The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-12 00:00:00

TUESDAY

OCTOBER l2,

A PLEA FOR THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.
Sir,—We have had our laugh, and a very hearty
one too, at the absurdities uttered by some of the
" strong-minded women" at Syracuse—at the extra-
vagant demands made upon cur patience and forbear-
ance. Perhaps we have felt indignant at the attempt
made to overturn the order of nature, and break in
upon the relations of social and domestic life ; or we
may have been tempted to round off the whole con-
troversy with the intuitive argument which once
closed a debate upon the subject—" After all, a man
is a man, and a woman is a woman." But the in-
quiry still forces itself upon our attention—is the
relation of woman to society in all respects what it
ought to be ? Has she no genuine wrongs to com-
plain of, when we have put aside the question whether
she should be a magistrate and a police-officer, a
legislator and a gaoler, a general and a private sol-
dier, a merchant on 'Change and a dray woman,
a commissioner in bankruptcy and a sheriff's
officer ?
Single women and widows, holding the proper
qualification, have votes for parish officers; why not
for members of Parliament ? Why should their pro-
perty be unrepresented ? Why should they have no
voice in choosing those who shall snake laws for
them in common with men ? If they had the right
to vote, and shrunk from its exercise, they need not
vote. But they do bolder and more courageous
things than it would be to present themselves at the
polling-booth continually, and society applauds them
for so doing. Clear perception of what is right, and
a conscience unflinchingly supporting the decisions of
the understanding, are by no means confined to men.
I doubt if women would cry out for the dark secrecy
of the ballot-box. If they voted, it would be in the
face of day. Give the femme sole the right to vote,
and you would at once do justice and infuse a purify-
ing element into those scenes of bribery, corruption,
and intimidation, which are the staple of our Parlia-
mentary elections.
But perhaps women are virtually represented in
Parliament with the other unenfranchised members of
society; still, have they nothing to complain of in their
legal position ? Are the laws set around them as a suffi-
cient defence ? The unmarried woman and the widow
it is true, hold property on precisely the same
tenure as men. So far good. No father, brother, or
cousin can despoil them, except with their own con-
sent. I speak of property which is theirs by gift or
inheritance; it is , absolutely theirs, but no longer
than they remain single. If they marry, their pro-
perty becomes absolutely their husband's, or that
transfer, by legal right of the husband, is evaded by
the interposition of trustees. 'When the priest has
pronounced his blessing, and she and her yet lover
are enjoying the sweets of the honeymoon, he pro-
perty passes as effectually out of her control as if' she
were already dead. She is lost in the person of her
husband, or in those of her trustees. The proceeds
of her settlement are nominally to be paid over to her
for her sole use and benefit; but, as soon as they
come into her hands, her liege lord may demand that
she should deliver up such proceeds to be disposed
of at his discretion, or indiscretion, or worse. Her
settlement is of use only in case of her husband's in-
solvency, to save them both, with their children,
from poverty, or in the rare case of a legal separation.
But let us grant, further, that the settlement of a
married woman, clumsey expedient as it is to cover the
injustice of the law, has its compensating advantages,
that by it a woman is to a certain extent defended
from the consequences of the unthrift or profligacy
of her husband. Let us grant that a woman's ab-
sorption in the legal person of her husband makes
her and her trustee-held property free from liability
to his creditors, if she have drawn a worse than blank
in the lottery of life, or have recklessly thrown her-
self away upon the unworthy. Still, what shall we
say to the unpropertied woman, the virtuous, indus-
trious, striving woman of the middle and lower
classes, married by fate or folly to an idle, spendthrift,
dissipated husband ? And there are such. He will
not earn a living for her and her children. Why
should he ? Well, then, she will ; and she has not
lost all love for the father of her little ones. She re-
members the days of their courtship, and the first few
sweet months of their married life; and she will work
for him too, if he will let her. Such is often the
prodigal love of woman. But, let her labour, let her
deny herself rest, and leisure, and sleep, and everything
but what is necessary to keep up her strength for
daily duty—let her rejoice and thank God that
she has power to gain bread for the mouths that she
has brought into existence—when she has toiled, and
gathered, and is looking with complacency upon her
gains, considering with joy what necessaries and com-
forts they will purchase for those dearer to her than
her life, her husband may come in and sweep off all
her hard earnings, leave her and her children penni-
less, and spend her precious gains upon his idle and
selfish vices. She has no legal right to withhold
them. She depends altogether upon the energy of
her maternal will and the little remains of grace that
may yet cling to the debased heart of her lord and
master.
I need go no further. Whatever absurdities may
be spoken about woman's rights, a deep feeling of
shame must attend the contemplation of woman's
wrongs ; and surely the Times will give its powerful
support to the demand that such wrongs should be
earnestly considered, and at an early period, with a
view to their redress, that it may no longer be the
opprobrium of our laws that, being made by the
stronger sex, they leave the weaker defenceless just
when they have the deepest need of protection and
the strongest claims upon our sympathy.
Bristol, Oct. 4.

