XVI.

5.—“...her heart a gentle mien essayed.”

“Woman seems to differ from man in mental disposition, chiefly in greater tenderness and less selfishness, and this holds good even with savages, as shown by a well-known passage in “Mungo Park’s Travels,” and by statements made by other travellers. Woman, owing to her maternal instincts, displays these qualities towards her infants in an eminent degree; therefore it is likely that she should often extend them towards her fellow creatures.”... “Mungo Park heard the negro women teaching their young children to love the truth.”—Darwin (“The Descent of Man,” Chaps. IX., III.).

6.—“By deeper passion, holier impulse, swayed.”

Mrs. Eliza W. Farnham well says:—“Woman has accepted her subordinate lot, and lived in it with comparatively littlemoral harm, as the only truly superior and noble being could have done. The masculine spirit, enslaved and imprisoned, becomes diabolic or broken; the feminine, only warped, weakened, or distorted, is ready, whenever the pressure upon it is removed, to assume its true attitude.”—(“Woman and Her Era,” Part IV.)

Id.... Perhaps as appositely here, as elsewhere, may be recorded the following:—“An American writer says: ‘While I lived among the Choctaw Indians, I held a consultation with one of their chiefs respecting the successive stages of their progress in the arts of civilised life, and, among other things, he informed me that at their start they made a great mistake, they only sent boys to school. Their boys came home intelligent men, but they married uneducated and uncivilised wives, and the uniform result was that the children were all like their mothers. The father soon lost all his interest both in wife and children. And now,’ said he, ‘if we could educate but one class of our children, we should choose the girls, for, when they become mothers, they educate their sons.’ This is the point, and it is true.”—(Manchester Examiner and Times, Sept., 1870.)

8.—“...mother-love alone the infant oft preserved.”

In Polynesia, “if a child was born, the husband was free to kill the infant, which was done by applying a piece of wet stuff to the mouth and nose, or to let it live; but, in the latter case, he generally kept the wife for the whole of her life. If the union was sterile, or the children put to death, the man had always the right toabandon the woman when and how it seemed good to him.”—Letourneau (“Evolution of Marriage,” p. 113).

Id.... An Arab legend tells of a chief of Tamin, who became a constant practitioner of infanticide in consequence of a wound given to his pride ... and from that moment he interred alive all his daughters, according to the ancient custom. But one day, during his absence, a daughter was born to him, whom the mother secretly sent to a relative to save her, and then declared to her husband that she had been delivered of a still-born child.—(R. Smith, on “Kinship,” p. 282; quoted by Letourneau, “Evolution of Marriage,” p. 83.)

Id.... Charles Darwin writes of Tierra del Fuego:—“The husband is to the wife a brutal master to a laborious slave. Was a more horrid deed ever perpetrated than that witnessed on the west coast by Byron, who saw a wretched mother pick up her bleeding, dying infant-boy, whom her husband had mercilessly dashed on the stones for dropping a basket of sea-eggs!”—(“Voyage of theBeagle,” Chap. X.)

Id.... Mrs. Reichardt tells of a certain Moslem, of high standing in the society of Damascus, who “married a young girl of ten, and, after she had born him two sons, he drove her almost mad with such cruelty and unkindness that she escaped, and went back to her father. Her husband sent for her to return, and, as she was hidden out of his sight, he wrung the necks of both his sons, and sent their bodies to his wife to show her what he had in store for her. The young mother, not yet twenty, died in a few days.”—(SeeNineteenth Century, June, 1891.)

Id.... It will not be forgotten that, in more than oneof the older civilisations, the father had the power of life and death over the members of the family, even past adult age.

