and the compact through and through, until she finds out the true cause of her false position.  How can we go before the legislatures of our respective States and demand new laws, or no laws, on divorce, until we have some idea of what the true relation is?

“We decide the whole question of slavery by settling the sacred rights of the individual.  We assert that man cannot hold property in man, and reject the whole code of laws that conflicts with the self-evident truth of the assertion.

     “Again, I ask, is it possible to discuss all the laws of a
     relation, and not touch the relation itself?

     “Yours respectfully,

     “Elizabeth Cady Stanton.”

The discussion on the question of marriage and divorce occupied one entire session of the convention, and called down on us severe criticisms from the metropolitan and State press.  So alarming were the comments on what had been said that I began to feel that I had inadvertently taken out the underpinning from the social system.  Enemies were unsparing in their denunciations, and friends ridiculed the whole proceeding.  I was constantly called on for a definition of marriage and asked to describe home life as it would be when men changed their wives every Christmas.  Letters and newspapers poured in upon me, asking all manner of absurd questions, until I often wept with vexation.  So many things, that I had neither thought nor said, were attributed to me that, at times, I really doubted my own identity.

However, in the progress of events the excitement died away, the earth seemed to turn on its axis as usual, women were given in marriage, children were born, fires burned as brightly as ever at the domestic altars, and family life, to all appearances, was as stable as usual.

Public attention was again roused to this subject by the McFarland-Richardson trial, in which the former shot the latter, being jealous of his attentions to his wife.  McFarland was a brutal, improvident husband, who had completely alienated his wife’s affections, while Mr. Richardson, who had long been a cherished acquaintance of the family, befriended the wife in the darkest days of her misery.  She was a very refined, attractive woman, and a large circle of warm friends stood by her through the fierce ordeal of her husband’s trial.

Though McFarland did not deny that he killed Richardson, yet he was acquitted on the plea of insanity, and was, at the same time, made the legal guardian of his child, a boy, then, twelve years of age, and walked out of the court with him, hand in hand.  What a travesty on justice and common sense that, while a man is declared too insane to be held responsible for taking the life of another, he might still be capable of directing the life and education of a child!  And what an insult to that intelligent mother, who had devoted twelve years of her life to his care, while his worthless father had not provided for them the necessaries of life!