The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1879-03-27
VOL. VIII.
THE BLESSED WOMAN.

THE BLESSED WOMAN.
An idea long entertained retains
strong hold upon nations or States as
upon individuals. 1. is more slowly
eviscerated from law books than from
human prejudices and intellect. The
pitiable degrading subordinatiOn Of wo-
man to mans power and csprices had
origin in the sbsolutIsm OF brute force.
In bar5arous age 1t was interviewer
with the oldest social systems that
had been crystalized into laws and
constitutions and handed down, inves-
ted with the reverence of countless
years, to lawgivers and people of our
time. Such was the code that ami
hilated woman as human being, merg-
ing her personal and legal existence In
to that OF her supreme lord and master.
She was worse than his slave. The bar
barous common law gently phrased it
it, the "unity of man and wife"-the
''merger of the wife's existence into
that of the husband" The latter
owned absolutely all that was the
wife's, and the wife, since she
sometimes breathed after the husband
was entombed, was generously suffered
to use, while she lived, one third of
the husbands realty. 1t was 80 gen.
erous of the common law to grant
such boon to widows. We have
heard Of rusty old lawyers, imbued
with all the barbarism of black letter
law learning, absolutely laud these
codes, educed from the savagery of the
dark ages, as eminently generous and
wise and just. Step by step, men have |
been induced, slowly and grudgingly,
to concede to mothers, sisters and |
wives a share of the rights and immu-
mites which men had exercised ex-
clusively for ages. 1t was in conform
ity with this progressive elevation of
the sex and in promotion of wo-
mans advancement and security and
in prevention of her degradation,
as necessary consequence of that OF
the husband, that the homestead law
of Texas became the immutable basis
of our social and property systems.
Formerly, if the husband became de-
praved and beggared sot the faultless
wife was necessarily and surely even
more degraded and debased. She had,
under the bsrbarous old code, no
rights or privileges and no life or So
cial existence distinct from that of the
babbling brute to whose poverty, fate
and infamy the relentless law con-
signed her. Lawgivefs of Texas were
juster than their forefathers of the
middle and dark ages. Old English,
black letter, Coke-upon-Lyttleton theo-
ries of philosophy and parliamentary
and woolsack edicts were repudiated
in land of freedom, as boundless as
treeless wastes, and of justice as in
born and irrepressible as the love Of
this freedom. The vices of Texas
spring from these virtues, even as wo-
mans emancipation and perfect secu-
rity of property were products of
natural love of right.
There was no right in woman's en-
none in the merger of her
existence and identity into that of
man whom she might love or hate
none in subjectiug her to beggary be-
cause the husband was a rogue or fool,
and none in robing her in rags and
shame and filth, or in staining her
pure soul with vice simply because a
man stood upon the banks of the
mighty river OF alcohol, and quafTed
and was maddened and damned. The
world of thought moves very slowly.
Woman has won freedom and rights
slowly, very slowly. In the South she
is still hedged about with restrictions
of opinion and prejudice which were
the outgrowth of negro slavery. She
has hardly been conceded the poor
privilege of being respectable, and yet
of making honest bread by honest toll.
She has been excluded from many pur-
suits for which she is peculiarly we'll
fitted, and we are only pleased that
Texas is foremost in guarding women
and mothers against the greed or fol-
lies or crimes of husbands, and
second to no State in all gen.
erous legislation that affects the
sex. Prejudices which consigned wo-
man to the piano or the brothel have
been slowly obliterated, and almost
every field of practical and intellectual
industry is accessible. The woman
who tolls and maintains herself is re-
spected even more than the lounging,
idle mistress welded to gold and idle
ness. The sun bonnet covers heads as
many and virtuous and intelligent as
those that BOW reverently when Christ's
name is audible, beneath nodding
ostrich plumes in the presence of Him
whose soul was imbued with its first [
sweet lessons of love by the Madonna,
and whose fiercest reproof to the un-
fortunate and fallen was ''go and sin
no more.n
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A PRIEST WHO CAN'T TELL THR