And, to come to quite recent times, and this our England, Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, to whose unflagging energy, during some fifteen years of labour, was mainly attributable (as the Parliamentary sponsors of the measures know) the amelioration in the English law concerning wives and mothers, embodied in the Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882, together with the later and beneficent Guardianship of Infants Act, 1886, relates, in her record of the history of this latter Act:—

“It will be remembered that so recently as 1883, a young lady petitioned that she might be allowed to spend her summer holidays with her own mother, from whom she was separated for no fault of her own or of her mother’s, but in virtue of the supreme legal rights of her father. The Court refused her petition, natural and proper as it seems to everyone of human feelings; and the words of the Master of the Rolls in giving judgment, on the 24th of July, 1883, are more significant and instructive as to the actual state of the law than the words of any non-professional writer can be:—‘The law of Englandrecognises the rights of the father, not as the guardian, butbecause he is the father of his children....The rights of the father are recognised because he is the father; his duties as a father are recognised because they are natural duties. The natural duties of a father are to treat his children with the utmost affection, and with infinite tenderness.... The law recognises these duties, from which if a father breaks he breaks from everything which nature calls upon him to do; and, although the law may not be able to insist upon their performance, it is because the law recognises them, and knows that in almost every case the natural feelings of a father will prevail. The law trusts that the father will perform his natural duties, and does not, and, indeed, cannot, inquire how they have been performed.... I am not prepared to say whetherwhen the child is a ward of Court, and the conduct of the father is such as to exhaust all patience—such, for instance, as cruelty, orpitiless spitefulness carried to a great extent—the Court might not interfere. But such interference will be exercisedONLY IN THE UTMOST NEED, AND IN MOST EXTREME CASES. It is impossible to lay down the rule of the Court more clearly than has been done by Vice-Chancellor Bacon in the recent case of “Re.Plowley” (47 “L.T.,” N.S., 283). In saying that this Court, “whatever be its authority or jurisdiction,has no authority to interfere with the sacred right of a father over his own children,” the learned Vice-Chancellor has summed up all that I intended to say.The rights of a father are sacred rights, because his duties are sacred....’

“These sacred rights of the father were, it will be observed, in the eyes of the law soexclusiveand paramount as to justify and demand the refusal to a young girl, at the most critical period of early womanhood, of the solace of a few weeks’ intercourse with a blameless and beloved mother; and this although the gratification of the daughter’s wish would have involved no denial to the father of the solace of his daughter’s company, since she was not actually, but onlylegally, in his custody, not having seen him for more than a year.

“It will be seen from this that the father alone has the absolute legal right to deal with his child or children, to the extent of separating them, at his own sole pleasure, from their mother, and of giving them into the care and custody of any person whom he may think fit. The mother has, as such, no legal status, no choice, voice, lot, or part in the matter.”—Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy (“The Infants’ Act, 1886,” p. 2).

It is consolatory to learn that a palliation of some part of the above unjust conditions has been achieved; yet how often has our presumedly happy land witnessed scenes of child misery and helpless mother-love, to which was denied even the poor consolation, so pathetically depicted by Mrs. Browning, in a scene which, as Moir truly says, “weighs on the heart like a nightmare”;—

“Do you hear the children weeping, oh! my brothers!Ere the sorrow comes with years?They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,Andthatcannot stop their tears.”

“Do you hear the children weeping, oh! my brothers!

Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,

Andthatcannot stop their tears.”

XVI.

4.—“...single basis...”

First written “disproportioned basis,” but altered, with good reason, in the face of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s arrogant male thesis:—“Only that mental energy is normally feminine which can co-exist with the production and nursing of the due (!) number of healthy children.”—(“Study of Sociology,” Chap. XV., note 5.)

But Professor Huxley speaks, more humanly, of “... such a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, striding ever upward, heavily burdened, and with mind bent only on her home; but yet, without effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now stockings are good and comfortable things, and the children will undoubtedly be much the better for them, but surely it would be short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine—a mere provider of physical comforts.”—(“On Improving Natural Knowledge.”)

Yet, if it be—as truly it is—a senseless and disgraceful depreciation of woman to look upon her as “a mere machine for the making of stockings,” is it not equally unworthy and unwise to consider her as—primarily and essentially—a mere machine for the making of a “due” number of stocking-wearers?

5.—“...quicker fire.”

