Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/482

This decision was important as further destroying the old common-law theory of the husband's absolute ownership of his wife's person, property, services and earnings. The same year (1882) the Supreme Court, at its general term, rendered a decision that a married woman could sue her husband for damages for assault and battery; that by the act of 1860 the legislature intended to, and did, change the common-law rule, that a wife could not sue her husband. Judge Brady rendered the opinion, Judge Daniels concurring; Presiding Judge Noah Davis dissenting. Judge Brady said:

To allow the right (to sue) in an action of this character, in accordance with the language of the statute, would be to promote greater harmony by enlarging the rights of married women and increasing the obligations of husbands, by affording greater protection to the former, and by enforcing greater restraint upon the latter in the indulgence of their evil passions. The declaration of such a rule is not against the policy of the law. It is in harmony with it, and calculated to preserve peace and, in a great measure, prevent barbarous acts, acts of cruelty, regarded' by mankind as inexcusable, contemptible, detestable. It is neither too early nor too late to promulgate the doctrine that if a husband commits an assault and battery upon his wife he may be held responsible civilly and criminally for the act, which is not only committed in violation of the laws of God and man, but in direct antagonism to the contract of marriage, its obligations, duties, responsibilities, and the very basis on which it rests. The rules of the common law on this subject have been dispelled, routed, and justly so, by the acts of 1860 and 1862. They are things of the past which have succumbed to more liberal and just views, like many other doctrines of the common law which could not stand the scrutiny and analysis of modern civilization.

The utter insecurity of woman without the ballot is shown in the reversal of this decision within a few months, by the Court of Appeals, on the ground that it would be "contrary to the policy of the law, and destructive to the conjugal union and tranquility which it had always been the object of the law to guard and protect." Could satire go farther? We record with satisfaction the fact that Judge Danforth uttered a strong dissenting opinion.

The friends of woman suffrage in the legislature of 1884 secured the passage of a bill empowering women to vote on all questions of taxation submitted to a popular vote in the village of Union Springs. Governor Cleveland was urged to veto it; but after hearing all the objections he signed the bill and it became a law.

At Clinton, Oneida county, twenty-two women voted on June 21, 1884, at an election on the question of establishing waterworks. Eight voted for the tax, fourteen against it. Fifteen other women appeared at the polls, but were excluded from voting because, though they were real-estate tax-payers, the asses-