Year: 1877

There has been for few years ID this state much sIipshod and fragmentary leg legislation ill respect to the property right of married women. The old com mon law assumed the subjugation of the wife. and stripped her of the better half of her rights of person and nearly all of her rights of property. It is a matter of astonishment that Christian nations should have been willing for eighteen centuries to hold the mothers of their race in condition of legal servitude. It has been the scandal of jurisprudence. Some progress has been made in reform ing the law in this state, but it has been done. as have already said. by patch work and shreds, some lll-considered, and often so incongruous as to provoke vexatious litigation and defy the wisdom of the courts. The property relations of husband and wife do not to-day rest on any just or harmonious system. Not on ly has the husband absolute disposal of. all his property freed from dower-rights. but he is practically the owner during coverture of all his wife's estate not spec ially limited to her separate use, and af- ter her death has, in every case, life use in all her personal, and in most cases in all her real property, by title which the wife, no matter what may have been hIs i'll deserts, is powerless to impair or defeat; whereas, on the other hand, the wife has during the husbands life no more power of her own rightto sell, con- vey or manage her own estate than if she were a lunatic or slave, and Tn case of his death has life use in only one third part of the real estate of which he dies possessed, and no indefeasible title what ever in any of his personal estate. As a consequence, 6 husband. may strip his wife, by mere voluntary disposition to strangers. of all claim on his estate after his death, and thus add beggary to widow-hood.

 I am sure this cannot seem right to any fair-minded man. Neither is it strange that some of our country-women, stung by the injustice of the law toward their sex, should be demanding, as mode of redress, part in the making of the laws which govern them. am confident there is manhood enough in our own sex to right this obvious wrong to which l have alluded.

 therefor recommend that the law on this subject be so recast that in all mar riages hereafter contracted, the wife shall hold her property and all her earn | AnS5S HUI RCACOAA&A SC1VACcS suOb G0uUSE6U GO her husband or minor children, as sole and separate estate, with absolute power of disposition in her own name, and that the surviving wife shall have, by law, the same measure of estate in the property of the deceased husband as the survi- wing husband shall be allowed to have in the property of his deceased wife. This will reduce their property relations to 8 principle of equality, and.. in my iudg. ment, is demanded by the most obvions dictates of justice and equity. Those who pare not satisfied with this can make diff. ferent law for themselves by ante-nuptial | settlements.

 am not unmindful that the husband alone is liable in the first instance for the support of the family; but this is much more than neutralized by the fact that, ir most cases, the wife's whole life is spent in the toilsome and unpaid service of the household. and that the whole drift ol her estate, in consequence of her more unselfish and generous nature, is toward the husbands pockets, in spite of all the guards of the law and every considera ton of prudence.