Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/170

158 out most convenient and feasible. I refused to receive the journals and MS. I applied for, on that insulting alternative; and they remain till this day in Mr Norton's possession. So does much of my personal property; including the gifts made by relations and friends on my ill-omened marriage. The law does not countenance the idea of separate property. All that belongs to the wife is the husband's—even her clothes and trinkets: that is the law of England. Her earnings are his. The copyrights of my works are his, by law. When we first separated, he offered me, as sole provision, a small pension, paid by Government to each of my father's children; reckoning that pension as his. The principle of the law is, that the woman's separate existence is not acknowledged; it is merged in the husband's existence; hence the difficulty in the matter of the contract. The husband cannot legally contract with his wife: she is a part of himself. It is boasted, on the other hand, as an immense concession to the wife, that, in consequence of this merging of her existence,—this nonentity in law,—she cannot be arrested or sued for debt. She does not exist: her husband exists; and if the debt be recoverable, it must be from him. I have already shewn, by the curious case at page 96, that it may happen, on this principle, that the creditor may lose his money altogether. In France, married women can be arrested for debt; and it would be infinitely more just to the separated wife, and to the tradesmen who trusted her, that she should be responsible to the law, and liable to a civil action; and that a husband should not be able to evade the payment of a contract under his own signature, on the plea of the "non-existence" of the defrauded party with whom it was made. "It may be law; but it isn't justice," is a common phrase among the poor: it is a phrase of which I have learned to appreciate the sound and exact truth. The argument that the husband may be bound by sureties, is useless. Suppose what Mr Norton affirmed, were true, and that the woman could not get a surety? Suppose a case different from mine, who am