Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/144

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(From "Der Pionier," July 29, 1855.)

Troy, N. Y., a Mrs. Robinson, who has poisoned her husband, has been sentenced to be hanged on the third of August. Now the governor is besieged from all sides with petitions for pardon, because the feelings revolt at the thought of having a woman hanged. What delicacy of feeling in a country where hanging partly takes the place of national holidays! Would not the hanging. and dangling of a female prisoner, especially if she were pretty, afford a most piquant excitement for the savage taste of the criminal mob?

What real motive dictates this petition to the governor? Is it American gallantry? Hardly, for this is usually practised where something is to be gained thereby, were it only the approval of fashion. Is it the disgrace for the feminine sex which is to witness one of its highly honored members ending on the gallows? Possibly; although at other times we are not so zealous in warding off disgrace from the sex.. But the chief motive is presumably a natural aversion towards hanging, which has come into consciousness and reached such a degree of intensity that it at last