In even so sedate and usually dispassionate a physiologist and philosopher as Charles Darwin, the masculine sex-bias is so ingrained and so ingenuous that he strives to disparageand contemn the notorious mental quickness or intuition of woman by saying:—“It is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception, and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man; but some, at least, of these faculties are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilisation.”—(“The Descent of Man,” Chap. XIX.).

His unconscious sex-bias apparently overlooked the pregnant and very pertinent caution which he had himself uttered in a previous work:—“Useful organs, however little they may be developed, unless we have reason to suppose that they were formerly more highly developed, ought not to be considered as rudimentary. They may be in a nascent condition, and in progress towards further development. Rudimentary organs, on the other hand, are either quite useless, such as teeth which never cut through the gums, or, almost useless, such as the wings of an ostrich, which serve merely as sails.... It is, however, often difficult to distinguish between rudimentary and nascent organs, for we can judge only by analogy whether a part is capable of further development, in which case alone it deserves to be called nascent.”—(“Origin of Species,” Chap. XIV.).

But surely Darwin would admit that experiment in capacity of education and development was as worthy evidence as “analogy,” and would further acknowledge how little effort in this direction had ever been made with woman. Buckle would seem to be far nearer the truth in ascribing to woman an unconscious deductive form ofreasoning, as against the slow and studied inductive process to which man is so generally trained to be a slave.—(See Buckle’s Essay on the “Influence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge,” as quoted from in Note XIII., 8.)

7.—“...one permitted end...”

“The function of child-bearing has been exaggerated to an utterly disproportionate degree in her life; it has been made her almost sole claim to existence. Yet it is not the true purpose of any intellectual organism to live solely to give birth to succeeding organisms; its duty is also to live for its own happiness and well-being.”—Ben Elmy (“Studies in Materialism,” Chap. III.).

Id.... “... not a moth with vain desireIs shrivelled in a fruitless fire,Or but subserves another’s gain.”—Tennyson (“In Memoriam,” LIV.).

Id.... “... not a moth with vain desire

Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,

Or but subserves another’s gain.”

—Tennyson (“In Memoriam,” LIV.).

5.—“...aspirations crushed...”

“I have found life a series of hopes unfulfilled and wishes ungratified.”—(Dying words of a talented woman.)

6.—“...purblind pride...”

“Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,And fills up all the mighty void of sense.”—Pope.

“Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence,

And fills up all the mighty void of sense.”

—Pope.

7.—“Her every wish made subject...”

For a somewhat modern exemplification may be takenthe instance of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in Paris with her husband, in 1852. She writes of Georges Sand:—“She received us in a room with a bed in it, the only room she has to occupy, I suppose, during her short stay in Paris.... Ah, but I didn’t see her smoke; I was unfortunate. I could only go with Robert three times to her house, and once she was out. He was really very good and kind to let me go at all after he found the sort of society rampant around her. He didn’t like it extremely, but, being the prince of husbands, he was lenient to my desires, and yielded the point.”—(“Life of Robert Browning,” by Mrs. Sutherland Orr, 1891.)

8.—“...her God.”

Conf.Milton (“Paradise Lost,” Book IV., 299):—

“He for God only, she for God in him.”

See Note XXXV., 5. Compare also the Code of Manu, v. 154, as quoted by Letourneau:—“Although the conduct of her husband may be blameworthy, and he may give himself up to other amours, and be devoid of good qualities, a virtuous woman ought constantly to revere him as a God.”—(“Evolution of Marriage,” Chap. XIII.)

Id.... Here may fittingly be appended some masculine concepts of feminine duty in other races.

TheStatus of Woman, according to theChineseClassics:—

In a periodical published in Shanghai, Dr. Faber, a well-known scholar, writes (1891) a paper on the status of women in China. He refers especially to the theoreticalposition assigned to women by the Chinese Classics. These lay down the different dogmas on the subject:

“1.—Women are as different in nature from man as earth is from heaven.

