am is reported to
have declared it useless to attempt to amend it--"There must be a
total reconstruction before a woman can have any justice." The
wrong lies not so much in any special statute as in the
fundamental theory of the law, yet no man can read the statutes
on this subject of the most enlightened nation, without admitting
that they were obviously made by man, not with a view to woman's
interest, but his own. Our Ohio laws may not be so bad as the law
repealed in Vermont in 1850, which _confiscated to the State_
one-half the property of every childless widow, unless the
husband had other heirs. But they must compel from every generous
man the admission, that neither justice nor gallantry has yet
availed to procure anything like impartiality in the legal
provisions for the two sexes. With what decent show of justice,
then, can man, thus dishonored, claim a continuance of this
suicidal confidence? There is something respectable in the frank
barbarism of the old Russian nuptial consecration, "Here, wolf,
take thy lamb." But we can not easily extend the same charity to
the civilized wolf of England and America, clad in the sheep's
clothing of a volume of revised statutes, caressing the person of
the bride and devouring her property.

It is said the husband can, by will, provide against these cases
of hardship and injustice. True, he can, if he will, but does he?
The number is few, some of the more thoughtful and conscientious;
but this is only obtaining justice as a favor, and not as a
natural right. But it is a majority of husbands who make these
laws, and they generally have no desire to amend them by will.
Besides, the will of the husband is sometimes even worse than the
law itself. Such cases are by no means rare. Almost every man's
memory may furnish one or more examples that have fallen under
his immediate notice. One or two only we will mention. A woman,
advanced in life, who owned a valuable farm in her own right, in
the border of a flourishing town, married a man who had little or
no property. The farm was soon cut up into town lots and sold at
high prices. In a few years the husband died, leaving no
children, but, by will, directed the division of nearly the whole
of the estate among his relatives, persons who the wife never
saw. The only remedy in this case was to fall back upon her right
of dower, and submit to the robbery of the law, in order to
escape the worse robbery of the will. This will was not