Page:The Legal Subjection of Men.djvu/71



This is quite apart from the fact that they are assigned much less toilsome forms of labour.

The comparative facility with which remission or commutation of sentence on female criminals can be procured is known to every solicitor conversant with Criminal Law Procedure—not merely in cases of infanticide—but in all cases of crimes of violence, the chances of pardon are immeasurably greater than in the case of a male.

As every litigant who has to contend with a woman knows to his cost, feminine privilege is not confined to matrimonial matters, nor to the Criminal Courts. The purse of the male is hit in the Civil Courts quite as heavily as his person in the exercise of the criminal privileges of the female sex. Anyone who has any relations, even of the most innocent character, with a woman, from a tenant or a trader who contracts with her to a casual guest at a friend's house who makes her acquaintance in a social way, may have occasion to discover that absence of intimacy does not necessarily shield him from unpleasant consequences.

The chief privileges of women in the Civil Courts are as follows (they cannot be paralleled by those of a peer or a member of the House of Commons):—


 * 1. Freedom from Arrest for Debt if Married.
 * 2. Property of Married Woman Exempt from Seizure.
 * 3. Privilege to Commit Breaches of Contract.
 * 4. Privilege to Defraud.
 * 5. Privilege to Seduce.
 * 6. Privilege to Commit Adultery.
 * 7. Privilege to Insult.
 * 8. Privilege to Assault.