“2.—Dualism, not only in body form, but in the very essence of nature, is indicated and proclaimed by Chinese moralists of all times and creed. The male belongs toyang, the female toyin.

“3.—Death and all other evils have their origin in theyin, or female principle; life and prosperity come from its subjection to theyangor male principle; and it is therefore regarded as a law of nature that women should be kept under the control of men, and not be allowed any will of their own.

“4.—Women, indeed, are human beings, (!) but they are of a lower state than men, and can never attain to full equality with them.

“5.—The aim of female education, therefore, is perfect submission, not cultivation and development of mind.

“6.—Women cannot have any happiness of their own; they have to live and work for men.

“7.—Only as the mother of a son, as the continuator of the direct line of a family, can a woman escape from her degradation and become to a certain degree her husband’s equal; but then only in household affairs, especially the female department, and in the ancestral hall.

“8.—In the other world, woman’s condition remains exactly the same, for the same laws of existence apply. She is not the equal of her husband; she belongs to him, and is dependent for her happiness on the sacrifice offered by her descendants.

“These are the doctrines taught by Confucius, Mencius, and the ancient sages, whose memory has been revered in China for thousands of years.”

And now, what wonder that Chinese civilisation and progress is, and remains, fossilised, inert, dead?

“There is one supreme maxim upon which the conduct of a well-bred woman is made to turn, and this is ‘obedience.’ Life, the Japanese girl is taught, divides itself into three stages of obedience. In youth she is to obey her father; in marriage her husband; in widowhood her eldest son. Hence her preparation for life is always preparation for service. The marriage of the Japanese girl usually takes place when she is about seventeen. It is contrary to all custom that she should have any voice in it. Once married, she passes from her father’s household into the household of her husband, and her period of self-abnegation begins. Her own family is to be as nothing to her. Her duty is to charm the existence of her husband, and to please his relations. Custom demands that she shall always smile upon him, and that she shall carefully hide from him any signs of bad humour, jealousy, or physical pain.”—Tinseau (quoted inReview of Reviews, Vol. IV., p. 282.)

Note well the last two words of the above quotation; they have a bearing on much that will have to be said presently. Meanwhile, we read from another writer: “The expression,res angusta domi, might have been invented for Japan, so narrow of necessity is the wife’s home life. The husband mixes with the world, the wife does not; the husband has been somewhat inspired, and his thoughts widened by his intercourse with foreigners, the wife has not met them. The husband has more or less acquaintance with western learning; the wife has none. Affection between the two, within the limits which unequal intellectuality ruthlessly prescribes, there well may be, but the love which comes of a perfect intimacy, of mutual knowledge and common aspiration, there can rarely be. The very vocabulary of romantic love does not exist in Japanese;a fortiori, there is little of the fact.” Yet, under the influence of western civilisation, these things are changing rapidly, and Mr. Norman, the commissioner of thePall Mall Gazette, further relates that “The generation that is now growing up will be very different. Not only will the men of it be more western, but the women also. As girls they will have been to schools like our schools at home, and they will have learned English, and history, and geography, and science, and foreign music; perhaps, even, something of politics and political economy. They will know something of ‘society,’ as we now use the term, and will both seek it and make it. The old home life will become unbearable to the woman, and she will demand the right of choosing her husband just as much as he chooses her. Then the rest will be easy.”

The harsh and restrained position, both of Japanese and Chinese women, is frequently attributed to Confucianism; yet the matter does not seem to be of any one creed, but rather of every religious creed. Thus Mrs. Reichardt tells us, concerning Mahommedan women and Mahommedan married life, that—

“A Mahommedan girl is brought up with the idea that she has nothing to do with love. It isayib(shame) for her to love her husband. She dare not do it if she would. What he asks and expects of her is to tremble before him, and yield him unquestioning obedience. I haveseena husband look pleased and complacent when his wife looked afraid to lift up her eyes, even when visitors were present.”—(Nineteenth Century, June, 1891.)