E. C.

THE SUFFERINGS OF WOMAN.
(From the Leader.)
"Whatever absurdities may have been spoken about
Woman's rights," says " E. C.," a correspondent of
the Times, " a deep feeling of shame must attend the
contemplation of Woman's wrongs ;" and the writer
claims the assistance of that journal in exposing the
injustice of the law which makes a woman lose all
hold over her own property if she be married, or
which makes the unproportioned woman, however
virtuous, thrifty, and solicitous she may be for her
children, see all her earnings swept away to supply
the vices of a debauched husband. We are too apt
in reading communications of this kind, to let our
minds rest only on the ultimate fact, without calling
to our perception the misery which is inflicted in the
Proce •
ss towards that ultimate fact. We do not dis-
cern, as we should, the condition of the woman who
toils against hope, who carries back in her hand the
humble exchange for bread and clothes to her chil-
dren, who sees them snatched from her by the man
that once said he loved her—we do not feel the gloomy
uncertainty, the sinking heart, the exasperation, the
rage, all rendered vain by the hopelessness--we do
not attain to the distinct perception of this scene,
happen as it does, to a greater or less extent, in thou-
sands of houses right about us, every week, every
year.

- But independently of these civil disabilities, there
are certain personal rights which would not last a day
after woman should be politically enfranchised, or
man should attain to the full sense of the justice which
he owes. Occasionally the wrong bursts forth in
some flagrant scandal, as in the recent " tragedy" at
Paris ; but if such overt tragedies are exceptional,
how much less exceptional are the cases which never
come before the public eye I Even when they do dis-
play their horrors, one reels that there is something
more. In this Paris case, we hear not the beginning.
A man is murdered, and a romance of real life flashes
upon the public; but the narrative has not the com-
pleteness which belongs to fact not less than to
fiction.
We find two English gentlemen in Paris, with
habits of frequent association ; one of them, the
I younger man, has a wife, amiable and engaging; in
a child-bed fever the lady declares to her husband
that her infant child is not his, but his friend's; the
two men meet immediately afterwards, and the hus-
band kills his rival and flies, and the lady is lodged in
a madhouse. That is very frightful, but it is far from
being all. There is a practice of hushing up the
truth about these matters, though the truth is gene-
rally better to be known than half the truth with a
complement of false inference.
One fact is remarkable ; at the desire of the physi-
cian, the husband had consented that when his wife
became dangerously ill, the friend should be sum-
moned, and that he should tend her several days and
several nights. Surely the moral necessity for such
the
attendance must have suggested to any il
world enough to prevent that surprise
attack. Aw
alone justify or extenuate the murderousmihni of
which can
hand so rigorously, usually courts exp a
man who is prepared to take vengeancel ninettoiohnihs
before
llfaktanlow
events come to suet* pass.
in BPuartissttilhlatthtihs
the intimacy
no tsll . Itw
hiischpelerfd to this
ectlywe
re-
sult had been the subject of remark. We do not
say these things to aggravate the burden of the fugi-
tive, but we say them because they tend to expose
that barbarous routine in such affairs which makes
the point at issue a mere matter of quarrel between
two men, without any regard to the interests or feel-
ings °Rim, woman. She is the helpless plaything of
others' passions. The very candour of a mind help-
lessly alienated by sickness could not disarm the fe-
rocity of personal pride. What mattered the mortified
" honour" of a man, compared to the wreck of the
woman's reason, life, and affections ? They are made
of no account.
Nor are we, in the absence of all evidence either
way, to presume that the transfer of the woman's af-
fections was a mere caprice. Without repeating any
of the stories current in the whisper which accompa-
nies the published reports, we content ourselves with
saying that we must not so presume. Was there any
reason for the change? and if so what was the rea-
son ? Did it leave the balance of blame to her or to
the " injured " husband ? Was he or she the more
materially injured, the more outraged? The facts
which would be the reply to these questions seldom

