Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/15

3 He has declared himself my deadliest foe, whose dagger has too near an aim to miss my heart and, of the two, I hold his stab to be worse than that of the Due de Praslin, for he would assassinate even my memory.

I resist.

For the shallower rebuke, that mine is an exceptional case; that the law need scarcely be disturbed to meet a solitary instance of tyranny, there is a ready and reasonable answer. All cases requiring legal interference are exceptional cases; and it will scarcely be argued that a balance must first be struck in numbers, and instances of wrong be reckoned by the dozen or the gross, before justice will condescend to weigh the scales. But it does not follow that mine is a solitary example of injustice, because it may possibly happen, from a combination of peculiar circumstances, to be the instance which shall call attention to the state of the law. Hundreds of women are suffering at this moment, whose cases are not less hard, but more obscure: audit consists with all experience, that although wrong and oppression may be repeated till. they become almost of daily occurrence, they strike at last on some heart that revolts instead of enduring; or are witnessed by men whose indignant sympathy works out reform and redress. In either case, oppression is brought to a halt, not by a multitude of instances, but by some single example; which example may be neither more nor less important than others, though it be made the argument and opportunity of change. We are not told that any extraordinary perfection marked for defence the peasant child of William Tell; nor Watt Tyler's daughter; nor even that virgin girl of Rome, for whom her sire chose death rather than degradation; the doom had fallen, perhaps, on other victims quite as worthy. But it was resisted for them by hearts that beat high in defence of honest right; and therefore (and not for the value of the victims) we read in the records of history, of a pagan father who took his child's life; of Christian fathers who perilled their own; and of those