The law allows the mother’s holiest feelings to be outraged with impunity.  It does not recognize her right to the custody of her own children, except at the husband’s pleasure.  She may be intelligent and educated, virtuous and pious.  Yet, if he so wills, he may remove her children from her care, deprive her of their society, and even of the comfort of occasionally seeing them; and he may place them under the tutelage of the ignorant and vicious; while the deeply wronged mother is powerless, according to law, to help either herself or her children.

It is counted among one of woman’s privileges that she may hold property in her own right.  Upon what tenure is she allowed to hold it?  If the property be acquired or inherited, without entail of any sort; if it be real estate, it is hers in fee-simple till she marries.  After that event—­unless she has guarded her rights by a legal pre-nuptial contract, properly signed and attested to by him who is to be her husband—­she may not dispose of any part of it without his express sanction.  He may not legally sell it away from her, it is true; but by law he is her master, and may manage it according to his supreme pleasure while he lives.  Even a will made by her does not take effect, except her husband pleases, till his death.  If the property be in ready money or in funds—­except it be guarded in the contract—­the husband becomes possessed of it at once, and may appropriate and apply it to any purpose he pleases, without consulting the wishes of his wife.  She has no redress.  He may, despite her remonstrances, take this her substance and her money, and spend it in foolish speculation; or, worse still, in gambling, drunkenness, and debauchery.  He may maltreat her and insult her by the presence in her own house of his mistress.  If, no longer able to endure his brutality, she is obliged to leave him, he may, unless the law grant a divorce and alimony, keep possession of her houses and lands, while she must leave home and children behind, and go out upon the world penniless.  She can not force him to return one dollar of the wealth that was her own; and after the separation, unless legal papers warranting it have been executed, he can follow her and collect her scanty earnings.  Thousands upon the back of thousands of times has all this occurred.  Does not civilized law give a woman a lien upon her husband’s property? and does not this counterbalance his lien upon hers?  About as equally as are all other privileges balanced between the sexes; no more.

She has no legal voice whatever in the management of her husband’s estate.  His real estate is the only thing upon which she has any claim, and this is only a life interest—­after his death—­of the one-third of the estate; and of this she may only draw the interest upon the valuation.  She may refuse to bar her dower[K] in a sale of land, but if the bargain goes on, her refusal does not invalidate the title; all she can do is, in the event of her