achel's ninepence.

ONE RESPONSIBLE HEAD

When we look through any business directory, there seem to be almost as
many copartnerships as single dealers; and three quarters of these
copartnerships appear to consist of precisely two persons, no more, no
less. These partners are, in the eye of the law, equal. It is not found
necessary, under the law, to make a general provision that in each case one
partner should be supreme and the other subordinate. In many cases, by the
terms of the copartnership there are limitations on one side and special
privileges on the other,--marriage settlements, as it were; but the general
law of copartnership is based on the presumption of equality. It would be
considered infinitely absurd to require that, as the general rule, one
party or the other should be in a state of _coverture_, during which the
very being and existence of the one should be suspended, or entirely merged
and incorporated into that of the other.

And yet this requirement, which would be an admitted absurdity in the case
of two business partners, is precisely that which the English common law
still lays down in case of husband and wife. The words which I employed to
describe it, in the preceding sentence, are the very phrases in which
Blackstone describes the legal position of women. And though the English
common law has been, in this respect, greatly modified and superseded by
statute law; yet, when it comes to an argument on woman suffrage, it is
constantly this same tradition to which men and even women habitually
appeal,--the necessity of a single head to the domestic partnership, and
the necessity that the husband should be that head. This is especially
true of English men and women; but it is true of Americans as well.
Nobody has stated it more tersely than Fitzjames Stephen, in his "Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity" (p. 216), when arguing against Mr. Mill's view
of the equality of the sexes.

"Marriage is a contract, one of the principal objects in which is
the government of a family.

"This government must be vested, either by law or by contract, in
the hands of one of the two married persons."

[Then follow some collateral points, not bearing on the present question.]

"Therefore if marriage is to be permanent, the government of the
family must be put by law and by morals into the hands of the
husband, for no one proposes to give it to the wife."

This argument he call