Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/33

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third, and, above all, the treatment of women in the last, offends our very souls. Is England then incapable of any but a Borrioboola mission? Is she for ever to prefer making a sort of "Sterne's Sentimental Journey" into other countries, to fulfilling her duties at home? The foreigners we are so fond of reproving, see with disgust and abhorrence our own method of dealing with certain laws. To them, our mercantile and uncertain speculation of " damages,"—the wonderful indecency of our divorce trials,—the incredible fact that the woman accused is allowed no direct defence, and cannot appear by counsel on such occasions—the loth and reluctant admission (and that of very recent date) of the right of a mother to her infant children,—are alike odious and incomprehensible. I will venture to say that in no country in Europe, is there, in fact, so little protection of women as in England. England the fault-finder; England the universal lecturer; England—where to add to the absurd anomaly of this state of things, the Salique law is considered a barbarism, and offence against a female Sovereign is treason. The contrast between that which we permit, and that which we disallow, borders almost on the burlesque. If Mr Norton, a magistrate and member of the aristocracy, had cheated at a game of cards played by a few idlers in one of the clubs of London, all England would have been in a ferment. Accusers would have risen; friends would have hung their heads; and for the sake of some dandy's purse, the invocation to justice would have been made in such a stern universal shout, as would have sent an echo all through Europe. Or if I, while visiting foreign lands, had invested myself with the dignity of a self-appointed messenger of God; if I had broken down the fence that guards other men's consciences, and trespassed there to sow what I considered "the good seed;" if I had forced on reluctant Roman Catholics, tracts of instruction in my own form of faith, and had been arrested for that trespass,—then indeed, I might hope to attract the attention of the Government of my own country, and my case might be warmly advocated at