d
life-interest in case she survives him. _Tenth_--They allow
the husband to imprison her at his pleasure within his own
house, the court sustaining him in this coercion until the
wife "submits herself to her husband's will."
_Eleventh_--They allow the husband while the common property
is in his possession, "without even the formality of a legal
complaint, the taking of an oath or the filing of a bond for
the good faith of his action," to advertise his wife through
the public press as a deserter and to forbid her credit.
_Twelfth_--They deny the widow the right of inheritance in
the common property that they give the widower, allow her
but forty days' residence in the family mansion before
paying rent to her husband's heirs, thus treating her as if
she were an alien to her own children--set off to her a few
paltry articles of household use, close the estate through a
process of law, and make the days of her bereavement doubly
days of sorrow.

The above laws of marriage, placing irresponsible authority in
the hands of the husband, have given him a power of moral
coercion over the wife, making her virtually his slave. Without
entering into fuller details of the injustice and oppression of
the laws upon all women, married and single, we will sum the
whole subject up in the language of the French Woman's Rights
League, which characterizes woman's position thus:

(1) Woman is held _politically_ to have no existence; (2)
_civilly_, she is a minor; (3) in marriage she is a serf;
(4) in labor she is made inferior and robbed of her
earnings; (5) in public instruction she is sacrificed to
man; (6) out of marriage, answers to the faults committed by
both; (7) as a mother is deprived of her right to her
children; (8) she is only deemed equally responsible,
intelligent and answerable in taxes and crimes.

By order of the New York State Woman Suffrage Society.

May, 1877. MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Secretary_.

In the summer of 1877 another effort was made by women of wealth to
be relieved from taxation. Several memorials to that effect were
sent to the legislature, one headed by Susan A. King[230] of New
York, a self-made woman who