mark.

Her name was Lilias Adie, and there is no doubt that she was only a harmless imbecile. The skull, and also a piece of the coffin, were presented to the doctor by a friend who had read in the kirk session records an account of the trial, and went to the spot stated as being the place of burial. The remains were found by him exactly as indicated, although there was nothing to mark their resting place. One would have thought that after the lapse of so many years it would be exceedingly difficult to find them, but you know things do not undergo such radical changes in this country as they do in America.—From a traveler’s letter in the “Syracuse Journal,” August 22, 1881.

Almost indistinguished from the belief in witchcraft was the belief that persons subject to epilepsy, mania or any form of mental weakness, were possessed of a devil who could be expelled by certain religious ceremonies. Pike.—History of Crime in England, Vol. pp. 7-8.

[43] The mysteries of the human conscience and of human motives are well nigh inscrutable, and it may be shocking to assert that these customs of unmitigated wrong are indirectly traceable to that religion of which the two great commandments were that man should love his neighbor as himself. Lea.—Superstition and Force, 53.

[44] Fox’s Book of Martyrs, gives account of persons brought into court upon litters six months after having been subjected to the rack.

[45] In this case both men and women says Johannus Mergerus, author of a History of Flanders.

[46] Adrianus Ferrens.

[47] St. Bernard exorcised a demon Incubus, who for six years maintained commerce with a woman, who could not get rid of him. Lea.—Studies in Church History.

[48] It was observed they (devils) had a peculiar attachment to women with beautiful hair, and it was an old Catholic belief that St. Paul alluded to this in that somewhat obscure passage in which he exhorts women to cover their heads because of the angels.—Sprangler.

[49] The attention of scientific men and governments has recently been directed to what are now called “The Accursed Sciences,” under whose action certain crimes have been committed from “suggestion,” the hand which executed being only that of an irresponsible automaton, whose memory preserves no traces of it. The French Academy has just been debating the question—how far a hypnotized subject from a mere victim can become a regular tool of crime.—Lucifer, October 1887.

“Merck’s Bulletin,” New York medical journal, in an editorial entitled Modern Witchcraft, December, 1892, relates some astonishing experiments recently made at the HÔpital de la CharitÉ, Paris, in which the power to “exteriorize sensibility” has been discovered, reproducible at will; suggestion through means of simulated pinching producing suffering; photographs sensitive to their originals even having been produced. Thus modern science stamps with truthfulness the power asserted as pertaining to black magicians, of causing suffering or death through means of a waxen image of a person. “The Accursed Sciences,” although brought to the bar of modern investigating knowledge, seem not yet to have yielded the secrets of the law under which they are rendered possible.

[51] The supreme end of magic is to conjure the spirits. The highest and most inscrutable of all the powers dwells in the divine and mysterious name, “The Supreme Name,” with which Hea alone is acquainted. Before this name everything bows in heaven and earth, and in hades, and it alone can conquer the Maskim and stop their ravages. The great name remained the secret of Hea; if any man succeeded in divining it, that alone would invest him with a power superior to the gods.—Chaldean Magic and Sorcery.

[52] Venetians concluded not unreasonably that the latter ran no more risk from the taint of witchcraft attached to their inheritance than did the clergy or the church. Where profits were all spiritual their ardor soon cooled. Thus it happened as the inevitable result of the people’s attitude in religious matters, that while in Venice there were representatives of the vast sisterhood, which extended from the Blockula of Sweden to the walnut tree of Benevenuto, sorcery there never became the terrible scourge that it was in other lands where its victims at times threatened to outnumber those of the Black Death.—The Witches of Venice.

[53] One of the most powerful features of the belief in witchcraft was the power that greed had in producing belief and causing persecution. The church had grown rich from such trials, and the state was now to take its turn. By the public offering of a reward for the finding of witches, their numbers greatly increased.

[54] The most exceptional conduct, the purest morals in constant practice of every day life, are not sufficient security against the suspicion of errors like these—Montesquieu.

[55] For a number of years her celebrated son struggled amid his scientific studies for the preservation of her life.

[56] Michelet.—La Sorcerie 151. See Papers on the Bastile.

[57] In its earliest phase the Black Mass seemed to betoken the redemption of Eve, so long accused by Christianity. The woman filled every place in the Sabbath. Following its celebration was the denial of Jesus, by whose authority the priests and barons robbed the serf of human hope—the paying of homage to the new master—the feudal kiss. To the closing ceremonies, “The Feast of Peace,” no man was admitted unaccompanied by a woman.—La Sorcerie.

[58] “This word at different times clearly meant quite different things. In the 14th century, under the Avignon popes, during the great schism when the church with two heads seems no longer a church, the Sabbath took the horrible form of the Black Mass.”

[59] This important part of the woman being her own altar, is known to us by the trial of La Voisin, which M. Revanna Sen. published with other Papers of the Bastile.—Ibid.

[60] That women have been more addicted to this devilish art than man, is manifest by the approbation of many grave authority. Diodorus, in his fifth book, speaks of Hecate. Heywood.—History of Women, London, 1624. St. Augustine, in his City of God, declared that women are more prone to these unlawful acts, for so we read of Medea, Cyrce and others. Suidas, speaking of witches, cites an old proverb, declaring witchcraft peculiar to woman and not to man. Quintillian, referring to this statement, says: Theft is more common with man, but witchcraft with woman.

[61] Idiots, the lame, the blind and the dumb, are men in whom devils have established themselves, and all the physicians who heal these infirmities as though they preceded from natural causes are ignorant blockheads, who know nothing about the power of demons.—Tishreden, p. 202.

[62] See Reeves and Hume.

[63] The Statute of Labourers (5 Eliz. C. 4) enacted that unmarried women between twelve and forty years old may be appointed by two justices to serve by the year, week, or day, for such wages and in such reasonable sort and manner as they shall think meet.—Reeves 3, 591-8.

[64] Seen by Dr. Gray.

[65] James believing in their (witches) influence, and Bacon partly sharing in the belief. Macbeth appeared in this year mixed up with Bacon’s inquiries into witchcraft. Ignatius Donnelly.—The Cryptogram. From the accession of James I., witchcraft became the master superstition of the age. The woman accused of witchcraft was practically beyond the pale of the law; the mere fact of accusation was equal to condemnation.

[66] Laws and Customs of Scotland, 2; 56.

[67] The Seeress of Prevorst.

[68] Iron collars, or Witches’ Bridles, are still preserved in various parts of Scotland, which had been used for such iniquitous purposes. These instruments were so constructed that by means of a loop which passed over the head, a piece of iron having four points or prongs, was forcibly thrust into the mouth, two of these being directed to the tongue and palate, the others pointing outward to each cheek. This infernal machine was secured by a padlock. At the back of the collar was fixed a ring, by which to attach the witch to a staple in the wall of her cell. Thus equipped, and day and night waked and watched by some skillful person appointed by her inquisitors, the unhappy creature, after a few days of such discipline, maddened by the misery of her forlorn and helpless state would be rendered fit for confessing anything in order to be rid of the dregs of her life. At intervals fresh examinations took place, and they were repeated from time to time until her “contumacy,” as it was termed, was subdued. The clergy and Kirk Sessions appear to have been the unwearied instruments of “purging the land of witchcraft,” and to them, in the first instance, all the complaints and informations were made.—Pitcairn, Vol. I., Part 2, p. 50.

“Who has not heard of the Langholm witches, and ‘the branks’ to subdue them? This was a simple instrument formed so as to fit firmly on the head, and to project into the mouth a sharp spike for subjugating the tongue. It was much preferred to the ducking-stool, ‘which not only endangered the health of the patient, but also gave the tongue liberty betwixt every dip!’ Scores of these ‘patients’ were burned alongside Langholm castle; and the spot is fully as interesting as our own reminder of the gentle days, Gallows Hill, at Salem.”

[69] By statute 33 of Henry VIII., C. 8, all witchcraft and sorcery was to be felony without benefit of clergy. This act continued in force till lately to the terror of all ancient females in the kingdom.—Commentaries. As bad as the Georges are depicted, thanks are due to two of them from women. By statute of George II., C. 5, no future prosecution was to be carried on against any person for conjuration, witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment.

