can. It may seem, at the first glance, to a woman, that if she have a legacy left her by some relative or friend of her own, who perhaps knows little and cares less about her husband, it is a hard thing that the executor should pay it to him, and not to her Mr. Dickens' story,* * a muddle." The exclusive property in what either accident laws of man-and-wife are a grievance not or exertion places in her hands. No reasonsolely to the latter. Mrs. Norton is too rea- able woman ever seriously thinks that she sonable, and too just a woman, to need to be told that there are bad wives. But perhaps she will say that this picture of the honest, hard-working operative, chained by the law to a woman utterly profligate and debased, who left his home, and returned to it when she pleased, to desecrate and pollute it, and that she cannot invest it in trinkets, or who, instead of a help-meet to him, was the buy a pony-phaeton, or send it to her favourevil spirit of his life, is a picture painted by ite son in the Guards. Or if she be in a a man. But it is painted by a man who has an lower condition of life, she may grumble eye to see, and a heart to love, all that is true that the half guinea given her by her old and beautiful in womanhood; who has illus- mistress, or the young gentleman she has trated not only this truth and beauty, but the nursed, is taken away from her, just as she wrongs and sufferings of women, as no man is thinking of a new bonnet, because the has ever done before, and who would not rent is in arrears. But such thoughts as be the great writer that he is, if he were a these are for the most part transient. whit less catholic in his sympathies. But Woman's better nature, which is instinctthere are 66 hard times," and hard lines, for ively generous and unselfish, soon reminds man as for woman, in this great matter of her, that for years she has been supported conjugal alliance; and when we see how by her husband, contributing slightly, if at poor Stephen Blackpool never returned all, to the common purse-and shall she home after a hard day's work, without "a now grudge him the little, which, through dread that ever haunted his desolate home," of her, comes either to increase his comforts finding that his wretched wife had returned or diminish his cares? We can hardly foragain to disgrace and impoverish him,-when give Mr. Thackeray for that one passage in we read the touching words (and seldom was such a history told in so brief a sentence,) that "the only evidences of her last return were the scantier moveables in his room, and the greyer hair upon his head," we cannot but recognise the truth, that men have their wrongs as well as women, and that, to be the bread-finder of a bad wife, is to real-tinually turning their tresses into bowize all the bitterness of the curse. Man being then the worker and the breadfinder, the responsibility of providing sustenance for the household, and the penalty of not paying for it being solely his, it would hardly seem that the wife, so long as their common wants are to be provided for by a common purse, can justly claim any *Hard Times. It seems to have been Mr. Dick the career of Becky Sharp, which shews us how she suffered her husband to go to prison, and mainly too for her extravagance, whilst a bank-note of a large amount lay hoarded up in the recesses of the little lady's writing-desk. That is not a womanly trait. Women, indeed, on the other hand, are con strings, for the use of their lords, making great sacrifices of self to enable their husbands to carry on the war against the com mon enemy. Practically they acknowledge, that whatsoever they possess is the breadfinder's, but they like to think that it passes into his hands as a gift, and not as a right. In ordinary cases, this non-existence of the wife, in respect to the possession of ens' original design, in this tale, to illustrate the evils property, suggests nothing more than some of the existing laws of divorce, but the idea, we know semi-jocular complaints, some charmingly not for what reason, was not worked out to its legi- illogical argumentation, or at the worst, à timate conclusion. In this respect, notwithstanding little transient soreness on the part of the the many fine passages which the story contains, wife. But there are cases in which it is a (and there are none finer than some which we could indicate in the whole range of the author's works,) source of intolerable aggravation - when the effect of the whole is disappointing. There are the legal non-existence of the wife is as refew, we suspect, of Mr. Dickens' more thoughtful volting to the reason as to the feelingsreaders, who did not imagine that he was working when the head and the heart alike declare up towards an illustration of the inequality of the laws of divorce, as they affect rich and poor, by against it. If the wife has the power of showing how Mr. Bounderby was enabled, by dint earning money, whether by writing books of money, to shake off a wife, guilty only of an in- or washing linen, there is no reason, we rediscretion, and that too on the evidence of an inter- peat, why her earnings should not find their ested witness, while poor Stephen Blackpool could not rid himself of the degraded being who was the way into the common purse, and contribute curso of his life, though her offences against him towards the payment of