Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/28

16 Will they eagerly restrict the labourer or mechanic from violence and brutality in his wretched home, and yet, insist on their own right of ill-usage as a luxury fairly belonging (like the possibility of divorce) to the superior and wealthy classes? Is there,—in the disposition of those who are to legislate,—an insurmountable barrier to fair legislation on this subject? and if not, is there any reason why (to plead the cause of the inferior sex as humbly as possible) the laws and enactments for their protection should not undergo as much revision, with as fair a chance of beneficial alteration, as the regulations affecting the management of pauper children,—insane patients,—and the tried and untried prisoners who occupy our gaols?

I forget; I might plead yet more humbly; I might drop yet one great step in the social scale, to find a more exact parallel with the legal position of women in this country.

England has lately made a sort of ovation to an American lady, whose graphic and impassioned appeal on the antislavery question, reached Europe in the guise of a romance; a romance which has since been translated into most modern languages,—so that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has become everywhere a "household word." Had I been in England at the time Mrs Beecher Stowe visited us, I too, would have considered it a privilege and joy to see one whose genius glorified that solemn and gloomy argument, and sent it amongst us clothed in light. I wish her success. I desire heartily for her that her name may hereafter be remembered with a blessing, among the names of those who were early labourers in a day now dawning, that shall bring help to the helpless. I hold her task to be a holy one, and slavery an accursed thing.

But, meanwhile, it may not be uninteresting to those Americans who are of a contrary opinion, and who have felt wounded at the manner in which we have called across the Atlantic to bid America renounce the error of her way,—to look back to the time,—when so new and unwelcome was our conversion to the creed of mercy, in our own colonies, that Lord Seaforth