[70] Towards the end of 1593 there was trouble in the family of the Earl of Orkney. His brother laid a plot to murder him, and was said to have sought the help of a notorious witch called “Allison Balfour.” No evidence could be found connecting her with this particular offense or with witchcraft in general, but it was enough in these matters to be a woman and to be accused. She swore she was innocent, but she was looked upon as a pagan who thus aggravated her guilt. She was tortured again and again, but being innocent she constantly declared her innocence. Her legs were put into the Casctulars—an iron which was gradually heated until it burned into the flesh, but no confession could be wrung from her. The Casctulars having utterly failed to make her tell a lie, “the powers that be,” whom Paul tells us “are of God,” tortured her husband, her son and her daughter, a little child of only seven years. The “powers” knew the tenderness and love of a wife and mother, so they first brought her husband into court and placed him by her side. He was placed in the “long irons,” some accursed instrument. She did not yield. Then her son was tortured; the poor boy’s legs were set in “the boot,” the iron boot, and wedges were driven in, which forced home crushed the very bone and marrow. Fifty-seven mallet strokes were delivered upon the wedges, yet this failed. This innocent tortured heroic woman would not confess to a lie. So last of all her baby daughter was brought in, the fair child of seven short years. There was a machine called the pinniwinkies, a kind of thumb screw which brought blood from under the finger nails with a pain terribly severe. These tortures were applied to the baby hands, and the mother’s fortitude broke down and she would admit any thing they wished. She confessed the witchcraft. So tired she would have confessed the seven deadly sins, but this suffering did not save her to her family. She was burned alive, with her last suffering breath protesting her innocence. This account is perfectly well authenticated and taken from the official report of the proceedings. Froude.—Short Stories on Great Subjects.

[71] The same dark superstition shared the civil councils of Scotland as late as the beginning of the 18th century, and the convictions which then took place are chiefly to be ascribed to the ignorance and fanaticism of the clergy.

[72] Excommunication was both of temporal and spiritual effect, the person under ban not only being deprived of absolution, extreme unction, consecrated burial, etc., but all persons were forbidden to deal with the recalcitrant. Under the strictest protestantism in Scotland, the clergy held almost entire control. When a woman fell under suspicion of being a witch, the minister denounced her from the pulpit, forbade anyone harboring or sheltering her, and exhorted his parishoners to give evidence against her. To the clergy and Kirk Sessions were the first complaints made. It is scarcely more than 150 years since the last witch was burned in Scotland, having been accused of raising a thunder storm by pulling off her stockings.—Witchcraft Under Protestantism.

[73] Many witches lost their lives in every part of England, without being brought to trial at all, from injuries received at the hands of the populace. Mackay.—Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions.

[74] One of the most powerful incentives to confession was to systematically deprive the suspected witch of her natural sleep. It was said who but witches can be present and so witness of the doings of witches, since all their meetings and conspiracies are the habits of darkness. “The voluntarie confession of a witch doth exceede all other evidence. How long she has been a witch the devil and she knows best.”

[75] Among the Lancashire witches was Old Demedike, four score years old, who had been a witch fifty years, and confessed to possessing a demon which appeared to her in the form of a brown dog.—Summer’s Trials.

[76] Ibid.

[77] Which examination, although she was but very young, yet it was wonderful to the Court in so great a presence and audience.—Ibid. Ties of the tenderest nature did not restrain the inquisitors. Young girls were regarded as the best witnesses against their mothers, and the oaths of children of irresponsible age were received as evidence against a parent.—Superstition and Force, p. 93.

[78] When a reward was publicly offered there seemed to be no end of finding witches, and many kept with great care their note book of “Examination of Witches,” and were discovering “hellish kinds of them.”

[79] Salem Witchcraft I, 393-4; 2, 373.

[80] I seemed to have stepped back to Puritan time, when an old gentleman said to me. “I am descended from that line of witches; my grandmother and 120 others were under condemnation of death at New Bedford, when an order came from the king prohibiting farther executions.”

[81] Salem, Mass., July 30, 1892.—The 200th anniversary of the hanging of Rebecca Nurse of Salem village for witchcraft, was commemorated in Danvers Centre, old Salem village, by the Nurse Monument Association. The distinct feature of the occasion was the dedication of a granite tablet to commemorate the courage of forty men and women, who at the risk of their lives gave written testimony in favor of Rebecca Nurse in 1692.

[82] Howes.—Historical Collection of Virginia, p. 438.

[83] Collection Massachusetts Historical Society for the year 1800, p. 241.

[84] No prosecution, suit or proceedings shall be commenced or carried on in any court of this state against any person for conjuration or witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment or for charging another with such offense.

[85] Under the church theory that all members of the witch’s family are tainted, the husband of this unfortunate woman hid himself, fearing the same fate.—Telegram.

[1] He bought his bride of her parents according to the custom of antiquity, and she followed the coemption by purchasing with three pieces of copper a just introduction to his treasury and household duties. Gibbon.—Rome, 4; 395.

[2] By the law of the Twelve Tables woman possessed the right of repudiation in marriage. These tables were a compilation of still older laws or customs, a species of common law incorporated into statutes by Lachis of Athens, daughter of one Majestes; and were so wise and of such benefit to the people of Attica that the Romans received them as natural laws in which there was more of patriotism and purity than in all the volumes of Popinanus. H.S. Maine.—Ancient Law.

[3] After the Punic triumphs the matrons of Rome aspired to the common benefits of a free and opulent republic.... They declined the solemnities of the old nuptials; defeated the annual prescription by an absence of three days, and without losing their name or independence subscribed the liberal and definite terms of a marriage contract. Of their private fortunes they commuted the use and secured the property; the estate of a wife could neither be alienated or mortgaged by a prodigal husband. Religious and civil rites were no longer essential, and between persons of similar rank, the apparent community of life was allowed as sufficient evidence of their nuptials.... When the Roman matrons became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, their marriage like other partnerships might be dissolved. Gibbon.—Rome, 4; 347.

[4] Uses or Usucapion, was a form of civil marriage securing the wife more freedom than the form which held her “under his thumb” as his daughter. It was as old or even older than the Twelve Tables, and although for many centuries not considered quite as respectable a form of marriage as that in which the wife became the husband’s slave with divorce impossible, it eventually grew to be the customary form of Roman marriage. Maine.—Early History of Ancient Institutions, p. 517.

[5] It was with the state of conjugal relations thus produced that the growing Christianity of the Roman world waged a war ever increasing in fierceness, yet it remained to the last the basis of the Roman legal conception of marriage.—Ibid.

[6] When the Chremes of Terence reproaches his wife for not obeying his orders and exposing their infant, he speaks like a father and master, and silences the scruples of a foolish woman. Milman.—Note to Gibbons Rome.

[7] “‘Usus’ had the very important consequence that the woman so married remained in the eye of the law in the family of her father, and was under his guardianship and not that of her husband. A complete revolution had thus passed over the constitution of the family. This must have been the period when a jurisconsult of the empire defined marriage as a life-long fellowship of all divine and human rights.”

[8] Reeves.—Hist. Eng. Law, p. 337.

[9] Maine says: No society which preserves any tincture of Christian Institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by middle Roman laws.—Ancient Law.

[10] Reeves says, while many great minds, as Lord Chief Justice Hale, Lord John Somers, Henry Spellman, Dr. Brady and Sir Martin Wright think feudalism came in with the conqueror, others, as Coke, Seldon, Bacon and Sir Roger Owen are of opinion that tenures were common among the Saxons. Blackstone, Dalrymple and Sullivan endeavor to compromise the dispute by admitting an imperfect system of feuds to have been instituted before the conquest.—History of English Law, Vol. I., p. 18-19.

[11] A certain bishop, wishing a person to take charge of his castle during his absence, the latter asked how he should support himself. For answer the bishop pointed to a procession of tradesmen with their goods then crossing the valley at their feet.

[12] Wives were bought in England from the fifth to the eleventh century. Herbert Spencer.—Descriptive Sociology of England.

[13] There was another law even more odious than Marquette; the father’s right to the price of mundium, in other words, the price of his daughter. Legouve.—Hist. Morales des Femmes, p. 104.

[14] Murder under the name of war, the ruin of women under the name of gallantry, were the chief occupations of the nobility. Pike.—Hist. of Crime in England. The chief qualification for success at courts was the power of making and appreciating mirth. The infidelities of women were commonly the narrator’s theme, and an exhortation to avoid matrimony was the most common form of advice given by a man to his friend. War and intrigue were regarded as the principal amusements of life; the acquisition of wealth the only object worth serious consideration. A consequence of this creed was that the husband frequently set a price upon his wife’s virtue, and made a profit out of his own dishonor. Fathers were ready to sell their daughters.—Ibid.

