The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1869-05-08 00:00:00

THE SISTER-IN-LAW.

We reprint the following sensible letter from the
Daily News of Tuesday:—

you kindly afford me space for a few lines on
the above subject, of which the Solicitor-General in Ms
speech on Wednesday night observed, " if there be any
question in the world which is a womati's question, this is
one." As a woman who has long entertained a very de-
cided opinion on the subject, I would beg leave to point
out the utter fallaciousness of that argument agairst the
measure now before Parliament, which Sir J. 1). Coleridge
epitomised, and presented, if I may so express it, in its
most highly concentrated essence, when he said "this is a
bill for the abolition of sisters-in-law to please Immo few
people who want to marry them." sit all the arguments
I have met with against the legalizing of these, as
bold them, perfectly unobjectionable marriages (II any
second ma, riage he unobjectionable), none has been urged
more often than thin; and I have never heard it without
surprise th..t such an objection could be gravely stated.
" No married woman could have her unmarried sisters to
stay in her house if this bill b.:came law." Now, air, there
is, I imagine, scarcely an unmarried wmnan, without very
pressing duties at home, who, at bait when her early youth
is past, does not pay visite to the houses of her married
friends alike, whether they be sisters by birth or merely by
affection, or even to less intimate friends, when she
may chance to be thrown in their way. Not hav-
ing married very early, I have myself stayed for
weeks and even mouths in the houses of married
friends, to whom I bore no relationship but that
of affection, on terms of intimacy as close as they
possibly could have been had I been born the sister of my
ho-tess. Now, seeing that the marriage law of England
would have permitted the husband in any of these cases
to marry me in case of his wife's death, why should
the stay of • wife's sister in her sister's house be any more
objectlonable than was mine, or than is that of hundreds
and thousands of other women with married friends, not
sisters by birth? Can any one suppose that there is
any real difference in the feeling of a married man
towards an unmarried woman staving on sisterly terii,s
its his house because she was or was not born his
wife's sister? What, too, must the opinion of
those who urge this argument be as to the moral
calibre of husbands and wives in general? Is
supposed that a husband, while sitting opposite his wife at
their table or fireside, is speculating on the eligibility of
temporary inmates of their home to fill that wife's place in
case of her death •, and moreover, that this so commonly
happens that a wife most be in constant dread of such
mental exercise on the pea of her husband, if she have
a guest besitle her whom the law would permit Mtn to
marry were she gone? For n,yself, as a wife, I can only
say I should blush for my sex could I think so meanly of
wives in general ; and still more, were l a man, should
I blush for say brother-men could I eutertain such an
opinion of them as it would appear that Sir J. D. Cole-
ridge, and those who share his view on this point, must
do. That there are, unhappily, vicious exceptions in both
sexes is undeidable, but that in these cases no law acts
as a restraint is sufficiently proved by the unhappy fact
that the seduction of a sisferin-law by a seats during his
wife's lifetime, and in their own house, is far from un-
heard of even in the higher classes of society. I believe,
therefore, that the legalising of these much-contested
marriages will have no appreciable effect whatever on the
relations between a man end his wife's sisters during
her lifetime ; that it shoeld have none lam sure. And
if after a woman's ceath one sit her sisters be willing
to marry the widower —ln all probability influenced
by affection for that sister's children—l know of no right
man out have to forbid her to do so; being firmly convinced
that the allegation of a Divine law against such marriages is
entirely without !emulation. Lastly, as a woman and. wife,
1 beg Cr, say that acre my husband to survive me I [Mould no
more object to his marrying a sister of mine, if I had one 11111-
married whom he liked well enough to do so. th-in .1 should
to his marrying any other woman in the world —I am, she.,
Malt! C. MUME RoTHEhlt.
3, Richmond-terrace, Middleton, Manchester, April 52.