earn money, it is because it is not to be measured in money, while it exists,—­nor to be replaced by money, if lost.  If a business man loses his partner, he can obtain another:  and a man, no doubt, may take a second wife; but he cannot procure for his children a second mother.  Indeed, it is a palpable insult to the whole relation of husband and wife when one compares it, even in a financial light, to that of business partners.  It is only because a constant effort is made to degrade the practical position of woman below even this standard of comparison, that it becomes her duty to claim for herself at least as much as this.

There was a tradition in a town where I once lived, that a certain Quaker, who had married a fortune, was once heard to repel his wife, who had asked him for money in a public place, with the response, “Rachel, where is that ninepence I gave thee yesterday?” When I read in “Scribner’s Monthly” an article deriding the right to representation of the Massachusetts women who pay two millions of tax on one hundred and thirty-two million dollars of property,—­asserting that they produced nothing of it; that it was only “men who produced this wealth, and bestowed it upon these women;” that it was “all drawn from land and sea by the hands of men whose largess testifies alike of their love and their munificence,”—­I must say that I am reminded of Rachel’s ninepence.

ONE RESPONSIBLE HEAD

When we look through any business directory, there seem to be almost as many copartnerships as single dealers; and three quarters of these copartnerships appear to consist of precisely two persons, no more, no less.  These partners are, in the eye of the law, equal.  It is not found necessary, under the law, to make a general provision that in each case one partner should be supreme and the other subordinate.  In many cases, by the terms of the copartnership there are limitations on one side and special privileges on the other,—­marriage settlements, as it were; but the general law of copartnership is based on the presumption of equality.  It would be considered infinitely absurd to require that, as the general rule, one party or the other should be in a state of coverture, during which the very being and existence of the one should be suspended, or entirely merged and incorporated into that of the other.

And yet this requirement, which would be an admitted absurdity in the case of two business partners, is precisely that which the English common law still lays down in case of husband and wife.  The words which I employed to describe it, in the preceding sentence, are the very phrases in which Blackstone describes the legal position of women.  And though the English common law has been, in this respect, greatly modified and superseded by statute law; yet, when it comes to an argument on woman suffrage, it is constantly this same tradition to which men and