[15] Both married and single found their worst foes in their nearest friends. The traffic in women was none the less real in Christian England than it is now in the slave marts of Stamboul or Constantinople.—Ibid. One of the most recent illustrations of the general regard in which woman is held throughout Christendom, is the experience of the young California heiress, Florence Blythe, who although but fifteen years old, was in constant receipt of proposals of marriage both at home and from abroad. Her attorney, General Hunt, said: “I do not think there is a woman living who has had the number of written proposals that Florence has received, but in all the letters woman is regarded as a chattel, a thing to be bought and sold. The constant receipt of letters of this character, and the equally constant attempt of adventurers to gain a personal interview with the child, at last became unendurable, and to escape such insulting persecution, Florence suddenly married a young man of her acquaintance living near her.” These letters, among them, from sixty titled Europeans, lords, counts, dukes, barons, viscounts, marquises and even one prince, confirm the statement of August Bebel, that marriage sales of women are still as common as in the middle ages, and are expected in most Christian countries.

[16] A husband upon his return from the Crusades, finding his wife had been untrue, imprisoned her in a room so small she could neither stand erect nor lie at full length; her only window looking out upon the dead body of her lover swinging in chains.

[17] The Shoshone Indian who hires his wife out as a harlot, inflicts capital punishment on her if she goes with another without his knowledge. Bancroft.—Native Races, I; 436.

[18] Therefore a single woman for whom no bid was offered, an “old maid” was looked upon with contempt as being of no value in the eyes of men.

[19] Hist. of Crime in England, Vol. I, p. 90.

[20] By the laws of the king of Wessex, who lived at the end of the VIII century, the purchase of wives is deliberately sanctioned; in the preface it is stated that the compilation was drawn up with the assistance of the Bishop of Winchester and a large assemblage of God’s servants.—Ibid.

[21] Nothing, says Pike, was considered but the market value of the woman, and the adulterer was compelled to expend the equivalent of her original price on the purchase of a new bride, whom he formally delivered to the injured husband. Nor were these laws merely secular, they were enacted and enforced by all the dread power of the church.—Ibid.

[22] In the 14th century either the female character was utterly dissolute, or the tyranny of husbands utterly reckless, when we find that it was no uncommon circumstance that women were strangled by masked assassins, or walking by the river side were plunged into it. This drowning of women gave rise to a popular proverb: “It is nothing, only a woman being drowned.” And this condition constituted the domestic life of England from the 12th century to the first civil war, when the taste of men for bloodshed found wider scope, and from the murder of women they advanced to the practice of cutting one another’s throats. Disraeli.—Amenities of Literature, Vol. I., p. 95.

[23] “And they were so covetous that for a little silver they sellen ’ein daughters, ’ein sisters and ’ein own wives, to putten ’ein to lechery.”

[24] The Church from the earliest period furnished its full portion to the codes of our simple forefathers, that of the first Christian king being that for the property of God and the Church (if stolen) twelvefold compensation was to be made. Thorpe.—Ancient Laws and Institutions of England.

[25] Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. XVI., Edinburg, 1872.

[26] Until the maiden was wedded she was kept strictly under control, and the kind of discipline which was enforced is well illustrated by a letter written late in the reign of Henry VI. The writer was the widow of a landholder, and she was corresponding with the brother of the young lady whose case she describes and whom she is anxious to serve by finding a husband. This young lady was under the care of her mother and the following was her condition: She might not speak with any man, not even her mother’s servants; and she had since Easter the most part been beaten once in the week, or twice, and sometimes thrice in a day, and her hand was broken in two or three places. Pike.—History of Crime in England.

[27] Britton.—Introduction, p. 39. Glanville.—De Legibius Anglica, p. 158.

[28] Doubtless in all ages marriages were by far oftener determined by pecuniary considerations than by love or affection, but proofs are wanting to show that marriage was formerly made an object of speculation and exchange in the open market with anything like the same effrontery as today. In our time among the propertied classes—the poor have no need of it—marriage barter is frequently carried on with a shamelessness which makes the phrases about the sacredness of marriage, that some people never tire of repeating, the emptiest mockery. August Bebel.—Woman in the Past, Present and Future.

[29] To make women the special objects of this torture, to teach them hardness of heart in the office of executioners, was refinement of atrocity.... It was for slaves and women that the greatest atrocities were reserved.—Hist. of Crime in England.

[30] Women in England had burned women to death in the 10th century; they had been set on the stool of filth to be mocked as brewers of bad ale in the 11th; on the stool of filth they had been jeered as common scolds from time immemorial; they were legally beaten by their husbands down to a comparatively recent period. In the 14th century they were such as circumstances had made them; strong of muscle but hard of heart, more fit to be mothers of brigands than to rear gentle daughters or honest sons.—Ibid.

[31] The elder Disraeli says: “Warton, too, has observed that the style of friendship between males in the reign of Elizabeth would not be tolerated at the present day.” Disraeli himself declares that “a male friend, whose life and fortunes were consecrated to another male, who looks upon him with adoration and talks of him with excessive tenderness, appears to us nothing less than a chimerical and monstrous lover.”—Amenities of Literature, Vol. II., p. 105.

[32] Poisoning or otherwise murdering husbands was a crime visited with peculiar severity in almost all codes. Lea.—Superstition and Force.

[33] Blackstone says it was to be no thicker than a man’s thumb, thus an instrument of ever varying size. According to palmistry the thumb of a self-willed or obstinate man, a cruel man, or of a murderer, is very large at the upper portion or ball.

[34] Petit treason may happen in three ways: By a servant killing his master, a wife her husband, or an ecclesiastical person (either secular or regular) his superior, to whom he owes faith and obedience. The punishment of petit treason in a man is to be drawn and hanged, and in a woman to be drawn and burnt.—Commentaries, Vol. IV., p. 203-4.

[35] But in treason of every kind the punishment of women is the same and different from men. For as the decency due to the sex forbids the exposing and publicly mangling their bodies, their sentence is to be drawn (dragged) to the gallows and there be burnt alive.—Ibid, IV., p. 92.

[36] The daily press, in its minute record of events, all unwittingly furnishes many a little item, whose primal reason only the student of history can read. The Syracuse, N.Y., “Daily Standard,” of February 22, 1884, published from its exchanges the following incident: “An eccentric old man in New Hampshire surprised his neighbors and friends the other day by shouldering his gun and starting for the woods on the morning of his wife’s funeral. On being urged to come back, he refused saying: “She warn’t no blood relation of mine.”

[37] But now by the statute 30, George 3 c. 48, women convicted in all cases of treason shall receive judgment to be drawn to the place of execution, and there to be hanged by the neck till dead. Before this humane statute women were sentenced to be burnt alive for every species of treason.—Commentaries, p. 92.

[38] See decision New York Court of Appeals, January, 1892.

[39] ST. PETERSBURG, September 22—In April last Mrs. Aina Sainio, wife of a professor in the State College at Travasteheuse, Finland, was found guilty of poisoning her husband, and in accordance with the mediaeval law, which is still in force there, she was sentenced to be beheaded, and her body to be affixed to a beacon and burned. It was charged that Mrs. Sainio had been unfaithful to her husband, carrying on a liaison with one of the students at the college. She strenuously denied this, and said her motive in killing her husband was to get the insurance of $2,500 on his life as she was deeply in debt. The case was carried to the Court of Appeals and today a decision was handed down affirming the judgment of the trial court and adding to the punishment. It transpired during the trial that Mrs. Sainio had forged her husband’s name to checks for small sums some time before his death, and for this offense the Court of Appeals ordered that her right hand be cut off. Then she will be decapitated, her body fastened to a stake covered with inflammable material and set on fire.

[40] Reported in the London Telegraph.

[41] Telegraphic Report from Providence, R.I., September 24, 1892.

[42] Mrs. Judge Seney’s trouble.—A deserted wife suing the woman who enticed her husband away from her. TIFFIN, O., February 14—Judge Dodge gave his decision yesterday in the novel case of the former Mrs. George E. Seney against the present Mrs. George E. Seney. Judge Seney is one of the well known lawyers of Ohio, and author of a “Civil Code” that bears his name. He married his first wife, Mrs. Anna Seney, in 1858, and for fourteen years they lived happily together. At about that time Mrs. Seney and Miss Walker became very intimate friends, and continued to be so until, as is alleged, Mrs. Seney ascertained that Miss Walker was undermining the affections of her husband. A separation between Mr. and Mrs. Seney soon followed, and subsequently the Judge married Miss Walker. Mrs. Seney, therefore, instituted a suit against her successor, claiming damages to the amount of a0,000 for the seduction of her husband.—New York Sun.

