he wife was
pretended, and none on the part of the husband, excepting
that he had gone to the West, leaving his wife and child
behind, no cause appearing, and had returned, and somewhat
clandestinely obtained possession of the child. The Judge,
following Blackstone's views of husbands' rights, remanded
the infant to the custody of the father. He thought the law
required it, and perhaps it did; but if mothers had had a
voice, either in making or administering the law, I think
the result would have been different. The distress of the
mother on being thus separated from her child can be better
imagined than described. The separation proved a final one,
as in less than a year neither father nor mother had any
child on earth to love or care for. Whether the loss to the
little one of a mother's love and watchfulness had any
effect upon the result, can not, of course, be known.

The state of the law a short time since, in other respects, in
regard to the rights of married women, shows what kind of
security had been provided for them by their assumed
representatives. Prior to 1848, all the personal property of
every woman on marriage became the absolute property of the
husband--the use of all her real estate became his during
coverture, and on the birth of a living child, it became his
during his life. He could squander it in dissipation or bestow it
upon harlots, and the wife could not touch or interfere with it.
Prior to 1860, the husband could by will take the custody of his
infant children away from the surviving mother, and give it to
whom he pleased--and he could in like manner dispose of the
control of the children's property, after his death, during their
minority, without the mother's consent. In most of these respects
the state of the law has undergone great changes within the last
twenty-five years. The property, real and personal, which a woman
possesses before marriage, and such as may be given to her during
coverture, remains her own, and is free from the control of her
husband. If a married woman is slandered she can prosecute the
slanderer in her own name, and recover to her own use damages for
the injury. The mother now has an equal claim with the father to