18, 1891, declaratory of the personal rights
of married women, is a still more important blow by just so much as the
rights of person are more sacred than the rights of property.

One hundred years ago, Lord Chief Justice Mansfield gave his famous
decision in the Somerset case, "That no slave could breathe on British
soil," and the slave walked out of court a free man. The decision of the
Lord Chancellor, in the Jackson case, is far more important, more
momentous in its consequences, as it affects not only one race but
one-half of the entire human family. From every point of view this is
the greatest legal decision of the century. Like the great Chief Justice
of the last century, the Lord Chancellor, with a clearer vision than
those about him, rises into a purer atmosphere of thought, and
vindicates the eternal principles of justice and the dignity of British
law, by declaring all statutes that make wives the bond slaves of their
husbands, obsolete.

How long will it be in our Republic before some man will arise, great
enough to so interpret our National Constitution as to declare that
women, as citizens of the United States, cannot be governed by laws in
the making of which they have no part? It is not Constitutional
amendments nor statute laws we need, but judges on the bench of our
Supreme Court, who, in deciding great questions of human rights, shall
be governed by the broad principles of justice rather than precedent.
One interesting feature in the trial of the Jackson case, was that both
Lady Coleridge and the wife of the Lord Chancellor were seated on the
bench, and evidently much pleased with the decision.

It is difficult to account for the fact that, while women of the highest
classes in England take the deepest interest in politics and court
decisions, American women of wealth and position are wholly indifferent
to all public matters. While English women take an active part in
elections, holding meetings and canvassing their districts, here, even
the wives of judges, governors, and senators speak with bated breath of
political movements, and seem to feel that a knowledge of laws and
constitutions would hopelessly unsex them.

Toward the last of April, with my little granddaughter and her nurse, I
went down to Bournemouth, one of the most charming watering places in
England. We had rooms in the Cliff House with windows opening on the
balcony, where we had a grand view of the bay and could hear the waves
d