east cause
decency and propriety of conduct to be maintained there; but now
low-minded men are encouraged to jest openly in court over the
most sacred and most delicate subjects. From the nature of
things, the guilty woman can not now have justice done her before
the professed tribunals of justice; and the innocent but wronged
woman is constrained to suffer on in silence rather than ask for
redress.

CLARINA HOWARD NICHOLS said: There is one peculiarity in the laws
affecting woman's property rights, which as it has not to my
knowledge been presented for the consideration of the public,
except by myself to a limited extent in private conversation and
otherwise, I wish to speak of here. It is the unconstitutionality
of laws cutting off the wife's right of dower. It is a provision
of our National and State Constitutions, that property rights
shall not be confiscated for political or other offences against
the laws. Yet in all the States, if I am rightly informed, the
wife forfeits her right of dower in case of divorce for
infidelity to the marriage vow. In Massachusetts and several
other States, if the wife desert her husband for any cause, and
he procure a divorce on the ground of her desertion, she forfeits
her right of dower. But it is worthy of remark that in no case is
the right of the husband to possess and control the estate which
is their joint accumulation, set aside; no, not even when the
wife procures a divorce for the most aggravated abuse and
infidelity combined. She, the innocent party, goes out childless
and portionless, by decree of law; and he, the criminal, retains
the home and the children, by the favor of the same law. I claim,
friends, that the laws which cut off the wife's right of dower,
in any case do confiscate property rights, and hence are
_unconstitutional_. The property laws compel the wife to seek
divorce in order to protect her earnings for the support of her
children. A rum-drinker took his wife's clothing to pay his rum
bill, and the justice decided that the clothing could be held,
because the wife belonged to him.

Only under the Common Law of England has woman been deprived of
her natural rights. Instances are frequent where the husband's
aged parents are supported by the wife's earnings, and the wife's