qr. 4

come out on the post mortern inquiry ; the woman's
case is seldom stated, far more seldom made good ;
yet assuredly, in the eye of real justice., she snould
stand on an equality of right with the I:inn.
Bat the discussion of these subjects continues in the
Times; however superficially, the relation of m'oman
to man is discussed in tho most public journal of the world ; and the facts will gradually draw discussion
beneath the surface.

OUR JIARITIIIIEso URGES —NA-
TIONAL DEFENCE.
We read in a Liverpool journal a few days since
an extract from a work of some authority, in which
it was stated that in 1799 the merchants of Liverpool
fitted out 120 privateers, amounting to 31,385
tons,
which carried 1,986 guns and 8,754 men.
squadron realised upwards of a million sterling. prize
money. If Liverpool could do this in 1799, she
could doubtless in the present day furnish f?r defen-
sive and offensive purposes at least five tunes the
force—one-third of it steam vessels, with 40,000
stalwart fellows to man them.
Here then is the reserved naval force of the coun-
try; but the question is how to make it available in as
short a time as a steamer can cross the Channel?—
and if these 40,000 men were ready on an emergency,
where are the armaments ? and if the guns were
ready, how will the seamen know the way to
handle them ? They would do well enough
if they could run alongside of the enemy.
The same daring and headlong courage and grim
determination that irresistibly carried all before
them during the war, would tell with the same
disastrous results to the foe; but how would they
manage with a skilled enemy, who could choose his
distance ? They would be in about the same predi-
cament as men armed with old ships' pistols encoun-
tering others with the modern hair triggers : with
this disadvantage too, that not only would their shots
be random ones, but they would not, as in the late war,
be enabled to do any injury by hurling their weapons
at their opponents, for the enemy would be out of
reach.

There is no doubt that we have both materiel and
personnel to resist the combined attack of the whole
world, but for the moment they are comparatively
useless. The announcement of hostilities will be a
powerful dash, and it cannot be denied that to meet a
coup de main we have no ships besides those of the
Royal Navy adapted for the service, and no organised
force of trained sailors to man the ships if they were
everything that could give the country confidence in
the protection they would be expected to afford.
It is, then, adaptation of vessels and organization
of men that are wanted to give security against
foreign aggression. To meet these requirements we
have two committees, nominated by the Admiralty,
at present at work; the first is inquiring into the
capability of the merchant steam navy to receive a
war equipment; and the second is collecting evidence
to guide them in propounding to the Government the
best and readiest means of manning the navy. To
what extent these committees have proceeded, we
know not; but we trust that they have already ar-
ranged for the Royal Mail Packet steamers to be
fitted for the emergencies of war, and that they have
obtained the unanimous consent of the seamen be-
longing to those steamers, to be instructed in the use
of great guns and small arms, and that having given
the necessary orders to the Ordnance Departments
for the supply of the armaments, they are ready to
extend their sphere of inquiry at the great ports of the
country, with the view of organising defensive squad-
rons from amongst the hundreds of other steam-yes-
sels belonging to Great Britain, and of not only ob-
taining the promises of the seamen to serve in time
of need, but of making themselves really efficient
and powerful—we may say invincible, by commencing
to receive instructions in the use of the great gun and
the cutlass.
If only one seaman in ten, or even fifteen, were
proficient in the gunnery exercise, the seamen of the
ports of London and Liverpool alone, as auxiliaries
to our Royal fleet, would settle an invasion in a
more summary manner than even the Spaniards did
the attempt on Cuba by the American fillibusteros.—
Herald.