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The Matrimonial Causes Bill.

To the Editor.

Sir,—As your columns are open to free discussion I trust you will all we space for a few remarks from one who is prepared to support the thirteenth clause of the Matrimonial Causes Bill as the best part of that bill. To the objections raised in your note on the subject I have one (to me all-sufficient) reply: namely, that they are based entirely upon conventionality—upon a certain fashion of looking at things; a fashion which may at any time be modified or altered, nay, which it is the business of philosophers and moralists to modify in accordance with the dictates of reason and conscience. Our social system allows great laxity to men and is mercilessly strict towards women. Granted : but am I therefore to allow that our social system is the perfection of justice? Why should not Society require as high a degree of moral elevation in a man as in a woman? I am a diligent reader of the reports of Police Courts and Law Proceedings, and I have found that a wealthy ruffian may address rude remarks to an innocent girl returning after dark from her work to her home, and being repulsed may knock two of her teeth down her throat, at the cost of £5 only. Again, if there should be a squabble at a public meeting, and one of the gentlemen on the platform should give a clergyman a slap on the face with his open hand, he may be cast in damages for £100. But to steal a piece of silk from a shop will bring upon the offender probably a year's imprisonment. Now these, Sir, are facts, and part of our social system; but are they consistent with justice? Not at all. I regard them as the results of our English laws having been made by wealthy men, whose daughters do not walk along the streets after dusk, but who have a keen appreciation of any attack upon property or dignity. In like manner I consider the onesidedness of our legislation on marriage and divorce as the natural result of laws being made by men only. You allege the additional temptations to which man is exposed as a reason for leniency towards him. I will proceed to discuss the question whether this plea is allowed in cases of seduction. Let us take a typical case from the works of our great novelist, lately deceased. James Steerforth, young, handsome, wealthy, and at least intellectual and accomplished enough to dazzle and attract a simple country girl, goes forth "to conquer" (in the French meaning of the term). Many girls must he have seen as captivating as little Em'ly; how many young men has she seen fit to be compared with Steerforth? But after the catastrophe, what allowance does Society, in the shape of the austere Mrs. Grundy, make for the manifold temptations which have fluttered the heart of the rustic maiden? None. She is for the time ruined, lucky if she can hide her shame in a distant land; whilst at him Mrs. Grundy shakes her fan with very moderate disapproval and bids him not to be so naughty again.

Women's rights, I take it, were not discussed at all in the time of Queen Elizabeth, but the comprehensive mind of Shakespeare seems to have been struck by this inequality in the treatment of the sexes. Witness the reply of Ophelia to her brother Laertes, who has been giving her much good advice:

"Good my brother,
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Shew me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whilst, like a puffed and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own read."

I confess I see nothing in the point so much discussed, whether few or many women would take advantage of this particular clause. Certain unthinking persons have chosen to argue as if this clause would preclude women from the indulgence of the "sweet weakness, to forgive." To such I reply that this bill will no more compel a woman to get rid of a faithless husband, than a man to get rid of a faithless wife. Let four hundred and ninety-nine women pardon their wicked spouses seventy times seven times, if they like; but if there be only one wife out of five hundred to whom her page 312 faithless consort is positively hateful and loathsome, I hold it to be grossly unjust that such a one should be compelled to forgive, when that compulsion does not apply to the other sex. Forgiveness, free forgiveness is good on the part of a pure and loving soul, unwilling to condemn; but compulsory forgiveness—what is it but a hideous mockery? Nor do I feel aught but contempt for the man who can take advantage of a temporary separation to break through the obligations of a contract, any breach of which, on the part of his partner, he is prepared to visit with the severest penalties.

The constitution of my mind may be peculiar,—but I own that I prefer justice to generosity, equality to privilege; and I look forward to the attainment of legal and political equality by women as the greatest reform of the coming time. Why need our ears be vexed by endless discussions as to whether woman has a brain as large as that of man, even as in the days of American slavery it was an endless subject of dispute whether the negro is inferior to the white man. What is that to us? Give all a fair start; woman with man, black man with white man, Mongolian with Caucasian; and then all questions of inferiority and superiority, moral, intellectual and physical, will be settled by experience. Are women fit to be M.P.'s? try them, and you will soon find out. Were I in England, I would sooner vote for Miss F. P. Cobbe than for 600 out of the 658 members of the House of Commons. Meanwhile, to treat women as rational beings (which I suppose they are) seems to me infinitely better than the fantastic politeness, the condescending kindness with which they are patronised and protected, like helpless invalids, or whimsical children of a larger growth. It is, I think, hard to over-estimate the advancement in civilisation that would spring from the establishment of rational feeling and mutual respect between the sexes; still more hard to estimate the vast increase of moral and physical well-being in a community where the men, not seeking excuses for themselves in the theory of a lower moral elevation, should come to be as pure in word and deed as they justly expect their wives and sisters to be.

David Copperfield.