the rent, or the and against God and man were notorious all the liquidation of the baker's bill. But, when country round. there is no common purse; when the hus band will not support the wife; when she painful industry, by means of which she is the victim of his neglect and his cruelty, hoped, when a sufficiency had been acquired, and he is squandering his earnings, perhaps, to visit some distant but unforgotten memupon drink, perhaps upon some profligate bers of her family. At last she had hoardconnexions, it is surely a case of incon-ed up three sovereigns a little fortune to ceivable injustice, that he should have the her the object for which she had so long power of laying his hands, at any time, upon been striving, seemed to be within her reach the produce of his wife's labour, and de--when, lo! the prize dazzled the eyes of claring that it is legally his. As the English her husband, and he pounced upon it like a law now stands, a husband may claim from hawk. The savings of years were carried the employer of his discarded wife, all the off to be spent at the beer-shop. And the money that she has earned; and the em poor woman went stark mad. ployer is bound to give it to him. Any Now, except in the suddenness and fearcontract entered into with her is mere waste fulness of the catastrophe, this is not a very paper. She may earn money for her hus- striking illustration of the injustice of which band, as his horse or his ox may earn it for we write; for the woman was living with him, but not for herself. If she has been the man, and was presumedly supported by permitted to receive her earnings, and has him, at the time of the robbery. Had she contrived by painful economy and self-de- lived apart, and supported herself, he might nial, to save any portion of them, she can- still have laid violent hands upon her earnnot leave her savings, after her death, even ings. Mrs. Norton has given one or two to her own children. They are absolutely illustrations of this phase of the non-existher husband's; and he may take them, and ence question, (her own case included,) and give them all to the children of a paramour, we have now before us another volume, or squander them upon the paramour her- which contains, among others, the following self. If our creed were the creed of the notable example :Mahometan Which says, that woman is but dust, we could not in this Christian country, and in this nineteenth century, maintain a law in its operation more flagrantly unjust. "She was a capable girl, and had been an irreproachable wife, but unfortunately, her husband became a drunkard, neglected his business, and expended all their means of living. At length, just before the birth of her youngest child, he pawned the clothing she had provided for it, and drove her into the streets, to seek the aid of charity in her hour of trial. After her recovery, she went to service, and managed to keep her children, but her husband pursued her from place to place, annoying her employers, and collecting herself against her legal protector, she fled with wages by process of law. Unable to protect her children to New Hampshire, where she obtained employment in a factory, till a year's residence should enable her to procure a divorce."* ber It may not be sufficient, in the estimation of some readers, to declare that the husband possesses this absolute power over the earnings of his wife; it may be required also to be shewn that he exercises it. It is frequently exercised. In the upper ranks of society the injustice sustained by the wife is rather of a passive than of an active character. She is wronged by the silent operation of the law, rather than by the This last sentence will assure the reader, active malevolence of her law-protected that the case did not occur in England. It husband. But in the lower ranks, where happened in the United States, where divorce there is little or no property to exemplify is comparatively of easy attainment. This the silent operation of the law, and men are facility greatly mitigates the injustice of not restrained either by the same "grip" such cases; but still the injustice was so of honour or the same fear of reproach as patent that our American brethren manfully hold men of social eminence in check, the acknowledged it, and the Legislature of New injustice of which we speak, takes the active York, since the above passage was written, shape of violent spoliation. We suspect have passed an act, conferring on women, that there are few well-read in the simple under certain terms and conditions, the legal annals of the poor who could not cite nume- possession of their own property. We susrous instances of injustice of this kind. pect that there are few women amongst Since we commenced this very article, an us who would not barter for this right their example has presented itself, in the parish present exemption from responsibility for wherein we write, and scarce a stone's throw debt. from our study-door. A poor woman had for years been gathering up a little money, *The Englishwomen in America. By Marianne the slowly-growing produce of her own Finch. London, 1853. The exemption, however, is not one to be an empty purse but a full heart. I have no held of light account. We have known money wherewith to propitiate the divinity Englishwomen to resist to the utmost a set of justice; for the law allows me to possess tlement with their families on the Continent, none. I have only my wrongs to lay at in the fear of incarceration for debt; and your feet. My husband has deserted me. we have known others who have been thrown He is wasting his substance on a strange into prison in the absence, accidental or woman. But he will not suffer me to eat in designed, of their husbands.