Thus, if she incurred a debt in one year she could not be compelled to pay it out of any future year's income. Marriage settlements may still be made in spite of the Married Women's Property Act, but a woman cannot now settle her own property on herself, so as to interfere with the rights of her creditors. Creditors and others are wont to complain of restraints on anticipation as giving to the married women who enjoy the benefit of them an unfair advantage. The object of these restraints is, of course, to protect wives from the result of yielding unwisely to their husband's influence in money matters. As long as it is customary to marry young and inexperienced girls to men much older and much more experienced, there is a good deal to be said in favour of the law in question. When women become, in consequence of right training, more self-reliant, they will cast aside such artificial props and protections with scorn.
In former times, as we have seen, the law compelled every woman who married to endow her husband with all her worldly goods, and so deprived her of all means of self-support. At the present day, though this law is changed, custom does its best to deny to married women all possibility of economic independence.
Girls are not given the same educational advantages as boys, because "they will get married"; many employments are closed to women for the same reason; public authorities and private employers are in the habit of dismissing women employees on marriage. Self-styled reformers are
