fling advantage, but still it is an
advantage, and is one step gained in the right direction.

The law allows the mother's holiest feelings to be outraged with
impunity. It does not recognize her right to the custody of her own
children, except at the husband's pleasure. She may be intelligent and
educated, virtuous and pious. Yet, if he so wills, he may remove her
children from her care, deprive her of their society, and even of the
comfort of occasionally seeing them; and he may place them under the
tutelage of the ignorant and vicious; while the deeply wronged mother is
powerless, according to law, to help either herself or her children.

It is counted among one of woman's privileges that she may hold property
in her own right. Upon what tenure is she allowed to hold it? If the
property be acquired or inherited, without entail of any sort; if it be
real estate, it is hers in fee-simple till she marries. After that
event--unless she has guarded her rights by a legal pre-nuptial
contract, properly signed and attested to by him who is to be her
husband--she may not dispose of any part of it without his express
sanction. He may not legally sell it away from her, it is true; but by
law he is her master, and may manage it according to his supreme
pleasure while he lives. Even a will made by her does not take effect,
except her husband pleases, till his death. If the property be in ready
money or in funds--except it be guarded in the contract--the husband
becomes possessed of it at once, and may appropriate and apply it to
any purpose he pleases, without consulting the wishes of his wife. She
has no redress. He may, despite her remonstrances, take this her
substance and her money, and spend it in foolish speculation; or, worse
still, in gambling, drunkenness, and debauchery. He may maltreat her and
insult her by the presence in her own house of his mistress. If, no
longer able to endure his brutality, she is obliged to leave him, he
may, unless the law grant a divorce and alimony, keep possession of her
houses and lands, while she must leave home and children behind, and go
out upon the world penniless. She can not force him to return one dollar
of the wealth that was her own; and after the separation, unless legal
papers warranting it have been executed, he can follow her and collect
her scanty earnings. Thousands upon the back of thousands of times has
all this occurred. Does not civilized law give a woman a lien upon her