Nor is Confucius alone, or the simple contagion of his teaching, rightly to be blamed for the following condition of things in our own dependency of

TheBombay Guardiancalls attention to an extraordinary book which is being circulated (early in 1891) broadcast, as a prize-book in the Government Girls’ School in the Bombay Presidency. The following quotations are given as specimens of the teachings set forth in the book:—

“If the husband of a virtuous woman be ugly, of good or bad disposition, diseased, fiendish, irascible, or a drunkard, old, stupid, dumb, blind, deaf, hot-tempered, poor, extremely covetous, a slanderer, cowardly, perfidious, and immoral, nevertheless she ought to worship him as God, with mind, speech, and person.

“The wife who gives an angry answer to her husband will become a village pariah dog; she will also become a jackal, and live in an uninhabited desert.

“The woman who eats sweetmeats without sharing them with her husband will become a hen-owl, living in a hollow tree.—(Conf. Note VI., 8.)

“The woman who walks alone without her husband will become a filth-eating village sow.

“The woman who speaks disrespectfully to her husband will be dumb in the next incarnation.

“The woman who hates her husband’s relations will become from birth to birth a musk-rat, living in filth.

“She who is always jealous of her husband’s concubine will be childless in the next incarnation.”

To illustrate the blessed result of a wife’s subserviency, a story is told of “the great reward that came to the wife of an ill-tempered, diseased, and wicked Brahmin, who served her husband with a slavish obedience, and even went the length of carrying him on her own shoulders to visit his mistress.”

So quotes theWoman’s Journalof Boston, Mass., and says in comment thereon:—“The British Government in India has bound itself not to interfere with the religion of the natives, but it certainly ought not to inculcate in Government schools the worst doctrines of heathenism.”

Yet, again, are these Hindoo, or Japanese, or Chinese doctrines simply the precepts of “heathenism” alone? Buckle quotes for us the following passage from the Nonconformist “Fergusson on the Epistles,” 1656, p. 242:—“There is not any husband to whom this honourof submission is not due. No personal infirmity, frowardness of nature, no, not even on the point of religion, doth deprive him of it.”

Much the same teaching is continued a century later in the noted Dr. Gregory’s “A Father’s Legacy to his Daughters”; and again, hideously true is the picture which Mill has to draw, in 1869:—“Above all, a female slave has (in Christian countries) an admitted right, and is considered under a moral obligation to refuse to her master the last familiarity. Not so the wife; however brutal a tyrant she may unfortunately be chained to, though she may know that he hates her, though it may be his daily pleasure to torture her, and though she may feel it impossible not to loathe him, he can claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations.... No amount of ill-usage, without adultery superadded, will in England free a wife from her tormentor.”—(“The Subjection of Women,” pp. 57, 59.)

As to how far public feeling, if not law, has amended some of these conditions, see Note XXXVI., 6. Meanwhile, as an evidence of what is the “orthodox” opinion and sentiment at this present day, it may be noted that Cardinal Manning wrote in theDublin Review, July, 1891:—“A woman enters for life into a sacred contract with a man before God at the altar to fulfil to him the duties of wife, mother, and head of his home. Is it lawful for her, even with his consent, to make afterwards a second contract for so many shillings a week with a millowner wherebyshe becomes unable to provide her husband’s food, train up her children, or do the duties of her home? It is no question of the lawfulness of gaining a few more shillings for the expenses of a family, but of the lawfulness of breaking a prior contract, the most solemn between man and woman. No arguments of expediency can be admitted. It is an obligation of conscience to which all things must give way. The duties of home must first be done” (by the woman) “then other questions may be entertained.”

Are not these English injunctions to womanly and wifely slavery as trenchant and merciless as any ascribed to so-called “heathenism”? And is it not the fuller truth that the spirit of the male teaching against woman is the same all the world over, and no mere matter of creed—which is nevertheless made the convenient vehicle for such teaching; and that, in brief, the precepts of womanly and wifely servitude are blind, brutal, and universal?

See also Note XLV., 6.

6.—“The ecstasy of earnest souls...”

