The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1876-02-19
CONCERNING HUSBANDS.
Mrs. LirerrnOre's Contribution to This 10
'sOr6ing Subject ia Her Chicago Lecture.

Mrs. Lirer1n0re's Contribution to This ID.
sorbing Subject ia Her Chicago Lecture.
Many young ladies' in the audience
were a trihe disappointed, because Mrs
Livermore didn't paint in long-drawn
detail, the ideal husband to whom the
female sex should aspire, but drifted in.
stead into a well-wOrn branch of her ia
vorite theme of woman's rights, in which
the ladies don't profess to be SO immedi-
ately interested. The lecturer showed
what brute: the husband used to be in
early times, and how little he had i'm
proved in some localities. How, in
some parts of Hindostan, whose darkness
has not yet been penetrated by the civ
ilization of England, the loving hus-
band sells his wife for debt, lends her to
the uses of others, multiplies her indef-
nitely, leaves he at will, simplifies judi
cial processes by acting at once as her
Judge, jury, and executioner, and clasps
collar on her neck as he would on adOg,
to denote ownership. She told of the
delightful lot of the Chinese women,
who are not deemed worthy of a name at
all until they marry, when they receive
their husbands name, and whose liege
lords value them at something less than
the clothes they wear. In ancient Egypt,
Inis, goddess-mother, was one of the
trinity in their heather mythology. 1t
could hardly be that where woman was
deified, woman would be wholly slave,
and SO it was that in the Egypt of early
history the bridegroom welded his bride
with a ring, and used much the same
formula of words as now concerning the
endowing with goods, etc.-words which,
said the speaker, never meant much, but
theoretically looked toward equality.
But in the orient to-day the predomi
nance of man and the degradation of
woman was proverbial. Mohammcdan-
ism declared that no woman could enter
heaven. In ancient Greece, also, society
was builded upon the idea that woman
was nothing. The wife couldn't sit at the
table of her master. She dared not
speak until he had first opened his
mouth She could not walk abroad in
her husbands company. 1t was disrepu-
table for her to be educated. She had
to choose between being classed as re-
spectacle and fool, or as intelligent and
a harlot. There were. women who had
too much spirit to accept this degrade
ton, and they gave their lives to culture,
and repudiated the Greek husband.
Their party grew, and the time came
when it was almost impossible to marry,
as women found the yoke SO intOlerable
that they would not enter it. The
speaker also portrayed the varying con-
dition of the institution of marriage
during the days of the Roman republic
and empire, until it lost its pristine
purity, and in the last tottering legs of
the empire was supplanted by the foul
and CHASTITY thing called, in certain cir
cles, "free love-" From this degraIa-
ton of marriage, the speaker believed,
flowed many of the evils that so weak
ened the Roman power that it fell an
easy prey to its enemies.
The lecturer dwelt with especial Mi
nuteness upon the marriage relations i'll
the north of Europe, among the ances-
tors of the Anglo-Saxon race. She told
of the great respect in which women
were held of the chaste, beautiful and
dignifed women of whose virtue and
true womanhood the Roman historians
have so eloquently testified of their
loyalty to their husbands, the devotion
with which they followed them through
even through the thick of the
battle, daring them to deeds of valor, and
nursing them when sick or wounded.
Upon this superb stock was engrafted
the civilization of modern Protestant
nations. The speaker believed that the
idea of woman and of her relations to
man as held by modern civilization was
an outgrOwth of christian ideas. Dur
ing the dark ages there were periods of
retrOgression when the laws that should
govern family life were forgotten. 1t
was right to infiict corporal punishment
upon the wife, and there were laws that
regulated the use of the whip. All of
the five hundred or six hundred prov
CRIBS about women that have come down
from the middle ages speak of her con-
temptuously. To-day, however, the
man who was VIGOROUSLY bad husband
lost caste, not only among the women but
among the men. 1t was true that the
American husband was the best i'm the
world. But had he reached the highest
altitude of which he was capable? Ought
he not to lie judged in some degree by
the laws discriminating against woman,
framed before his time, may be, but al
lowed by him to remain upon the statute
books? In some states the property of
woman was not safe. In England the
husband could confiscate the wiie's prop
erty. A large majority of the states
gave the earnings of the wife to the
husband. II WAS 50 in Illinois until ten
years ago, but to-day the women of this
state have right to sell their earnings,
in which respect they enjoy an advan-
tage not possessed by their sisters in
Massachusetts, and some other states.
The speaker dwelt at length upon the
gross injustice of the property and pro-
bate laws of Massachusetts and some
other states as they affected women. The
hardships that these laws imposed upon
women was the theme of her concluding
remarks. She asked that these laws be
changed, and gave as the reason why
they had not already been repealed, that
public sentiment was not strong enough
to reform the law. She pleaded for a
perfect adjustment of the relations be-
tween husband and wife which should
complement each other and be reciprocal
instead of inharmon:ous in their action.
Oil VERSUS CASA novel and I'M