Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/149

Rh I do not want to use the moral expression that the woman is "better" than the man, but she certainly is more humanely organized, and in the retirement to which she is condemned she is less exposed to the hardening and demoralizing influences of the vulgar atmosphere in which the male sex at present still disports itself. A crime committed by a woman will, therefore, generally have more cogent and deeper motives than the same crime committed by a man. How often we hear in this country of men who have murdered their wives; and how rare is the opposite case! But who is there to maintain that men have to suffer more at the hands of the women than the women at the hands of the men? This juxtaposition alone proves the weaker disposition of the feminine nature towards criminal deeds; consequently the necessity of applying a different standard in the judging or condemning of a Mrs. Robinson than of a Mr. Whiskeyson or of any wife-murderer by whatsoever name he may be called. A husband may perhaps slay his wife for some pat rejoinder; the wife poisons her husband only after her feelings, her love, her pride, tortured perhaps through all grades of despair, has killed all womanliness within her, and has left nothing of it except the feeling of revenge.

If I had to present a petition to Governor Clark, I should above all things, as my motive for so doing, accompany it by an elucidation of the