[43] James Howard, thirty-five years old, was taken from jail at Texarkana, Ark., on Wednesday night by a mob and lynched. He was under arrest for horrible cruelty to his fourteen-year-old wife. The woman says that he frequently tied her feet together while she was in a state of nudity, and hanging her up by the feet beat her unmercifully and threatened to kill her if she told anyone of his cruelties. On the first of November, Howard took a common branding iron, used to brand live stock, and heating it red hot branded a large letter “H” on his wife’s person in two places while she was tied to a bed.

[44] “Pall Mall Gazette,” 1888.

[45] “Westminster Review,” September, 1887.

[46] Cato, the Roman (pagan), censor three centuries before the Christian era, said: “They who beat their wives or children lay sacrilegious hands on the most sacred things in the world. For myself, I prefer the character of a good husband to that of a great senator.”

[47] The bill failed of passing upon the ground that the lash belonged to the dark ages, degrading a man by its infliction.

[48] An English lady, Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucus, in writing a description of this implement said: “This country has even now but little to boast in her laws regarding woman, and your country is burdened with similar evil laws; the Franchise is most important.”

[50] Sometimes called Timbrel, or Gum Stole.

[51] “It would seem that almost every English town of any importance had its ducking-stool for scolds. In 1741, old Rugby paid 2s 4d for a chair for the ducking stool. The parish of Southam, in Warwickshire, got a beautiful stool built in 1718 at an expense of £2 11s 4d. Ancient Coventry had two stools.”

The most noteworthy of all the instruments designed for the correction of Eve’s offending daughters was the ducking-stool, known as the tumbrel and the trebuchet. A post, across which was a transverse beam turning on a swivel and with a chair at one end, was set up on the edge of a pond. Into the chair the woman was chained, turned toward the water—a muddy or filthy pond was usually chosen for this purpose when available—and ducked half a dozen times; or, if the water inflamed her instead of acting as a damper, she was let down times innumerable, until she was exhausted and well nigh drowned.

From the frequency with which we find it mentioned in old local and county histories, in church wardens’ and chamberlains’ accounts, and by the poets, we shall probably not be wrong in concluding that at one time this institution was kept up all over the country.—“London Graphic.”

[52] John Dillon.—Colonial Legislation of America.

[53] Ibid.

[54] JERSEY CITY, N.J., July 23,1887.—Mrs. Mary Brody, convicted a few days ago of being a common scold, was today sentenced to pay a fine of $25 and costs.

Only the other day a woman in this city, under some ancient unrepealed law of this state, was arrested and brought before a magistrate on the charge of being a common scold. A too free use of the tongue was reckoned a public offense in all the American colonies, and in England the lawful punishment of common scolds was continued until a recent day. It was for these that the “ducking-stool” was invented, which usually consists of a heavy chair fastened to the end of a large piece of timber, which was hung by the middle to a post on the river side. The offender was tied into the chair, and then soused into the water until it was judged that her shrewishness had departed from her. Sometimes she was dipped so thoroughly that her breath departed for good, as happened to a certain elderly lady at Ratcliffe Highway. The ducking-stool was constantly hanging in its place, and on the back of it were engraved devils laying hold of scolds, etc.—“St. Louis Republican.”

[55] If it is a crime to buy and sell wives, let the men who do such things be punished; if there is no crime in the transaction, why should the wife who is sold be punished. Unfortunately this is not a solitary instance of law made or administered to punish women in order to teach men.—English Women’s Suffrage Journal.

Before Mr. Justice Denman, at the Liverpool Assizes, Betsey Wardle was charged with marrying George Chisnal at Eccleston, bigamously, her former husband being alive. It was stated by the woman that, as her first husband had sold her for a quart of beer, she thought she was at liberty to marry again.

George Chisnal, the second husband, apparently just out of his teens was called.

His Lordship—“How did you come to marry this woman?”

Witness [in the Lancashire vernacular]—“Hoo did a what?” [Laughter.]

Question repeated—“A bowt her.” [Laughter.]

His Lordship—“You are not fool enough to suppose you can buy another man’s wife?” Oi? [Laughter.]

His Lordship—“How much did you give for her?” Six pence. [Great laughter.]

His Lordship asked him how long he had lived with the prisoner.

Witness—“Going on for three years.”

His Lordship—“Do you want to take her back again?”

“Awl keep her if you loike.” [Laughter.]

His Lordship (addressing the prisoner)—It is absolutely necessary that I should pass some punishment upon you in order that people may understand that men have no more right to sell their wives than they have to sell other people’s wives, or to sell other people’s horses or cows, or anything of the kind. You cannot make that a legal transaction. So many of you seem to be ignorant of that, that it is necessary to give you some punishment in order that you may understand it. It is not necessary it should be long, but you must be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for one week.—“News of the World,” 1883.

A peculiar case came up in the mayor’s office at Vincennes, Ind., in 1887. A man named Bonn sold his wife to another man named Burch for $300, and held Burch’s note therefor. The sale was a reality, but the note was never paid, hence the difficulty.

“We know a man in the Black Hills—a man who is well-to-do and respected—the foundation of whose fortune was $4,000, the sum for which he sold his wife to a neighbor. The sale was purely a matter of business all around, and the parties to it were highly satisfied.” 1889.—“The Times,” Bismarck, N.D.

[56] In “The Doncaster Gazette” of March 25, 1803, a sale is thus described: “A fellow sold his wife, as a cow, in Sheffield market place a few days ago. The lady was put into the hands of a butcher, who held her by a halter fastened around her waist. ‘What do you ask for your cow?’ said a bystander. ‘A guinea’ replied the husband. ‘Done,’ cried the other, and immediately led away his bargain. We understand that the purchaser and his ‘cow’ live very happily together.” Ashton.—The Progress of Women.

[57] “Morning Herald,” March 11, 1802.—On the 11th of last month a person sold, at the market cross, in Chapel en la Frith, a wife, a child, and as much furniture as would set up a beggar, for eleven shillings.

“Morning Herald,” April 16, 1802.—A butcher sold his wife by auction at the last market day at Hereford. The lot brought £1 4s. and a bowl of punch.

“Annual Register,” February 14, 1806.—A man named John Garsthorpe exposed his wife for sale in the market at Hall about 1 o’clock, but owing to the crowd which such an extraordinary occurrence had brought together, he was obliged to defer the sale, and take her away, about 4 o’clock. However, he again brought her out, and she was sold for 20 guineas, and delivered with a halter, to a person named Houseman, who had lodged with them for four or five years.

“Morning Post,” October 10, 1808.—One of those disgraceful scenes which have of late become too common took place on Friday se’nnight at Knaresborough. Owing to some jealousy, or other family difference, a man brought his wife, equipped in the usual style, and sold her at the market cross for 6d and a quid of tobacco.—Ibid.

[58] Our laws are based on the all-sufficiency of man’s rights; society exists for men only; for women, merely in so far as they are represented by some man, are in the mundt, or keeping of some man. Herbert Spencer.—Descriptive Sociology, England.

[59] A committee appointed by the National Woman Suffrage Association, at that time in convention assembled in Washington, waited upon President Cleveland with the memorial.

[60] Mediaeval Christian husbands imprisoned erring wives in cages so small they could neither stand upright nor lie down at full length. Mediaeval Christian priests boiled living infants in osier baskets in presence of helpless heretical mothers. In mediaeval times the public scourging of women was one of the amusements of the carnival; even as late as the eighteenth century English gentlemen, according to Herbert Spencer, made up parties of pleasure to see women whipped at Bridewell.

[61] Seduction was connived at that the guardian might secure the estate of the ward.—Ibid.

[62] The Salic law had not preference to one sex over the other—purely economical law which gave houses and lands to males who should dwell there, and consequently to whom it would be of most service.—Spirit of the Laws.

[63] In order to give color to the usurpation (for it was nothing better), the lawyers cited an obscure article from the code of the barbarous Salians, which, as they pretended had always been the acknowledged law of the French monarchy.... Since that time the Salic law, as it is called, has been regarded as an essential constitutional principle in France.—Student’s History of France, p. 19.

[64] Montesquieu.—Spirit of the Laws.

