Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/166

146 that refusal cut her off absolutely from her children, though they were all under seven years of age. That wrong, which our laws had immemorially sanctioned, roused her to action, and it was through her efforts, so long ago as 1838, that the law was altered so as to allow a mother of unblemished character right of access to her own children during the years of early infancy!

And that is how the law still stands to-day—a woman's contribution—the most that could be done at the time for justice to women. But there is no statue to Caroline Norton in Parliament Square—or anywhere else, so far as I know.

But what I specially want to draw attention to is this—that when she wrote the pamphlet with which she started her agitation all her relatives entreated her not to publish it, because it would be an exposure to the world of her own private affairs. By that time, however, Caroline Norton had learned her lesson in "womanliness," and she no longer said 'Happy is the woman who has no history." Her answer was: "There is too much fear of publicity among women: with women it is reckoned a crime to be accused, and such a disgrace that they wish nothing better than to hide themselves and say no more about it." Does not that set forth in all its weakness the conventional womanly attitude of the period?

The Bill which, through her efforts, was brought three times before Parliament, was at