“Without recognising the possibilities of individual and of racial evolution, we are shut up to the conventional view that the poet and his heroine alike are exceptional creations, hopelessly beyond the everyday average of the race. Whereas, admitting the theory of evolution, we are not only entitled to the hope, but logically compelled to the assurance that these rare fruits of an apparently more than earthly paradise of love, which only the forerunners of the race have been privileged to gather, or, it may be, to see from distant heights, are yet the realities of a daily life towards which we and ours may journey.”—Geddes and Thomson (“Evolution of Sex,” p. 267).

Id.... “What marriage may be in the case of twopersons of cultivated faculties, identical in opinions and purposes, between whom there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers, and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them—so that each can enjoy the pleasure of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development—I will not attempt to describe. To those who can conceive it there is no need; to those who cannot, it would appear the dream of an enthusiast. But I maintain, with the profoundest conviction, that this, and this only, is the ideal of marriage; and that all opinions, customs, and institutions which favour any other notion of it, or turn the conceptions and aspirations connected with it into any other direction, by whatever pretences they may be coloured, are relics of primitive barbarism. The moral regeneration of mankind will only really commence when the most fundamental of the social relations is placed under the rule of equal justice, and when human beings learn to cultivate their strongest sympathy with an equal in rights and cultivation.”—J. S. Mill (“The Subjection of Women,” p. 177).

2.—“And lingers still the hovering shade of night.”

George Eliot had yet to say, “Heaven was very cruel when it made women”; and Georges Sand, “Fille on nous supprime, femme on nous opprime.”

1.—“...carnal servitude...”

It may be objected by some that details in the verse orin these notes are of too intimate a character for general narration. The notes have, however, all been taken either from widely read public prints of indisputable singleness of purpose, or works of writers of undoubted integrity. One is not much troubled as to those who would criticise further. To them may be offered the incident and words of the late Dr. Magee, who, as Bishop of Peterborough, and a member of a legislative committee on the question of child-life insurance, said:—“In this matter we have to count with two things: first, almost all our facts are secrets of the bedchamber; and, secondly, we are opposed by great vested interests. This thing is not to be done without a good deal of pain.”—(Review of Reviews, Vol. IV., p. 37).

And thus are verified, in a transcendental sense also, the words of Schiller:—

“Undin feurigem BewegenWerden alle Kräfte kund.”(“Die Glocke.”)

“Undin feurigem Bewegen

Werden alle Kräfte kund.”

(“Die Glocke.”)

7.—“Survival from dim age...”

See Note XXIII., 1.

1.—“...girlhood’s helpless years...”

Somewhat as to these ancient conditions may be gathered from the position in India at the present day. Read the following:—“The practice of early marriages by Hindoos I was, of course, informed of by reading before coming to India, but its mention in books was always coupled with the assertion that in India girls reach puberty at a muchearlier age than in cold climates. Judge, therefore, of my surprise to find that so far from Hindoo girls being precocious in physical development, they are much behind in this respect; that a Hindoo girl of fifteen is about the equal of an English child of eleven, instead of the reverse, and that the statements made to the contrary by Englishmen who have no opportunity of becoming acquainted with Hindoo family life, were totally misleading. In the first place they were under the impression that marriage never takes place before puberty, and, secondly, they accepted the Hindoo view as to what constitutes puberty. You know that, unfortunately, they were misled as regards the first point. I hope to show you that in the second place the idea which they accepted as correct is a totally mistaken one.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D. (Address to the Hindoos of Bombay on the subject of child-marriage; delivered at the Hall of the Prarthana Somaj, Bombay, on the 11th Oct., 1890).

2.—“...sexual wrong.”

