where no attempt is made to
provide a dowry for the daughters, except among the wealthy classes.
Quite well-to-do Englishmen think it unnecessary to give their daughters
anything during their lifetime, though they are willing to seriously
inconvenience themselves to start their sons well in life. English
fathers give everything to their sons; in many of the Continental
countries the daughters are rightly considered first, and among all
classes, rich and poor alike, the parents strive to provide some kind of
a dowry for them, beginning to save from the day of the child's birth.

I feel sure that if _dots_ for daughters became the custom in this
country an enormous impetus would be given to marriage, and much trouble
between husband and wife would be avoided if the woman had some means of
her own, however small. It is surely most humiliating and unpleasant for
a well-bred woman to be dependent on her husband for every omnibus fare
and packet of hairpins!

English people, however, are apt to pride themselves on their faults,
and are moreover so incurably sentimental that they take credit to
themselves for being the exception in this respect to other countries,
and boast that there is no inducement but love for them to marry. In the
same absurd and improvident spirit is the customary disinclination to
ask for settlements on our daughters. Only of very rich men is this
expected, whereas it is but right that every man should make a
settlement on his wife, if only of the furniture and the policy of life
insurance.

A chapter on marriage reforms would not be complete without some
reference to our barbarous marriage service. Is it any good complaining
about it, though? Ever since I learnt to read I have been reading
attacks on it; apparently no one has a good word to say for it, not even
clergymen, yet still it remains in use, unamended, just as it was
written in the days of James I. If ever a man-made religious formula
required revising to suit the progress of ideas it is this one. How can
the Church expect us to regard marriage as a sacrament when its
conditions are expressed in such coarse language and from so false a
standpoint. Is it not false to glorify by inference those persons who
have 'the gift of continency,' a 'gift' which, if common to the
majority, would soon result in the extinction of the human race? This
special clause is a horrible insult to a pure-minded, innocent bride,
and is wholly unnecessary. Surely if