to time. Servants are continually changing their situations, till they find one in which they consider themselves compensated for their sacrifices.

When soldiers enlisted for life, their condition was deemed so hard, that it was believed the army would be better supplied by altering those terms. A soldier knows that implicit obedience is indispensable to the interests of his profession; he cannot therefore regard it as a grievance, that such should be exacted as a general rule. If he fall into the hands of a severe and capricious officer, he regards it as a particular misfortune, not the vice of a bad system: he feels that it is one of the chances of life, which no regulations could entirely prevent.

It may possibly be objected, that a man who is driven by his necessities to accept a hard service of this nature cannot be considered a free man; but that is only a calamity, not a wrong. Freedom was never so understood as to imply exemption from natural difficulties. He has no wrong to complain of, who is compelled by his poverty to accept a condition of great restraint, which he owns is imposed for just purposes, indispensable to the good of society. If, on the contrary, the privations on one side, and the power on the other, be distributed chiefly out of favour to one party, and are therefore of no use to society, but quite the reverse, it is certain that though force or calamity may compel men to submit, their minds will never be reconciled to such a condition.

Now, with respect to women, the whole question

is, how far the privations imposed upon them are for the good of society. As far as they are so, it is the duty of every one to maintain them.

The necessity of a woman's condition is to need protection. To obtain this, she is bound in justice to yield up some natural rights. The point to examine is, whether the sacrifice has been made equitably.

Even the power possessed by the husband, of "seizing on the property of his wife, on the very fruits of her own industry, and of squandering it as he pleased on the most dissolute revellings or the vilest associates*," was not the worst circumstance which, till very lately, had oppressed the defenceless sex.

Posterity will probably look back with amazement, at a state of law which could have sanctioned so flagitious an outrage against the rights of nature and the rudest ideas of justice, as robbing a virtuous woman of her children. It was a power so revolting to every sentiment of humanity that, except for the sake of the children themselves, even the wife's criminality could barely have justified the exertion of it. The very sanction of social law is nature's law; and the strongest of all is a mother's love for her offspring. It is the most powerful image which poetry or passion can draw forth, to magnify the sanctity of a right, or the intensity of an affection. Even in the brutes, who exist for our sustenance, the violation of this feeling, though often quite unavoidable, is ever regarded by cultivated minds with unconquerable pain; and the same compunc

* Lord Brougham's Speech.

tious emotion is the last which deserts the rough bosoms of those, to whose hands the coarse offices of society have fallen.

It is well known that the last virtue, which deserts the heart of a woman who has yielded to passion, is anxiety for the right training of her children. It may however be granted, that a woman whom this affection could not withhold from the paths of guilt, is not to be trusted with their education. What then shall we say of that principle, which gave to the husband the power of debarring the most innocent and deserving of mothers from access to her children, and giving the care of them to a profligate woman! Bitter indeed is the sense in which women might say, that law is no regarder of persons!

To work out the punishment even of guilt, through the instrumentality of outrage to the tenderest and most useful affections of nature, is at best a very barbarous policy. But for the legislature to secure the pre-eminence of one party, by leaving in their hands this instrument of torture, whereby to extort acquiescence from their victims, was surely unworthy of the English name. And so it was felt. To the honour of our country, the bill for amending this wrong was no sooner proposed than it passed the Commons with "unparalleled majorities." It was feebly opposed in the other house, by that class in society where, unhappily, the story of domestic life would I fear render men too often pardonable for being insensible to the cries of nature, and the authority of justice.

They who desire to see what was said on both sides will find it in the debates on the Custody of Infants' Bill, in the years 1838, 1839*. They will find the objections to it grounded chiefly, on the legal difficulties which would attend cases of separation, if the rights of the mother were acknowledged by law. But it is needless to observe on the futility of arguments, which propose to simplify legal arrangements, by throwing justice overboard. It is more agreeable, and more important, to call on women for the gratitude due to the eloquent and frank recognition of their rights, drawn forth from men of all parties.

The Lord Chancellor in a speech full of generous but dispassionate feeling disposed at once of all technical difficulties, by declaring the prior importance of justice to all other considerations.

Lord Lyndhurst, in moving the second reading, declares the law by which a father, actuated by the most corrupt motives, might take the children from their mother, to be "a cruel, an unnatural, a tyrannous, an unjust law." He gives several instances of men, who had availed themselves of this power, to extort property from their wives. And he says, he never heard a valid objection to the bill. Lord Wynford, in objecting to some of its provisions, admitted that the existing law ought to be altered.

Lord Denman's words are, that it is "imperatively necessary" some alteration should be made,

* See Mirror of Parliament, Monday, 30th July, 1838. Monday, 19th July, 1839. Debates in the Lords on the Custody of Infants' Bill.

"to prevent the frightful and revolting instances of cruelty and oppression that are so frequently taking place." He assures their Lordships that there is not one of the judges, who is not ashamed of the state of the law which he is obliged to administer on this subject. "The present law," he says, "is cruel to the wife, debasing to the character of the husband, and dangerous to the health and morals of the children."

The first mover of this bill, Sergeant Talfourd, must have satisfaction in feeling that he has brought relief to some of the most agonizing human sufferings; that he has come forward to assist those who could do nothing for themselves, and whose gratitude can bring him no reward. This measure is designed to put some check to a barbarous wrong, and has first given effect to the growing, but still imperfectly recognised doctrine, that the rights of women are as sacred to justice as those of men, and ought to be regulated on no other principle. The moral influence of this concession cannot fail to be great.

NOTE D, (p. 175.)

Contempt for women is more shown in what is called high life than elsewhere.

When the plans for the construction of a new House of Commons were discussed, whether by the request of some ladies, or through spontaneous consideration, a gentleman was found generous enough to risk his reputation for sanity, by proposing that