“As regards the marriage of girls before even what is called puberty, I can hardly trust myself to speak, so strongly are my feelings those of all Western—may I not say of all civilised?—people in looking upon it as actually criminal. Ah! gentlemen, those of you who are conversant with such cases as I have seen, cases like those of Phulmoni Dossee, which has just now stirred your hearts to insist upon some change in the existing law, and others where a life-long decrepitude has followed, to which death itself were far preferable, do you not feel with me that penal servitudeis not too hard a punishment for such brutality? I am glad to think that a very large section of Hindoo men think with me. I have been repeatedly spoken to on the subject, and members even of those castes which are most guilty in this matter, have expressed to me a wish that Government would interfere and put a stop to the practice.”—Mrs. Pechey Phipson, M.D.,op. cit.

A terrible evidence to the evil is borne by the following document:—

[From “The Times of India,” November 8th, 1890.]To his Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India.

[From “The Times of India,” November 8th, 1890.]

To his Excellency the Viceroy and Governor-General of India.

May it please Your Excellency.—The undersigned ladies, practising medicine in India, respectfully crave your Excellency’s attention to the following facts and considerations:—

1. Your Excellency is aware that the present state of the Indian law permits marriages to be consummated not only before the wife is physically qualified for the duties of maternity, but before she is able to perform the duties of the conjugal relation, thus giving rise to numerous and great evils.

2. This marriage practice has become the cause of gross immoralities and cruelties, which, owing to existing legislation, come practically under the protection of the law. In some cases the law has permitted homicide, and protected men, who, under other circumstances, would have been criminally punished.

3. The institution of child-marriage rests upon public sentiment, vitiated by degenerate religious customs and misinterpretation of religious books. There are thousands among the better educated classes who would rejoice if Government would take the initiative, and make such a law as your memorialists plead for, and in the end the masses would be grateful for their deliverance from the galling yoke that has bound them to poverty, superstition, and the slavery of custom for centuries.

4. The present system of child-marriage, in addition to the physical and moral effects which the Indian Governments have deplored, produces sterility, and consequently becomes an excuse for the introduction of other child-wives into the family, thus becoming a justification forpolygamy.

5. This system panders to sensuality, lowers the standard of health and morals, degrades the race, and tends to perpetuate itself and all its attendant evils to future generations.

6. The lamentable case of the child-wife, Phulmani Dassi, of Calcutta, which has excited the sympathy and the righteous indignation of the Indian public, is only one of thousands of cases that are continually happening, the final results being quite as horrible, but sometimes less immediate. The following instances have come under the personal observation of one or another of your Excellency’s petitioners:—

A. Aged 9. Day after marriage. Leftfemurdislocated,pelviscrushed out of shape, flesh hanging in shreds.

B. Aged 10. Unable to stand, bleeding profusely, flesh much lacerated.

C. Aged 9. So completely ravished as to be almost beyond surgical repair. Her husband had two other living wives, and spoke very fine English.

D. Aged 10. A very small child, and entirely undeveloped physically. This child was bleeding to death from therectum. Her husband was a man of about 40 years of age, weighing not less than 11 stone. He had accomplished his desire in an unnatural way.

E. Aged about 9. Lower limbs completely paralysed.

F. Aged about 12. Laceration of theperineumextending through thesphincter ani.

G. Aged about 10. Very weak from loss of blood. Stated that great violence had been done her in an unnatural way.

H. Aged about 12. Pregnant, delivered bycraniotomywith great difficulty, on account of the immature state of thepelvisand maternal passage.

I. Aged about 7. Living with husband. Died in great agony after three days.

K. Aged about 10. Condition most pitiable. After one day in hospital was demanded by her husband for his “lawful” use, he said.

L. Aged 11. From great violence done her person will be a cripple for life. No use of her lower extremities.

M. Aged about 10. Crawled to hospital on her hands and knees. Has never been able to stand erect since her marriage.

N. Aged 9. Dislocation ofpubic arch, and unable to stand, or to put one foot before the other.

In view of the above facts, the undersigned lady doctors and medical practitioners appeal to your Excellency’s compassion to enact or introduce a measure by which the consummation of marriage will not be permitted before the wife has attained the full age of fourteen (14) years. The undersigned venture to trust that the terrible urgency of the matter will be accepted as an excuse for this interruption of your Excellency’s time and attention.

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