[65] Women in England were for more than a thousand years legislated for as slaves. Crimes committed by men which could be atoned for by a fine, were by women punished with burning alive. The period is not very distant when she was distinctly legislated for as a servant and but on a level with chattel slaves.—Hist. Crime in England.

[66] American Law, 1829.

[67] Through the influence of Governor M. Nutt, who instituted many reforms.

[68] There was no distinction between offenses against the church on one hand, and offenses against the state or individual on the other. Cases of theft and sorcery, like those of witchcraft, could be tried in the church. From the position of the clergy as law-givers, it follows not only that the secular laws had the sanction of religion, but that religious observance were enforced by the secular arm.

[69] From 499 to 1066. Herbert Spencer.—Descriptive Sociology.

[70] To women were still applied those punishments, which had been instituted by the men whose practice it was to buy their wives and sell their daughters. Pike.—Hist. Crime in England.

[71] Bracton.—De Legibus Anglice I, 479.

[72] “The reformation altered, but did not better the condition of woman. Socially it rescued her from the priest to make her the chattel of the husband, and doctrinally it expunged her altogether. Martin Luther declared that the two sacred books, which especially point to woman as the agent of man’s final redemption—the books of Esther and Revelations—that in ‘so far as I esteem them, it would be no loss if they were thrown into the river’.”

[73] “The forefathers of Benjamin Franklin used a Bible kept fastened under the seat of a four-legged stool, the leaves held in place by pack-threads. When the family assembled to hear it read, one of the number was posted as sentinel some distance from the house to give warning of any stranger’s approach, in which case the stool was hurriedly replaced upon its legs, and some one seated upon it for more effectual concealment of the book.”

[74] Herbert Spencer.—Descriptive Sociology, England.

[75] The English Women’s Suffrage Journal, November, 1886, reported: “Mrs. —— rose to move a resolution. After reading a memorial, she said: ’Now, when I was asked to add a few words of support to the memorial I have just read, my first feeling was that I was very far from the right person to do so, inasmuch as being a married woman—and therefore disqualified—and rightly disqualified,” etc.

[76] The coverture of a woman disables her from making contracts to the prejudice of herself or her husband without his allowance or confirmation.

[77] I have arrived at conclusions which I keep to myself as yet, and only utter as Greek phogagta sunetotsi, the principle of which is, that there will never be a good world for women till the last monk, and therewith the last remnant of the monastic idea of, and legislation for, woman, i.e. the Canon Law is civilized off the face of the earth. Meanwhile all the most pure and high-minded women in England and Europe have been brought up under the shadows of the Canon Law, and have accepted it with their usual divine self-sacrifice, as their destiny by law of God, and nature, and consider their own womanhood outraged when it, their tyrant, is meddled with. Canon Charles Kingsley.—Letter to John Stuart Mill, June 17, 1849, in Life and Letters.

[78] Dowers were first introduced into England by the Danish king, Cnut or Canute, and into Denmark by Swein, father of Canute, who bestowed it upon Danish ladies in grateful acknowledgment of their having parted with their jewels to ransom him from the Vandals. For account of Dowers, see History of Dowers; Grote.—History of Greece 2, 112-13; Alexander.—History of Women; Lord Kames.—Sketch of the history of Man; Histoire des Morales des Femmes. In Denmark, King Sweinn Forkbeard was the first to give woman a share in her parents’ property. Saxo Grammaticus says, The king was taken prisoner by the Vinds who demanded so large a sum of money for his ransom, the men of Denmark would not pay it, so their king remained a prisoner. The women of Denmark sold their ornaments and ransomed him. From gratitude the king decreed that afterwards daughters should inherit one-third of their father’s property. Journal of Jurisprudence. One especial right belonged to wives among the Northmen; this was the custody of her husband’s keys, and if he refused them the wife could compel him by law to give her their possession. These were the keys of the store-room, chest, and cupboard.

[79] The law of dower was less favorable to the wife in the 13th century than it became later.

[80] See Reeves pp. 156-6.

[81] Sheldon Amos.—Science of Law.

[82] History of Women, 1779.

[83] Higgins says the word widow comes from Vidya, to know.

[84] Ancient Laws of Ireland, Sanchus Mor. pp. 347-51.

[85] At a time when the English law of husband and wife, which now for three centuries, has been substituted for the Irish law in this country, has been condemned by a committee of the House of Commons, as unjust towards the wife, and when the most advanced of modern thinkers are trying to devise some plan by which wives may be placed in a position more nearly approaching to equality with the husband, it is interesting to discover in the much despised laws of the ancient Irish, the recognition of the principle on which efforts are being made to base our legislation on this subject. Preface to Sanchus Mor. Vol. 2.

[86] Vol. 3, p. 35.—Ibid.

[87] Rambles and Studies in Old South Wales.—Wirt Sikes.

[88] The three peculiars of a women, are her cowyll, her gowyn, and her sarand; the reason these three are called three peculiars, is because they are the three properties of a woman and cannot be taken from her for any cause; her cowyll is what she receives for her maidenhood; her sarand is for every beating given her by her husband, except for three things; and those three for which she may be beaten are, for giving anything she ought not to give; for being detected with another man in a covert; and for wishing drivel on her husband’s beard; and if for being found with another man he chastises her, he is not to have any satisfaction beside that, for there ought not to be both satisfaction and vengeance for the same crime; her gowyn is, if she detect her husband with another woman, let him pay her six score pence for the first offense, for the second, one pound; if she detect him a third time she can separate from him without leaving anything that belongs to her. Aneurin Owen, Professor of Welsh Law.

[89] The law enacts that she ought not to suffer loss on account of the man, since she received no benefit from him, and therefore he is to rear the child. Ancient Laws and Institutions of Wales.

[90] The Welsh laws of Howell the Good were enacted by four laics and two clerks who were summoned lest the laws should ordain anything contrary to scripture. Ibid.

[91] A woman cannot be admitted as surety or as a witness concerning man. Ibid.

[92] Civil Code, Art 340.

[93] The Woman Question in Europe.—T. Stanton. This law of France differs greatly from the old Welsh pre-christian law, which threw the support of an illegitimate child upon the father. Notwithstanding the responsibility thus thrown upon her, a French proverb declares that “the most reasonable woman never attains the sense of a boy of fourteen.”

[94] It was no mere accident that the French language only possessed one word, l’homme, for man, and human being. French law only recognizes man as a human being.—August Bebel.

[95] Legouve—History of Morals of Women.

[96] The baby was born in the next house, and of course I was interested, how can one not be interested when one of these little angels becomes imprisoned in the earth form and begins a career that makes one tremble to think of? Meeting the father a few hours later I ask the customary question. “Another no account girl to be supported,” he said gloomily, and passed on.—Woman’s World. A father of experience spoke differently: “My gals never forget me. They married and went away to their own homes: and though they were none of them well-to-do, yet not one of them ever saw the time she wouldn’t steal a dollar from her husband to give to father or mother; but it isn’t so with the boys. They never knew they owed me anything; they never put their hands in their pockets for me; they never laid awake o’ nights thinking how to scrimp household expenses to get me or mother a present like the gals did. And yet when I was araisin’ ’em I thought one boy was worth a dozen gals.”

[97] See Scandinavian Jurisprudence.

[98] A story is told by an American traveller, of a party met upon the cars, the mother a delicate little personage, the father stout and strong. Upon leaving the train he walked off incommoded by a single traveling impedimenta, while the wife was almost hidden under the pack she was carrying. With indignation the American asked, “why do you not let the man take some of these things?” ‘What! and he the father of a family?’ was the surprised answer.

