432 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



attached to her husband, " exactly as much may be said of domestic 

 slavery. ... It is j^art of the irony of life that the strongest feelings of 

 devoted gratitude of which human nature seems to be susceptible are 

 called forth in. human beings toward those who, having the power en- 

 tirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarily refrain from using 

 their power." Even children are only links in the chain of bondage. 

 By the affections of women " are meant the only ones they are allowed 

 to have — those to the men with whom they are connected, or to the 

 children who constitute an additional and indefeasible tie between them 

 and a man." The Jesuit is an object of sympathy because he is the 

 enemy of the domestic tyrant, and it is assumed that the husband can 

 have no motive but the love of undivided tyranny for objecting to be- 

 ing superseded by an intriguing interloper in his wife's affections. As 

 though a wife would regard with complacency, say a female spiritual- 

 ist, installed beside her hearth ! It is impossible to doubt that Mr. Mill's 

 views, in writing such passages, were colored by the incidents of his 

 life. But it is by circulating his book and propagating his notions 

 that the petitions in favor of female suffrage have been obtained. 



The anomalies in the. property law affecting married women, to 

 which remedial legislation has recently been directed, are like what- 

 ever is obsolete in the relations between the sexes generally, not delib- 

 erate iniquities, but survivals. They are relics of feudalism, or^of still 

 more primitive institutions incorporated by feudalism ; and, while the 

 system to which they belonged existed, they were indispensable parts 

 of it, and must have been so regarded by both sexes alike. Any one 

 who is tolerably well informed ought to be ashamed to represent them 

 as the contrivances of male injustice. It is not on one sex only that 

 the relics of feudalism have borne hard. 



The exclusion of women from professions is cited as another proof 

 of constant and immemorial injustice. But what woman asked or 

 wished to be admitted to a profession fifty or even five-and-twenty years 

 ago ? What woman till quite recently would have been ready to re- 

 nounce marriage and maternity in order that she might devote herself 

 to law, medicine, or commercial pursuits ? The fact is, the demand is 

 connected with an abnormal and possibly transient state of things. 

 The expensiveness of living, in a country where the fashion is set by 

 millionaires, combined with the overcrowded condition of the very call- 

 ings to which w^omen are demanding admission, has put extraordinary 

 difiiculties in the way of marriage. Many women are thus left with- 

 out an object in life, and they naturally try to open for themselves 

 some new career. The utmost sympathy is due to them, and every fa- 

 cility ought in justice to be afforded them ; though unhappily the addi- 

 tion of fresh competitors for subsistence, to a crowd in which literally 

 famine has already been at work, will be as far as possible from remov- 

 ing the real root of the evil ; to say nothing of the risk which a woman 

 must run in committing herself irrevocably to a precarious calling and 



