able
law laid its cold, unwelcome hand upon that darkened home. There
must be letters of administration had--an inventory of the
"effects"--an appraisement. Everything was explained by
sympathizing counsel. The "right of dower" set conspicuously
in the foreground--"one equal third part"--at length she
comprehended it all. Her home was to pass into other hands:
henceforth she was to be counted only as an incumbrance on it.
Looking from the misery of the present down the gloom of the
future, she could see only widowhood and penury. And whilst the
appraisers were performing their ungracious task of overhauling
cupboards and drawers, and estimating the value in cash of
presents received in her courtship, she, in her quiet despair at
this last bitter drop added to her full cup, arrayed herself in
her best apparel (which the law generously provides "she shall
retain"), and, without uttering a word of complaint or farewell,
walked to the nearest water and drowned herself.

If "oppression maketh even a wise man mad," ought we to wonder
that a woman, almost crazed by a sudden and terrible bereavement,
upon finding that her calamity, instead of giving her the jealous
and compassionate protection of the law, was to be made the
pretext for robbing her of what yet remained of earthly comforts,
should, in the madness of her despair, cast away the burden of a
life no longer tolerable? In India she would have been burned
upon the funeral pile of her dead husband; we drive her to
madness and suicide by the slower, but no less cruel torture, of
starvation and a breaking heart. Whilst persisting in such
legislation, how could we expect to escape the woe, denounced by
the compassionate and long-suffering Saviour, against the
"hypocrites who devour widows' houses"?

It is said woman can accomplish any object of her desire better
by persuasion, by her smiles and tears and eloquence, than she
could ever compel by her vote. But with all her powers of coaxing
and eloquence, she has never yet coaxed her partner into doing
her simple justice. Shall we never get beyond the absurd theory
that every woman is legally and politically represented by her
husband, and hence has an adequate guarantee? The answer is, that
she has been so represented ever since representation began, and
the result appears to be that, among the Anglo-Saxon race
generally, the entire system of laws in regard to women is, at
this moment, so utterly wrong, that Lord Brough