[99] It is unnecessary to let the whole many-colored map of German common law pass in review; a few specimens will suffice. According to German common law woman is everywhere in the position of a minor with regard to man; her husband is her lord and master, to whom she owes obedience in marriage. If she be disobedient, Prussian law allows a husband of “low estate” to inflict moderate bodily chastisement. As no provision is made for the number or severity of the blows, the amount of such chastisement is left to the sovereign discretion of the man. In the communal law of Hamburg the regulation runs as follows: “The moderate chastisement of a wife by her husband is just and permissible.” Similar enactments exist in many parts of Germany. The Prussian common law further decrees that the husband can determine the length of time during which a woman must suckle her child. All decisions with regard to the children rest with the father. When he dies the wife is everywhere under the obligation of accepting a guardian for the children; she is decided to be under age, and incapable of conducting the education of children alone, even when their means of support are derived entirely from her property or her labor. Her fortune is managed by her husband, and in cases of bankruptcy is regarded in most states as his and disposed of accordingly, unless a special contract has been made before marriage. When landed property is entailed on the eldest child, a daughter has no rights, as long as husband or brothers are alive; she cannot succeed unless she has no brothers or has lost them by death. She cannot exercise the political rights which are as a rule connected with landed property, unless in some exceptional cases, as for instance in Saxony, where communal regulations in the country allow her to vote, but deny her the right of being elected. But even this right is transferred to her husband if she marry. In most states she is not free to conclude agreements without the consent of her husband, unless she be engaged in business on her own account, which recent legislation permits her to do. She is excluded from every kind of public activity. The Prussian law concerning societies, forbids school-boys and apprentices under eighteen, and women to take part in political associations and public meetings. Until within the last few years women were forbidden by various German codes to attend the public law courts as listeners. If a woman becomes pregnant of an illegitimate child she has no claim on support if she accepted any present from the father at the time of their intimacy. If a woman is divorced from her husband, she continues to bear his name in eternal memory of him, unless she happens to marry again.

August Bebel.—Woman in the Past, Present and Future.

[100] Who, indeed, would not have been received by the queen.

[101] A German girl continues to be a maid-of-all-work until circumstances elevate her to a higher position. She becomes a mother, and this opens a fresh career to her as an amme or wet nurse. Her lines thenceforward fall in pleasant places. An amme is a person of consideration. No disgrace or loss of character is attached to the irregularity of conduct which often is the origin of her promotion to a higher sphere. Her wages are quadrupled; her fare by comparison is sumptuous; she can never be scolded; she is called upon to fulfill but one duty. The occupation is so much more remunerative than ordinary service, that one can scarcely be surprised if plenty of women are found ready and willing to follow the trade. With them the child is only a means to an end. Marriage among the lower orders in Germany is cumbered about with so many restrictions and conditions, that it has come to be looked upon as almost an impossibility.

[102] When Miss Aarta Hansteen, a Norwegian lady announced her purpose of lecturing on woman’s natural equality with man, she met little or no support, the church strenuously opposing on ground of woman’s original curse.

[103] Translated into English under title of “Nora,” by Miss Frances Lord.

[104] So profound was its effect that visiting invitations were coupled with the request not to speak of the work.

[105] Marian Brown Shipley, an American lady, long a resident of Sweden and thoroughly conversant with its literature and tone of thought, said of it, “A more glorious thing has not been done in Sweden for centuries, Strindberg has defied church and state, striking both to their foundations with his merciless satire, and rallied the Swedish people at a single stroke.”

[106] Bjornsen said, “The confiscating of August Strindberg’s book Giftas, is the greatest literary scandal in the North in my time. It is worse than when one wished to put me in the house of correction on account of the King; or thrust out Ibsen from the society of honorable people for gjengungerd (Ghosts).”

[107] March 30, 1882.

[108] Russian Revolt.

[109] A Russian writer of the 17th century said: “As Eve did wrong, so the whole race of women become sinful and the cause of evil.”

[110] She was spoken of as a “Vanity itself,” “A storm in the home,” “A flood that swells everything,” “A serpent nourished in the bosom,” “A spear penetrating the heart,” “A constantly flying arrow.”

[111] Rural Life in Russia.—The Nineteenth Century.

[112] See Chap. 4. p. 161.

[113] I myself am the happy possessor of a little rude wooden bas-relief, framed and glazed, of two saints, whose names I have ungratefully forgotten, to whom if you pray as you go out to commit a crime, however heinous, you take your pardon with you.—Rural Life in Russia.

[114] See Chap. 4. p. 182.

[115] Reported by Mrs. Livermore.

[116] Leavenworth Standard, Dec. 21, 1886.

[117] Under common law a woman is classified with lunatics, idiots, infants and minors.

[1] Milton’s oriental views of the function of women led him not only to neglect but to prevent the education of his daughters. They were sent to no school at all, but were handed over to a school mistress in the house. He would not allow them to learn any language, saying with a sneer that “for a woman one tongue is enough.” The miseries however that follow the selfish sacrifice of others is so sure to strike, that there needs no future world of punishment to adjust the balance. The time came when Milton would have given worlds that his daughters had learned the tongues. He was blind and could only get at his precious book—could only give expression to his precious verses through the eyes and hands of others. Whose hands and whose eyes so proper for this as his daughters? He proceeded to train them to read to him, parrot-like, in five or six languages which he (the schoolmaster) could at one time have easily taught them; but of which they now could not understand a word. He turned his daughters into reading machines. It is appalling to think of such a task. That Mary should revolt and at last after repeated contests with her taskmaster, learn to hate her father—that she should, when some one spoke in her presence of her father’s approaching marriage, make the dreadful speech that it was no news to hear of his wedding, but if she could hear of his death, that was something—is unutterably painful, but not surprising.—The Athenaeum.

[2] The Church as It Is.—Parker Pillsbury, pp. 32-3-4-5-6.

[3] Report of the Proceedings of the Missionary Conference.—Mr. Perkins’ speech.

[4] The same hymns are sung, the same doctrine preached, the same necessity for salvation emphasized, and justification by faith is made the corner stone of redemption.

[5] Historians have declared that “Nowhere did the spirit of Puritanism in its evil as well as its good, more thoroughly express itself than in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.” Boston, for its atrocities was known as “The Bloody Town.” “The Emancipation of Massachusetts” by Brooks Adams, gives a very correct account of the retarding influence of Puritan bigotry in the development of intellectual truth in the New England States.

[6] The true character of Presbyterian Pastors in Scotland in Time of Charles II.

[7] When her father’s name was mentioned, Dora said, “Don’t speak to me of my father, Mr. Morris, you and the whole church know that my father, prophet though you call him, broke many a woman’s heart. If it is required of me to break as many hearts and ruin as many women as my father did, I should go to perdition before I would go back into the church again, and—” “Oh, sister Dora!” exclaimed the teacher in consternation at her clearness of vision. “It is a fact and you know it,” she continued, “you know that many of his wives died of broken hearts and how did he leave the rest? Look at my mother and look at all the rest of them! A religion that breaks women’s hearts and ruins them is of the devil. That’s what Mormonism does. Don’t talk to me of my father.”—Reported in the Chicago Inter Ocean.

[8] A correspondent writing for an eastern paper from Salt Lake City, a few years since, said: “Of all the ill-conditioned, God-forsaken, hopeless looking people I ever saw, the women here beat them all. Yesterday was supply day for the Mormons living outside the city. They bring their wives into town in dead-axle wagons, and fill the vacant room with children who look fully as bad as their mothers, if not worse. Many of them are lean and hump-backed and all look sickly and ill-clad. Two out of three women on the streets yesterday, had nursing infants in their arms. One of the saints had thirteen wives and ninety-four children; another had nine wives and five nursling babies, which he exhibited with all the pride I should take in a lot of fine horses. I never realized the infernal nature of the institution nor its effect upon society as I do now.”

[9] Key to Theology, by Parley Pratt.

[10] Ibid.

[11] The following conversation took place between a mistress and an Irish servant girl: “Bridget, why are not women ever priests?” “Oh! they couldn’t be; they’re too wicked.” “You don’t believe such nonsense, do you—you don’t believe women are more wicked than men?” “Yes, ma’am,” replied Bridget with emphasis; “they’re a dale more wicked; they can’t iver be prastes, for they brought sin into the world. Eve was the very first sinner; I learned it all in the catechism.”

[12] In a recent Catholic Allocution, emanating from the dignitaries of that church on the Pacific Coast, it was said: “The church, like Christ, is the same yesterday, today and forever; it is the same here as in other parts of the world; its sacred laws, enacted under the guidance of the divine spirit, are as binding here as in any other place.”

[13] We do not, indeed, prize as highly as some of our countrymen appear to do the ability to read, write and cipher. Some men are born to be leaders, and the rest are born to be led. The best ordered and administered state is that in which the few are well educated and lead, and the many are trained to obedience.—“Catholic Review.”

[14] The Mormon faith belts Idaho, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, a portion of the country that is wealthier than any other portion in its natural products. It is not simply in Utah that this power of Mormonism is found, but it is spreading in every territory. Every railroad in that section is partially built by Mormon laborers. They are spreading all over that country. They control, in three or four states there, the balance of power. They control every election that is held in Utah, and every man is dictated to in relation to his vote. They also control the ballot-box in Idaho and Wyoming, and are thus liable in time to come, should the two Mormon territories become states, to throw sixteen Senators into our Congress. They openly boast of their intention to take their plural system to your watering places here in the east, Saratoga, Newport and other resorts. I realize the struggle of the past when the manhood of our nation was put to the test, and I know there is another contest approaching. The leaders say they intend to fight this contest until Mormonism prevails—Mormonism and treason to the United States Government.

