ter-in-law used to interfere, saying, that it was not the occupation of a man, he was wont to reply, that he had promised to the Great Master of Life, if his child was spared, never to be proud, like the other Indians. -Our informant (Mr. Wenkel, one of the association) added, that he had often seen this Indian in his old age, and that his left breast, even then, retained the unusual size it had acquired in his occupation of nurse.""

Instead of going into details respecting these or other duties, I need only observe that women soon and easily excel in all domestic occupations, because these chiefly require address, and because that quality depends on a rapid succession of ideas and of movements which have been already described as peculiarly characteristic of woman.

In all ages, this has been more or less perfectly felt. Hence Homer makes Hector say to Andromache :

· Εἰς οἶκον ἱοῦσα, τὰ σαυτῆς ἔργα κόμιζε,
Ιστόν τ', ἠλακάτην τε, καὶ ἀμφικόλοισι κέλευε
Εργον ἐποίχεσθαι.

IL. Z. 490.

-

Go home and pursue your own employments, the web and the distaff, and order your handmaids to busy themselves about their work.

PART IV.

MATRIMONIAL SLAVERY.

The

THE physical relation of women to men-tneir beauty, ensures their being beloved; while their feebleness seems to ensure their being oppressed. fate of women is, indeed, different, in different coun. tries; but in all, they are more or less slaves.

In some countries, savage man has not merely made women a slave, but has converted her into a beast of burden. She not only does all domestic drudgery, but carries the savage's weapons to the chase, and returns loaded with his prey.

In other countries, half civilized man has performed the operation which he calls legislating, for woman: and, accustomed to feel the foot of the princely or priestly despot upon his own neck, he has planted his foot upon the neck of woman. Difference of intellect is no better a reason for this than it is for the enslavement of the negro.

In these countries, moreover, after having created all

the errors of women, men have subjected them to the censorship of opinion, which governs them impeririously-injuring them by suspicion, converting even appearance into crime, and punishing them by dis

honour.

Everywhere the forms of government and laws pow. erfully influence the condition of the sex.

In despotic countries, such as Palestine and Syria, Mr. Emerson tells us that the situation of women is in no degree removed from the classification originally made, by which a man's "wife, and his slave, his maid-servant, his ox and his ass," are equally defended from the covetousness of his neighbour.

Is it better in England, where the commentator on Blackstone tells, "that husband and wife, in the language of the law, are styled baron and feme; the word baron or lord attributing to the husband no very courteous superiority?" And that we may not regard these as mere unmeaning technical terms, he reminds us, that "if the baron kills his feme, it is the same as if he had killed a stranger, i. e. simply murder, but if the feme kills her baron, it a species of treason subjecting her to the same punishment as if she had killed the king."-By the common law, women were moreover denied the benefit of clergy and executed for the first offence; whilst a man who could read, was, for the same crime, subject only to burning in the hand and a few months imprisonment, until 3 and 4 W. & M. c. 9.

In republics, on the contrary, says Montesquieu, "women are free by law, and subject only to morals. Luxury is banished, and with it corruption and vice. Good legislators have banished even that commerce of

gallantry which produces idleness, and makes women the agents of corruption even before they are themselves corrupted, which confers value upon trifles, and detracts from things of importance."

This is illustrated by Segur's sketch of their condition in Switzerland. "In that country, the small degree of luxury which prevails, and the ignorance of the arts which attend it, present to women, as pleasures, only those which nature offers, and, as occupations, only their duties. The young women living together, enjoy from an early age great liberty, and preserve the purity of their manners in the midst of their independence. The certainty of being united only with those whom they love, is opposed to all gallantry for the present, and to all coquetry for the future. When, after some years, the young woman has tried the affections of her lover, she has before her only her marriage, and no other perspective than love of her husband and children, and assiduity in household affairs. This is her principal business. There are no intrigues for places nor for rank. Pleasures are less vivid and more simple: riches are less brilliant and more solid. There is in this less the idea of pleasure, than of happiness."

England, being an aristocracy, is perhaps less favour. able to women than countries which present the des. potism of one. For me, I confess, it is difficult to imagine anything more unfavourable.-Others may think, on the contrary, that England affords a fair specimen of the treatment of women in Europe, in so far as they are affected by the laws. In default of more extended knowledge of the laws of other coun. tries, I have no objection to its being so regarded.

Following then, implicitly, the admitted statements as to the condition of married women in England, it will appear that it is quite as disadvantageous as slavery itself, and that wives have no property, either in their fortunes, their persons, or their children.

It is principally upon the greater or smaller portion of independent fortune which women enjoy, that their mode of existence everywhere depends. Let us see how this is managed in England-beginning at the beginning, and implicitly following legal writers on the subject.

Any man, in order to obtain a wife with fortune, may, by a friend, be put in temporary possession of money, secretly contracting to repay it as soon as he has possessed himself of her property; or he may actually buy an heiress of those having the disposal of her, and afterwards pay the purchase-money out of her estate. This is practicable, in consequence of the law which gives the sole property of the wife's fortune to the husband.

It is true that a woman also may impose upon a man, by pretending to have a fortune; and, if the man is credulous, she may by such representation induce him to marry her. But she cannot, on being married, put her husband in possession of borrowed money as her fortune, and afterwards repay it secretly, out of his estate. This must deter her from either concealing or misrepresenting her circumstances, as such conduct would expose her to the resentment of her husband.

Even as to debts previous to marriage, men may, in many ways, conceal and misrepresent their circum、 stances. Those in trade have their affairs so compli.