* Still, we re- peace the bread which I have earned with peat that there are few women who would my own hands. He comes to me in my not willingly undertake the responsibilities loneliness-vaunts himself my husbandof property for the sake of its legal independ- and takes from me the wages of my industry. ent possession. It is true, that in ordinary I now ask to be permitted to eat in quietness cases neither will the right on the one hand, the bread which I have earned. I ask that, nor the liability on the other, practically having ceased to be protected by my husaffect the happiness of the married woman band, I may be protected against my husfor a day. But laws are for the most part band. I ask to be dissolved of my allegiance made to meet not ordinary, but extraordi- to him-to cease to be a part of him-to nary cases. To a vast majority of mankind bear my own name and to work for myself." it is personally a matter of extreme indif- If there were any tribunal, we say, to which ference that the law sends a murderer to an Englishwoman could betake herself, needthe gallows. Not one man in a million ing only the utterance of such solemn words is murdered in the course of a year. To a as these to call forth the prompt response, vast majority of English wives it is doubt-"Stand forth and prove it," then might it be less a pleasure to cast all that comes to asserted that redress is open to the woman. them by inheritance, by gift, or by laborious acquisition, into the common purse. It is their delight to be "one flesh" with their It will, perhaps, be objected that a Court husband; to have nothing apart from him. for what may be lightly called the settlement But no woman knows, however bright the of matrimonial disputes would need to have dawn of her conjugal career, in what storms not twenty-four hours but twenty-four weeks and convulsions it may close. And the in every day. We do not believe it. If a knowledge that, under the existing law, wretched, ignorant, neglected child steal a grievous wrong for which there is no redress, yard of tape or half-a-pound of'pig-lead from may be and is committed, is sufficient to a rich man, neither law nor justice ever make every one interested in the application pleads that there is no time to take the of a legal remedy. It is the boast of necessary evidence relating to the abstracEnglishmen that women are protected by tion of the farthing's worth of material the law-but every woman's legal protector may violently despoil her of her earnings, and spend them in a drunken revel with the paramour who has taken her place. It may be said, "But redress is open to the woman-she may sue for a divorce, and having obtained it, she may profit by her own industry." Ostensibly, the law promises divorce in such cases; but practically she denies it. Divorce is for the rich; not for the poor. For the man; not for the woman. If there were any tribunal to which an injured woman could betake herself and say, "I come before you with *When the revolution broke out in Belgium in 1830, there were very many English families settled. n the Belgian towns, whom the apprehension of danger drove down in a crowd to Ostend, eager to embark immediately for England. Some husbands were accidentally, perhaps unavoidablyabsent from their families at the time, and their wives, unable to discharge all the debts of their household, were seized and thrown into prison. We are sorry to add, that there were one or two cases of wilful desertion in this conjuncture-the husband escaping to England, and leaving the wife to be incarcerated for debt. D-21 VOL. XXIII. But how unlike a tribunal of this kind is the pro perty. Why should the plea of no time be urged in support of an excuse for not hearing one particular class of appeals for justice? But the fact is, as we have already shewn, that these appeals against the ill-conduct and ill-treatment of a husband would not be frequent. They would only occur in cases of grievous and long-continued wrong, when it would be an absolute disgrace to English justice to refuse to take cognizance of them.* For it is not to be supposed that we, or any writers of either sex, desire to see the establishment of Courts, to which either husband or wife could rush, in a moment of aggravation, and make a sudden appeal for *It will be understood that although our remarks in this place relate more especially to the appeals of a wife against the ill-treatment of a husband, we plead generally in favour of the institution of cheaper and more accessible tribunals, for the adjudication of cases of conjugal wrong. As the English law now stands, the dissolution of the matrimonial contract is practicable, but only under certain conditions. The first is, that the party seeking it shall be a man; the second, that he shall be a rich one. It is this reproach which we desire to see removed. justice. In cases of personal violence, where I tities. That the effect of this is to limit the immediate protection is required, the com- aspirations, to