If women had a voice in the making of the laws, how long would the dram-shop and low groggery send out their liquid poison to pollute civilized lands?  But all women are not on the side of right.  Neither are the very large majority of men.  Many women are drunkards themselves, and worse.  True, alas! too true.  Sin has corrupted human nature, and men and women have sunk to fearful depths of degradation.  Statistics go to show, however, that fallen women happily bear only a very small proportion to those upon whose moral character there is no stain.  The virtuous and good are in the large majority.

Men are not allowed by law to murder their wives.  Indeed, the law forbids them to beat them; but for this trifle, husbands frequently escape with an “admonition.”  Yet, though the letter of the law is explicit, they must stop short of killing their victims.  There is a case on record, within a few years back and in a British province, where a man beat his wife to death.  He was found guilty of the crime.  The jury—­composed of men, of course—­brought in a verdict of manslaughter, and he was sentenced to three months in the common jail.  The plea in his behalf was that she was a drunkard.  The poor fellow had only gone a little too far; the court must be merciful.  At this same assize, there was a man indicted for theft.  He had made good his entrance into a jeweler’s shop, and stolen therefrom a watch.  The theft was proved, and the culprit sent to the penitentiary for three years. Query:  Which was the greater crime, killing a woman or stealing a watch?

The law professes to punish seduction and rape; but when either or both are proved, what are the sentences?  In nine cases out of ten, scarcely so severe as for damaging an animal belonging to a neighbor.  Occasionally, when the cases have been atrociously aggravating, a man has been hung for poisoning his wife, or one has been sent to the penitentiary for rape; but the instances are more frequent in which the criminal escapes punishment.  It is contended that, usually, the women who are murdered, or otherwise maltreated, are ill-tempered, drunken creatures, and therefore not worthy the protection of the law.  Would these same parties contend that because a man was ill-tempered, drunken, or dissolute, therefore his wife was scarcely to be punished for foully murdering him?  Not at all.  The universal testimony would be that she was a shockingly wicked wretch.

Women, as well as men, have to contend with infirmities of temper; and they quite as well succeed in controlling or keeping them in check.  There are both men and women, unfortunately, who let their evil passions run riot till they are torments to all who have any thing to do with them.  Some women, naturally gentle and kind, have been so ill-treated, so shamefully tyrannized over, that in process of time the “milk of human kindness in their breasts has turned to gall;” and the gall is then bitter enough.  Would not men, in similar circumstances, be just as bitter?