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to serve his fellow-men, till, in an hour of delirious regret, its strong pulse was stilled for ever.[1]
If he were here—if he were here, who so valued the wedded companion of his own home, that when she died he sank, scathed by her loss as by lightning,_he would not answer with contented apathy, "it is the law," when women complain of injustice! He would stand for the right now, as he stood in those other days, when he nobly strove, and patiently planned, to make Law what it should be, a means of protection, not an engine of oppression, to the, weak. Is there no one with heart great enough to fill his place?
It is the law. Can anything be more curious than the crabbed obstinacy or despairing sigh with which this reply is made? as though we had for our guidance the edicts of the Medes and Persians, of which it was fabled that they involved no principle of change. Yet changes are perpetually made in the most stringent edicts we have. That which was law to the generation of yesterday, is not law to us; and that which is law to us, may be reversed for the generation of tomorrow; why should unjust laws for women be more permanent than other unjust laws? We know that Law was mapped and planned among civilised nations as the great Highway to Justice. Where the road leads astray, it should be mended or altered: and it is one of the boasts of our ever-boastful England,, that she does this. Not indeed of a sudden, with the stroke, of some magic wand; but after fitful struggle and delay, as all things are done on this travailing earth; a delay proportioned to the strength of ancient prejudices, the jealousy of contending interests, the energy or slackness of the hands that do the work.
Neither my space—nor my bounded knowledge—will per-
- ↑ Sir Samuel Romilly lost his wife, after a long and happy union, on the 29th October, 1818. After four days and nights of excessive anguish and grieving, his mind became disturbed, and he committed self-destruction.
