it
certainly will.

We had also for consideration a synopsis of what deserves to be
called most emphatically "The Maine Law," in relation to married
women, prepared by Mr. Drummond, our late speaker and formerly
attorney-general, and one of our best lawyers, where it was
demonstrated, both by enactments and adjudications, running from
March, 1844, to February, 1866, that a married woman--to say
nothing of widows and spinsters--has little to complain of in our
State, her legal rights being far ahead of the age, and not only
acknowledged, but enforced; she being mistress of herself and of
her earnings, and allowed to trade for herself, while "her
contracts for any lawful purpose are made valid and binding, and
to be enforced, as if she were sole agent of her property, but
she cannot be arrested."

Then followed Mr. S. B. Beckett, just returned from a trip to the
Holy Land, who testified, among other things, that he had seen
women both in London and Ireland who knew "how to keep a hotel,"
which is reckoned among men as the highest earthly
qualification--and proved it by managing some of the largest and
best in the world.

And then Mr. Charles Jose, late one of our aldermen, who, half in
earnest and half in jest, took t'other side of the question,
urging, first, that this was a political movement--as if that
were any objection, supposing it true; our whole system of
government being a political movement, and that, by which we
trampled out the last great rebellion, another, both parties and
all parties cooeperating in the work; next, that women did not ask
for suffrage--it was the men who asked for it, in their names;
that there were no complaints and no petitions from women! As if
petitions had not gone up and complaints, too, by thousands, from
all parts of the country, from school-teachers and office clerks
and others, as well as from the women at large, both over sea and
here.

But enough. The meeting stands adjourned for a week. Probably no
organization will be attempted, lest it might serve to check free
discussion.

J. N.

_May 5, 1870._

Mr. W. W. McCann wrote to the _Woman's Journal_ of this suffrage
meeting in Portland, in 1870:

Judge Howe's voice, whe