[409] The Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, 48 and 49 V. c. 69, section 5:  “Any person who (1) unlawfully and carnally knows or attempts to have unlawful carnal knowledge of any girl being of or above the age of thirteen years and under the age of sixteen, or (2) unlawfully and carnally knows or attempts to have carnal knowledge of any female idiot or imbecile woman or girl under circumstances which do not amount to rape, but which prove that the offender knew at the time of the commission of the offence that the woman or girl was an idiot or imbecile, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the Court to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.”  Section 4:  “Any one who unlawfully and carnally knows any girl under the age of thirteen shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable to be kept in penal servitude for life.”  Any one who merely attempts it can be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.

CHAPTER VIII

WOMEN’S RIGHTS IN THE UNITED STATES

It has been my aim, in this short history of the growth of women’s rights, to depict for the most part the strictly legal aspect of the matter; but from time to time I have interposed some typical illustration of public opinion, in order to bring into greater prominence the ferment that was going on or the misery which existed behind the scenes.  A history of legal processes might otherwise, from the coldness of the laws, give few hints of the conflicts of human passion which combined to set those processes in motion.  Before I present the history of the progress of women’s rights in the United States, I shall place before the reader some extracts which are typical and truly representative of the opposition which from the beginning of the agitation to the present day has voiced itself in all ranks of life.  Let the reader bear carefully in mind that from 1837 to the beginning of the twentieth century such abuse as that which I shall quote as typical was hurled from ten thousand throats of men and women unceasingly; that Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, and Mrs. Gage were hissed, insulted, and offered physical violence by mobs in New York[410] and Boston to an extent inconceivable in this age; and that the marvellously unselfish labour of such women as these whom I have mentioned and of men like Wendell Phillips is alone responsible for the improvement in the legal status of women, which I propose to trace in detail.  Some expressions of the popular attitude follow: 

[Sidenote:  Examples of opposition to women’s rights.]