[2] During the Parliament Commission inquiry, a witness, Peter Garkel, collier, said that he preferred women to boys as drawers; they were better to manage and kept time better; they would fight and shriek and everything but let anybody pass them. The London National Reformer states that “The first woman member (Mrs. Jane Pyne), of the London Society of Compositors was admitted by the executive on August 30 (1892). Two years ago Miss Clementine Black applied for permission to join the society but the request had to be refused on the ground that “it was not proposed that woman should be paid on the same scale as men.”

[3] Lecture by Felix Adler, 1892, The Position of Woman in the Present.

[4] “The New York Court of Appeals has rendered an opinion which shows that married women in that state are still in bondage. A woman fell down a coal-hole and sued for damages, recovering $500. The defendant asked for a new trial on the ground that the woman was working for her husband and the court had taken into account her loss of wages. The Court of Appeals reversed the decision and sent the case back for a new trial. It held that the services of a wife belonged to her husband, and she can not recover any wages even if she holds his written promise to pay.”—Chicago Inter Ocean. Jan. 1892.

[1] Generally these conventicles produced very many bastards, and the excuse they (the ministers) made for that, was, “where sin abounds the Grace of God super abounds; there is no condemnation in those that are in Christ.” Sometimes this: “The lambs of God may sport together; to the pure all things are pure.” Nay, generally they are of opinion that a man is never a true saint till he have a fall like that of David with Bathsheba, The true character of the Presbyterian Pastors and People of Scotland. Reign of King Charles II—and since the Revolution, p. 12.

[2] Mr. Mott a member of the Salvation army in Syracuse, having led astray another member, a young girl of seventeen and being requested to do her the justice of marrying her, replies that he has a great mission converting the world and has no time for marrying. He took an active part in the salvation meeting the other night. He says he was doing as Jesus did, and was free from sin. He carried the flag in the streets and prayed three times. There was great disorder and indignation at Mott’s impudence in praying and speaking.—Syracuse Daily Standard. 1883.

[3] The Book of Pitris.

[4] Light on the Path.

[5] Mrs. Gage, Chairman of the Resolution Committee.

[6] Both Marie Weston Chapman, and Whittier, immortalized this letter in verse, Mrs. Chapman by a spirited poem entitled: “The Times that try Men’s souls,” and Whittier in one called “A Pastoral Letter.” This “Clerical Bull” was fulminated with special reference to those two noble South Carolina women, Sarah M. and Angelina E. Grimke, who were at that time publicly pleading for those in bonds as bound with them, while on a visit to Massachusetts. It was written by the Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Adams, of Boston, author of “A South-side View of Slavery.”

[7] No man who remembers 1837 and its lowering clouds will deny that there was hardly any contribution to the anti-slavery movement greater or more impressive than the crusade of these Grimke sisters from South Carolina through the New England States.—Wendell Phillips.

[8] Who afterwards married Stephen Foster, one of the apostles of the anti-slavery cause.

[9] Decomposed eggs, the contents of stables, and even of outhouses, were hurled at the speaker and those assembled to listen.

[10] Rev. Samuel J. May first had his attention called to the wrongs of women under Church and State by a striking comparison of the two from the lips of a woman. Priestly opposition to new ideas, and to woman’s taking part in reform work, still continues to be manifest, as shown by the tour of General Weaver and Mrs. Lease, through the Southern States in the fall of 1892. “The notorious Mrs. Lease,” as she was termed, was met by hooting, howling, egg-throwing mobs, and in Atlanta “an eminent minister of the strongest religious denomination (Baptist) in the South” preached against the third party, September 18th, five days before that on which General Weaver and Mrs. Lease were to speak in that city. This sermon, reported by the Constitution, as a “red-hot roasting” declared against the political party that would employ women as speakers, “unsex American women,” as an evidence of the skepticism of the age. Nor is this the only recent instance of pulpit opposition to woman. After the formation of the woman’s National Liberal League, Washington, February 1890, clergymen in different portions of the country—Washington, Iowa, Massachusetts, etc., hurled their anathemas against this association, as inimical to Bible morality, and especially against the women leading in this step. In addition to these sermons, a Catholic Orphanage of seven hundred children, was instructed to pray against such demoralizing ideas; and beyond this, letters passing between influential women fell under United States supervision, and were opened in transit.

[11] Lucretia Mott foremost among these delegates, after this rejection decided upon holding a Woman’s Rights Convention, upon her return to America, which should present the wrongs under which women suffered. This was done, 1848, at Seneca Falls, N.Y.

[12] Through Senator Joseph E. Brown.

[13] Several ladies well known for their work in the enfranchisement of their sex, attended this trial, the New York Sun facetiously referring to the presence of “those eminent Presbyterians, Lillie Devereux Blake, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Susan A. King.”

[14] Report of the Washington D.C. “Republican.”

[15] Ably reviewed each week as they appeared, by Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake.

[16] Lenten Lectures, p. 56-7-114.

[17] WOMEN AND THEIR SPHERE! Rev. Dr. Dix, some weeks since, came to the front with a series of sermons in which, by unsupported assertion, he managed to demonstrate that women in the United States are no longer ornamental. The trouble in the mind of the reverend D.D. seems to be that women, having grown in the knowledge of the truth and of that liberty wherewith Christ maketh free, have concluded that their sphere is not to be man’s slave—his plaything, a human gewgaw, to be fondled, caressed, or kicked as the masculine mind may elect. If it is important for man to “know himself,” brave women have concluded that it is quite as essential for a woman to know herself, and with a heroism born of rights conferred by God Himself, women have in these latter days resolved to map out their own sphere independent of man’s dictation. They have made commendable headway. They have succeeded in shaking down a number of antiquated citadels where ignorance, superstition, prejudice, despotism and cruelty found refuge, and, as they tumbled, the breath of popular indignation has blown the fragments away like chaff in the grasp of a tornado. These brave women, finding out that—

CHORUS

set themselves about solving its problems for themselves and for their sex. Some of them asked for the ballot. Why? Because they wanted to obliterate from the statute books such laws as restricted their liberties and circumscribed their sphere. As wives they wanted to be the equals of their husbands before the law. Why not? As mothers they wanted to be the equal of their sons before the law. Why not? A thousand reasons have been assigned why not, but they do not answer the demand. What is wanted as prudent guarantees that the ballot will be wisely wielded by those upon whom the great right has been conferred? The answer is ready—intellect, education, a fair comprehension of the obligations of citizenship, loyalty to the Government, to republican institutions and the welfare of society. It is not contended that women do not possess these qualifications, but the right is withheld from them nevertheless, and by withholding this right a hundred others are included, every one of which when justice bears sway will be granted. This done woman’s sphere will regulate itself as does man’s sphere. The Boston Herald in a recent issue takes Dr. Dix to task for narrowness of vision and weakness of grasp in discussing “the calling of a Christian woman,” and then proceeds to outline its own views on the “sphere of capable women,” in which it is less robust than the reverend D.D. To intimate that the Infinite Disposer of Events favors the narrow, vulgar prejudices of Rev. Dr. Dix and his organ, the Boston Herald, is to dwarf the Almighty to human proportions and bring discredit upon His attributes in the midst of which justice shines with resplendent glory, but the demand is that women themselves shall determine for themselves the boundaries of their sphere. It is not a question of mere sentiment, it is not a matter of fancy or caprice. It is rugged question. It involves food, clothing, shelter. It means self-reliance. Women are not appealing to man’s gallantry, not to any quality of less importance than his sense of justice for their rights. Man is not likely to regard his mother with less affection and reverence because she is his father’s equal, and in the past, when women were more degraded than at present, the best men have found in women inspiration for their best work, good men will not find less inspiration for good work when women are emancipated from the thraldom of vicious laws, and crowned man’s equal in all matters relating to “sphere,” shall, by laws relating to physical and mental organism, take their chances in the world’s broad field of battle, demanding and receiving for work done in any of the departments of human activities men’s pay when they perform men’s work.—Indianapolis Sentinel, May 13, 1883.

[18] It is not a physiological cause which produced our present family with the father as ruler and owner of all property.—Kemptsky.

