ing," etc.; and so, without meaning to be heartless or unfair, he, because of his incompetency to view the situation of the woman from the standpoint of experience, fails in complete equity. A woman would know full well the difficulties to be met by a mother thus thrown upon her res'ources, and would add the weight of her knowledge to the decision. There is, perhaps, in the whole range of our daily experience no more glaring incon sistency than the failure to give women their full property rights, while at the same time deprecating their entering various new fields for their own and their children's support. "Women should remain in the home; they have higher and holier duties to perform than that of bread-winning," is cried from every side; and then straightway, if their rightful protector fails in his duty, instead of giving his substance to the woman so that she may remain in the home and fill her " proper sphere," the court gives her a paltry part, and she is left to perish in that home, or go out into the world and compete with man for daily bread. But space does not admit of relating the cases which have demonstrated to me the truth of my position. I must content my self with showing its antecedent probability from propositions admitted by all, and the assertion that my experience confirms it. In the relations of husband and wife, parent and child, guardian and ward, — all the domestic relations, in short, — a little thought will show that woman's knowledge — woman's instinct, if so you please to call it — should find play in their adjustment. What can the man and father know of the vital interests of the woman and mother? He can learn some thing from what he sees as, standing upon the eminence of fatherhood, he looks up to the summit of motherhood towering beyond him. But, ah! who shall say what verdant depths, what crystal springs of thought and feeling, are hidden beyond his ken! Do not misunderstand me. I am not ar raigning man's wisdom, man's love of justice,
or that attribute which gives the charm of poesy to life's prosaic details, — man's chiv alry; I am merely saying that there are some things that men do not know, that men cannot learn, and that women do know. Neither do I arraign the past, nor fail to see how natural it is that we to-day are suf fering the necessary results of having out grown our environments. Our civilization had its birth in a crude and barbarous age; and especially did our common law spring from a condition far different from the present. It had its origin and early develop ment when the material interests of life were uppermost; when the forceful, the muscular, the aggressive qualities of human nature were the ones required for the establish ment of human rights and the maintenance of human government. And so man, by nature endowed with the ability to cope with the necessities of those times, was the active element in society and government, and nat urally gave the coloring of his nature to the jurisprudence which developed. In this ju risprudence woman, the member of the hu man race representing by her weaker physical organization and her peculiar qualities of mind the more aesthetic and ethical interests of the race, held the place of ward, so to speak, to the dominant sex. It was sought to protect and care for her that the high and holy mission of motherhood might not be jeopardized by contact with the crude and incongruous influences of outer life in a material age. And it is well. Who shall say what de velopment the race may not have reached from this very protection; from the seclusion incident to the condition of coverture and dependence! We cannot know. The most that we can say is that whatever of great ness and glory womanhood has reached has been achieved under the conditions men have imposed. That other conditions would have produced better results is not known, and does not seem probable. Now, however, all is changed, or at least
