r the age of fifteen, of whom you spoke last week, but a form
of slavery? Again, by way of climax, what will the Western world
think of a country that permits a mistress to beat a slave girl
to death for eating a piece of watermelon--as reported by your
correspondent from Hankow? The triviality of the provocation reminds
us of the divorce of a wife for offering her mother-in-law a dish
of half-cooked pears. The latter, which is a classic instance, is
excused on the ground of filial duty, but I have too much respect
for the author of the "Hiaoking," to accept a tradition which does a
grievous wrong to one of the best men of ancient times. The tradition,
however unfounded, may serve as a guide to public opinion. It suggests
another subject, which we might (but will not) reserve for another
section, viz., the regulation of divorce and the limitation of
marital power. It is indeed intimately connected with my present
topic, for what is wife or concubine but a slave, as long as a
husband has power to divorce or sell her at will--with or without
provocation?

Last week an atrocious instance, not of divorce, but of wife-murder,
occurred within bow-shot of my house. A man engaged in a coal-shop
had left his wife with an aunt in the country. The aunt complained
of her as being too stupid and clumsy to earn a living. Her brutal
husband thereon took the poor girl to a lonely spot, where he killed
her, and left her unburied. Returning to the coal-shop, he sent
word to his aunt that he was ready to answer for what he had done,
if called to account. "Has he been called to account?"
[Page 300]
I enquired this morning of one of his neighbours. "Oh no! was the
reply; it's all settled; the woman is buried, and no inquiry is
called for." Is not woman a slave, though called a wife, in a society
where such things are allowed to go with impunity? Will not the new
laws, from which so much is expected, limit the marriage relation
to one woman, and make the man, to whom she is bound, a husband,
not a master?

Confucius, we are told, resigned office in his native state when
the prince accepted a bevy of singing girls sent from a neighbouring
principality. The girls were slaves bought and trained for their
shameful profession, and the traffic in girls for the same service
constitutes the leading form of domestic slavery at this day--so
little has been the progress in morals, so little advance toward
a legislation that protects the life and vi