[19] By a singular lack of oversight in making up the title-page and lettering the cover, the words “Husband and Wife” have been printed as though they referred to objects of equal importance. Even the carefully trained eye of a former editor of the “Christian Register,” the Rt. Rev. F. D. Huntington, D.D., Bishop of Central New York, who furnishes a brief and cautious introduction to the volume, did not detect this error. It has been left to us to call attention to the incongruity of the title-page, and to give the sentiment of the book proper typographical expression. The conventional sobriety and ecclesiasticism of the title-page do not prepare one for the novelty of the contents. It is only by reading the book that we become aware of them. The sensation of the reader is somewhat the same as one would have on going into a building which from the facade appeared to be a plain, dignified Episcopal church, but which on entering he found to be a mediaeval circus. Not that there is any anything intentionally hilarious in the arena of this book or that it displays any athletic vigor of thought but that it is essentially novel and revolutionary. Dr. Gray is not unconscious of the novelty of his doctrine. “It is believed,” he says, “that the position of this essay is new to the discussion. It has not been urged or stated in print in England or America;” and, later on, he expresses a well-grounded belief that “some will smile” at his views as “antiquated and fanciful.” All of these claims may be readily granted. First, the doctrine is new. It is new at least in its present dress—as new as Adam would seem to be, if he put on a modern costume, dyed his gray hairs, and appeared in Boston as a social lecturer.—The Christian Register, Boston.

[20] Who has forgotten the sublime magnanimity of Artemus Ward, when he proposed on a certain occasion to sacrifice all his wife’s relatives? This is exactly what Dean Gray theoretically achieves. He not only abolishes his own wife’s relatives, but those of other men who have entered into the marriage relationship. He makes thorough work of it. Not only does he extinguish the wife’s sister as a relative, but also her cousins and her aunts. In fact, he even abolishes the mother-in-law. The luxury of a mother-in-law is granted to the wife, who by virtue of marriage becomes related to her husband’s mother, but is not granted to the husband, who has no relation whatever to the mother of his wife. As to the sisters, the cousins and the aunts, there may be a reason why Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.B., would view with dismay an equal addition to their number through the offices of matrimony; but the majority of men not blessed with a similar superfluity would hardly wish to forego this delightful form of conjugal perquisite.—Ibid.

[21] “One of the most learned colored men in the country is Alexander Crummell, Rector of St. Luke’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C. When he desired to study for holy orders he applied at Kenyon College, Gambier, O., but was refused admission. He made applications elsewhere, which were equally unsuccessful. He finally went to Oxford, England, and there took a full course. He is an eloquent preacher, and his congregation embraces a large number of prominent colored citizens.”

[22] I. Corinthians, v: 1.

[23] And one of the most bitter opponents to the admission of the women lay delegates to the Methodist General Conference.

[24] As reported in Syracuse, New York “Sunday Morning Courier”, March 4th, 1877.

[25] Rev. F. B. Neely, of Philadelphia, said that he was in favor of submitting the question to the annual conferences. He offered the following amendment to the report of the committee: But since there is great interest in this question, and since the church generally should be consulted in regard to such an important matter, therefore Resolved: That we submit to the annual conferences the proposition to amend the second restrictive rule by amending the words “and said delegates may be men or women” after the words “two lay delegates” for an annual conference so that it would read, “Nor of more than two lay delegates for an annual conference, and the said delegates may be men or women.” The amendment was seconded by Dr. Paxton.—Telegram. New York, May 12.—The debate on the admission of women delegates was one of the most lengthy in the history of the church. It occupied the time of the conference during the larger part of six sessions. It is the common remark, too, that never before was a subject contested in this body with such obstinacy, not to say bitterness. The struggle to obtain recognition from the chair was a revelation to those who did not know previously how fond Methodists are of speaking in meeting. The instant the chairman’s gavel fell, announcing the termination of one speech, fifty delegates or more were on their feet, and from fifty stentorian voices rang out the pitiful appeal, “Mr. Chairman!” This was the order of affairs from the beginning of the debate to the close. One delegate who was finally recognized proved to be so hoarse from his protracted efforts to get the floor that it was with difficulty he could be heard when he did get it.—Correspondence, Syracuse, N.Y. Sunday Herald, May 13.

[26] The final vote, excluding women from this conference and submitting the question of their eligibility to the annual conferences, stood: To exclude and submit, 237; against, 198—making a majority of 39 only of the total vote, while the laymen were so evenly divided that the change of one vote would have tied them. If now the annual conference shall decree by a three-fourths vote of all the ministers present and voting, that women are eligible, and if four years hence the general conference by a two-thirds vote shall ratify that decree, the fair sisters will thereafter have free course in that body. Otherwise they will be tolerated only as mere lookers-on. From the fact, that many who voted to submit the matter to the annual conference did so, not because they wish the women to come in, but merely as the best method of getting rid of a troublesome question for the time being, it looks as though their chances of gaining admittance as delegates four years hence were little better, if any, than in the present instance.—Sunday Herald Syracuse, N.Y. May 13.

[28] From “The Woman’s Journal.” Boston.

[29] Headed by Mme. AstiÉ de Valsayre.

[30] When the temporal kingdom took possession of Italy, the rate of ignorance was 90 per cent. It has now been reduced to 45 per cent.

[31] The “Boston Herald,” Aug. 17, 1886, heading an article upon these statutes, “Copper Colored Blue Laws.”

[32] A husband is entitled to punish his wife when he sees fit. At first he is to use remonstrances; if these do not avail, he is to have recourse to more severe punishment. The confessor is at first bound not to pay much heed to women complaining of their husbands, because women are habitually inclined to lie.

[33] The scene in the convocation was animated, the public at large favoring the women. The senior Proctor being slow in his figuring, one of the “Gods in the Gallery” becoming impatient for the announcement of the numbers, shouted “Call in one of the ladies to help you, sir.”

[34] In Egypt, where women received the same education as men, very few children died—a fact noted in the absence of child mummies.

[35] “Eve lived 940 years, giving birth to a boy and a girl every year. Eve lived ten years longer than Adam. They must give this first woman the best constitution in the world for while her husband lived 930 years and communicated to his sons for several generations the principle of so long a life (which is no less applicable to Eve than to him), he must have been of very vigorous constitution; turn the thing as you will it will always be an argument from the greater to the less to show that Eve’s body was better constituted than that of her husband.”

[1] As the resurrection of a material body to dwell in a spiritual heaven.

[2] When a quarter of the human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too much disheartened by the circumstance to see clearly the absurdity of this command. This is the condition of women, for whom I have the same compassion that I would have for a prisoner so long cramped in a narrow cage that he could not use his limbs. While many women are thinking their own thoughts there are others without so potent a brain, who have as yet, failed to see the absurdity of allowing others to think for them. For this condition of mental and moral blunders the church is responsible.—Ralph Waldo Emerson.

[3] When reading was first taught women in America, said Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, it was opposed on the ground that she would forget her father’s or husband’s name should she learn to read and write. Geography met with like opposition on the ground of its tendency to make her dissatisfied with home and desirous to travel, while the records of history show that the first public examination of women in Geometry, 1829, raised a cry of disapproval over the whole country.

[4] There are hard and ugly facts in this Christendom of ours, and its history includes the serfdom and nihilism of Russia, the drudgery of German women; the wrongs of the Irish peasant girl; the 20,000 little English girls sold each year to gratify the lusts of the aristocracy; all the horrors of the Inquisition; all the burnings of the witches; the slavery and polygamy of America and the thousand iniquities all around us; all these belong to the history of Christendom.—The Woman’s Tribune, Clara Colby, editor.

[5] This case decided adversely to woman’s right of suffrage by the territorial Supreme Court, was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, through the efforts of Mr. A. S. Austin, a young and energetic attorney of Olympia, the state capital; the points raised by Mr. Austin were, First: that the Bloomer case is a collusive one between the original plaintiff and defendants, and is a fraud upon all friends of equal suffrage in the state. Second: that the decision of the Supreme Court of Washington Territory was erroneous in two respects, to wit: that the statute of the territory conferring suffrage was constitutional, and that women are citizens.

[6] At a Democratic State Convention, Syracuse, N.Y.

[7] This was the case at the Republican nominating convention, Chicago, 1880.

[8] The liberty and civilization of the present are nothing else than the fragments of rights which the scaffold and stake have wrung from the strong hands of the usurpers.—Wendell Phillips.