paralyze the energies, and to mon police-courts of England are accessible demoralize the characters of women, is not to all, and by a recent law ample protection to be denied. They are born and educated, for the time has been extended to injured as it were, for total absorption. Even if and outraged women. But where the ques- the compensation, of which we have spoken, tion of the dissolution of the matrimonial were more complete than it is, it would still contract is to be mooted, it would be pre- be profound injustice to women, to depreposterous to give heed to anything but a ciate their capabilities of independent action, cool, deliberate appeal, passing through cer- and to hold them continually in restraint. tain formal stages, which only a fixed resolu- We make women what they are-we make tion and a good cause could successfully them weak, and complain that they are not encounter. The rapid processes of police strong-we reduce them to dependence, and justice are too slow for the transient resent- then taunt them with being incapable of inment of an injured woman. It often hap-dependent action. Partly by our system of pens that a charge is brought to-day, which education-partly by our wise laws-we is reluctantly supported to-morrow, though reduce them to the lowest possible level, wounds which man's brutality has inflicted keep them there, and revile them for not still bleed and throb, the wretched victim mounting higher. crawls into court only to plead for his forgiveness.* With this fact before us, need we apprehend that anything short of a fixed and rooted determination, the growth of a long-abiding sense of wrong, would carry a woman into Court to reveal the sad story of her life, and plead for the dissolution of her conjugal bonds? We e may rest convinced that there would be no frivolous and vexatious complaints of marital injustice, and no inconvenient multitude of suitors. The subject of Divorce, however, is not that which we proposed to ourselves to discuss in this article, any further than in its bearings upon the legal fiction of the "nonexistence" of married women. It is obvious, that so long as the dissolution of the marriage contract is almost an impossibility, and the marriage contract is what it is, the larger and more important section of the women of England must be legal nonen *As we are correcting the proof of this sheet, the following remarkable proof of the truth of this statement lies on our table in the paper of the day. The Times of the 16th July contains the following:"CLERKENWELL-James Mars, a powerful man, nearly six feet high, 56 years of age, was charged before Mr. CORRIE with committing a most unprovoked and murderous outrage on his wife. We know all that may be said about "woman's sphere" and "woman's duties." We have the whole formula of expression by rote; and we believe in it, as far as it goes. We believe that married women, in all conditions of society, best contribute to the well-being of the family, and therefore to the common purse, by preserving order and harmony at home. Nature has ordained that this should be their primary duty. Even from the poorest homes we are sorry to see the wife absent, though she be earning money in the factory or the field. But the better the education-the higher the faculties of women, the better they will perform these primary duties. And it is not because at some period of their lives they have husbands to tend and children to nurse, that we are to take no account of the relation they bear to all the rest of the world. There would be more good wives and good mothers, if women were better trained to take a part in the active business of life-if they were educated as though they might be neither wives nor mothers, but independent members of society, with work of their own to do seriously, earnestly, and with all their might. This theory of the non-existence of women pursues its victims from the school-room to the grave. Trained from the first to be dependent upon men, they pass through different stages of dependence, and at the last find that they cannot bequeath to another man the ring on their finger, which they may have worn from their earliest girlhood, or the Bible in which they first learnt to spell. To attain and preserve a condition of independence, it is necessary that they should abide in a state of singleness, which is, more or less, a state of reproach. Single women are legally capable of independent action, "Ellen Mars, a weak and sickly-looking woman, who carried a fine healthy-looking baby in her arms, and whose forehead was closely bound across with a linen band, the congealed blood disfiguring the bridge of her nose, and both eyes blacked, on entering the box, at once attempted to extenuate her husband's offence, by saying he was always a good husband, &c. "Mr. CORRIE. You have committed a most brutal assault on your poor hard-working wife I wonder she was not killed. I would have sent you for the full period but for your illness and the appeal of your wife; but I cannot look over it lightly, for if I did, the law which was made to curb such brutality might as well be repealed. You must go to hard labour for three months; and, in the meantime, your poor wife and children shall be looked to while but they are seldom or never educated for you are in prison." it. It cannot be said that they are educated |