s, and the prosecution ought to be confined to the
offense on her part. ("Esprit des Lois," tom. 3, 186; "Traite du
Contrat de Mariage," No. 516; "Elements of Civil Law," p. 254).'

"Say you, 'These are but the opinions of men'? On what else, I ask,
are the hundreds of women depending, who, this hour, demand in our
courts a release from burdensome contracts? Are not these delicate
matters left wholly to the discretion of courts? Are not young
women from the first families dragged into our courts,--into
assemblies of men exclusively,--the judges all men, the jurors all
men? No true woman there to shield them, by her presence, from
gross and impertinent questionings, to pity their misfortunes, or
to protest against their wrongs?

"The administration of justice depends far more on the opinions of
eminent jurists than on law alone, for law is powerless when at
variance with public sentiment.

"Do not the above citations clearly prove inequality? Are not the
very letter and spirit of the marriage contract based on the idea
of the supremacy of man as the keeper of woman's virtue--her sole
protector and support? Out of marriage, woman asks nothing, at this
hour, but the elective franchise. It is only in marriage that she
must demand her right to person, children, property, wages, life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How can we discuss all the
laws and conditions of marriage, without perceiving its essential
essence, end, and aim? Now, whether the institution of marriage be
human or divine, whether regarded as indissoluble by ecclesiastical
courts or dissoluble by civil courts, woman, finding herself
equally degraded in each and every phase of it, always the victim
of the institution, it is her right and her duty to sift the
relation and the compact through and through, until she finds out
the true cause of her false position. How can we go before the
legislatures of our respective States and demand new laws, or no
laws, on divorce, until we have some idea of what the true relation
is?

"We decide the whole question of slavery by settling the sacred
rights of the individual. We assert that man cannot hold property
in man, and reject the whole code of laws that conflicts with the
self-evident truth of the assertion.

"Again, I ask, is