Page:The Enfranchisement of Women, the law of the land.pdf/6

6 wives as the dominant power. Among savages in general, it is the women who really discharge every duty but that of fighting and hunting. Even among civilised nations, how many classes devolve, not only the industrial drudgery, but the business, of their calling, upon the women. The most contemptuous gibe the fisherwomen can fling at their neighbour is that "she cannot keep her husband." The great Napoleonic wars that drew the male population away to the army, made the women of France fill up the gap, by carrying on the work and managing the business of civil life; and to such purpose was it done, that to this day there is scarcely a department of trade or industry, hardly an office of trust or skill, in which they are not to be found creditably proficient. In our country, who is there who cannot tell off, in his own circle, or within his personal knowledge, cases of women who have, by their commanding intelligence, redeemed the fortunes of a futile husband, or, as widows, brought up and put out into life the family he failed to support? Of those who engage in business, how few become insolvent; how punctual are they, as a rule, in fulfilling trade engagements; how reliable in meeting liabilities; how rigid in the discharge of duties!

It is indeed strange that the English people should raise such distinctions as those on which this disqualification founded. The law of inheritance excluding females which had been imported into the constitution of France, from the allodial tenure of the Salic settlers, never prevailed in Britain. This nation always recognised the right of succession in the female line. I well remember the plenipotentiary of an Indian prince declaring to me he had discovered the reason of the subjugation of the Hindoos to the Saxons. "In the zenana," said he, "we have secluded our women, and made them wholly unfit to make intelligent and capable men and women of our children." "Daughters," observes Professor Monier Williams, are little regarded. When a boy was five years old he was betrothed. After the nuptial ceremony a boy returned without his bride to his father's house, but at the age of fifteen or sixteen he was allowed to live with his child wife. He (Professor Williams) had at Indian high schools and colleges often examined boys, half of whom were fathers. Early marriages were the curse of India. The condition of Hindoo girls was one of hopeless