Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/36

 knowledge of this and of other grievous wrongs calling for redress, that, even more than the commanding influence of Mill, enlisted the most generous and the most public-spirited of the youth of England in his crusade in favour of women's rights. Reformers in the middle of the nineteenth century believed, not unreasonably, as assuredly did Mill, that the wrongs done to women could never be removed without giving them a share in sovereign power. The change in the law produced by the Married Women's Property Acts, 1870-1892, and for most practical purposes completed by 1882, has removed almost every grievance of which a married woman in respect of her property had reason to complain. The position of an English wife may in many respects be envied by the women of Prance, who a few years ago protested against the law of the land by publicly burning the Code Napoleon. The one question which an English reformer need now ask himself is. Whether the zeal to relieve a married woman from unjust disabilities may not, as against her creditors, have bestowed upon her unfair privileges?