the right of protest against laws in which she had no voice; laws which outrage the holiest affections of her nature; laws which transcend the limits of human legislation, in a convention called for the express purpose of considering her wrongs?  He might as well object to a protest against the injustice of hanging a woman, because capital punishment bears equally on man and woman.

“The contract of marriage is by no means equal.  The law permits the girl to marry at twelve years of age, while it requires several years more of experience on the part of the boy.  In entering this compact, the man gives up nothing that he before possessed, he is a man still; while the legal existence of the woman is suspended during marriage, and, henceforth, she is known but in and through the husband.  She is nameless, purseless, childless—­though a woman, an heiress, and a mother.

“Blackstone says:  ’The husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband.’  Chancellor Kent, in his ‘Commentaries’ says:  ’The legal effects of marriage are generally deducible from the principle of the common law, by which the husband and wife are regarded as one person, and her legal existence and authority lost or suspended during the continuance of the matrimonial union.’

“The wife is regarded by all legal authorities as a feme covert, placed wholly sub potestate viri.  Her moral responsibility, even, is merged in her husband.  The law takes it for granted that the wife lives in fear of her husband; that his command is her highest law; hence a wife is not punishable for the theft committed in the presence of her husband.  An unmarried woman can make contracts, sue and be sued, enjoy the rights of property, to her inheritance—­to her wages—­to her person—­to her children; but, in marriage, she is robbed by law of all and every natural and civil right.  Kent further says:  ’The disability of the wife to contract, so as to bind herself, arises not from want of discretion, but because she has entered into an indissoluble connection by which she is placed under the power and protection of her husband.’  She is possessed of certain rights until she is married; then all are suspended, to revive, again, the moment the breath goes out of the husband’s body. (See ‘Cowen’s Treatise,’ vol. 2, p. 709.)

“If the contract be equal, whence come the terms ‘marital power,’ ‘marital rights,’ ‘obedience and restraint,’ ’dominion and control,’ ‘power and protection,’ etc., etc.?  Many cases are stated, showing the exercise of a most questionable power over the wife, sustained by the courts. (See ‘Bishop on Divorce,’ p. 489.)

“The laws on divorce are quite as unequal as those on marriage; yea, far more so.  The advantages seem to be all on one side and the penalties on the other.  In case of divorce, if the husband be not the guilty party, the wife goes out of the partnership penniless.