interest of the wife from that of the husband. An eminent American jurist told the writer that he knew a case in which a woman was compelling her husband to work for her as a hired labourer, and another in which a woman had accomplished a divorce by simply shutting the door of the house, which was her own property, in her husband's face. No doubt equally harsh things are done by bad husbands to wives, and these instances are repeated, as they were cited, merely to show the point to which the legal independence of women has been carried. After all, it must be remembered that the man remains responsible for the maintenance of the woman and her children, and that the analogy of a commercial partnership which is in vogue with the champions of Woman's Right in the United States, is very far from holding good: commercial justice between themselves and their husbands is not what the women really want. It must be remembered, too, that the male has by nature certain advantages over the female which no legislature on earth can annul; and that it is necessary in the interests of both sexes, but especially in the interest of women, to render the restraint of marriage acceptable, not only to persons of cultivated sensibility but to ordinary men. Marriage might almost be defined as a restriction placed upon the passions of the male in the interests of the female. If the ideal which floats in the pages of Mr. Mill were actually embodied in legislation, and the husband were stripped of all conjugal rights, and left with nothing but the responsibility of maintaining the family, it is at least possible that the result amongst the coarser masses of mankind might be the increase of license and the consequent degradation of women.
It is commonly said in the United States by the Woman's Right party, that women are underpaid for their labour, and a vague hope is held out that this might be set right by female legislation. In most fields of industry women are new-comers, and on all new-comers old custom is apt at first to bear hard. Female singers, pianoforte players, novelists, painters, milliners, are not underpaid. If female clerks and schoolmistresses are paid less than male clerks and school-
