e than the despotic acts of a foreign
ruler.

As if left ignobly to illustrate the truths of their noble
declarations, no sooner did the enfranchised class enter upon the
exercise of their usurped powers than they proceeded to alienate
from the mothers of humanity rights declared to be inseparable
from humanity itself! Had they thrust the British yoke from the
necks of their wives and daughters as indignantly as they thrust
it from their own, the legal subjection of the women of to-day
would not stand out as it now does--the reproach of our
republican government. As if sons did not follow the condition of
the mothers--as if daughters had no claim to the birthright of
the fathers--they established for disfranchised woman a "dead
line," by retaining the English common law of marriage, which,
unlike that of less liberal European governments, converts the
marriage altar into an executioner's block and recognizes woman
as a wife only when so denuded of personal rights that in legal
phrase she is said to be--"dead in law"!

More considerate in the matter of forms than the highwayman who
kills that he may rob the unresisting dead, our gallant fathers
executed women who must need cross the line of human
happiness--legally; and administered their estate; and decreed
the disposition of their defunct personalities in legislative
halls; only omitting to provide for the matrimonial crypt the
fitting epitaph: "Here lies the relict of American freedom--taxed
to pauperism, loved to death!"

With all the modification of the last quarter, of a century, our
English law of marriage still invests the husband with a
sovereignty almost despotic over his wife. It secures to him her
personal service and savings, and the control and custody of her
person as against herself. Having thus reduced the wife to a dead
pauper owing service to her husband, our shrewd forefathers, to
secure the bond, confiscated her natural obligations as a child
and a mother. Whether married or single, only inability excuses a
son from the legal support of indigent and infirm parents. The
married daughter, in the discharge of her wifely duties, may
tenderly care and toil for her husband's infirm parents, or his
children and grandchildren by a prior marriage, while her own
parents