which so much good arose and so much more was expected, exists no longer. The clergy destroyed it, by working on the credulity, ignorance, and political prejudices of those whose duty it should have been to advance the progress, the freedom, and welfare of Italy.

The institution gave no cause for their hatred; the directresses, in order not to hurt any one's feelings, begged the pupils to avoid, in writing their compositions, the following words :-Tiranni, Catene, Esule, Schiavitù, Patria Oppressa, Indipendenza. But their caution availed them nothing. The priests worked upon the minds of the parents in the confessional; the education was too liberal to please them, and the school was doomed.

The number of pupils diminished year by year. The Marchesa Doria and Contessa Rebizzo, aided by the liberality of the king, supported the institution for some years after I left it; but the priests being then unfortunately strong in Italy, they won the victory in this unjust and painful struggle.-Fraser's Magazine.

MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY.-Mr. Shaw Lefevre, in rising to ask for leave to bring in a Bill to amend the law with respect to the property of married women, said that had there been any important Government Bill in the paper for that evening he should have hesitated, in the present state of the business of the House, to detain it with any statement at the present stage of the Bill which he should ask the leave of the House to bring in; but, as there was nothing of importance, he hoped he might be permitted to take this opportunity of explaining its object. In the able speech of last year in which his hon. friend the member for Westminster advocated the claims of female ratepayers to the suffrage, the argument which had most weight with himself, and he believed with many others who voted with him, was that in which he pointed out the grievances resulting to large numbers of married women from the present state of the law relating to their property. He stated that, as a rule, the wealthy classes escape from the operation of the common law by means of marriage settlements, but that this course not being open to the poorer classes, they come under the full force of its severity. He said that if wornen had a share in the return of members to this House there could not be a doubt that one of the first measures that would be forced upon our attention would be one for amending this law. The House rejected the claims of the hon. member, and women would be no better represented in the new House than in the present. It would not, therefore, be unreasonable that they should take an opportunity of considering the grievances complained of. The Bill which he proposed with this object was almost identical with one which was brought into this House in 1857 by Sir Erskine Perry. That Bill had been prepared, after a long inquiry, by a com

mittee of the Law Amendment Society, of which the noble lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the right hon. baronet the Secretary of State for War were active members. The Bill was read a second time late in the session by a majority of 120 to 65; but, notwithstanding this favourable start, nothing more had been done in the matter since that time. It happened that in the same year the Divorce Act was passed, and in the course of it a clause was inserted which, by giving magistrates power to make orders protecting married women. from claims on their property and earnings by husbands who deserted them, remedied to a small degree the evils then complained of. It was thought, he presumed, that, as something had been done, it was not desirable to renew the discussion on the broader question. In the course, however, of the last autumn a very numerous petition was presented to the Law Amendment Society, praying them again to exert themselves on this question, and in consequence another committee was appointed by that learned society, composed of able lawyers and others, who, after an independent inquiry, came to the same opinion as the previous one. It was at the invitation of that society that he now proposed the Bill. Before stating its purport he must crave the indulgence of the House while he stated briefly the effect of the law which was complained of. If he wished tersely and accurately to describe the present state of the common law, which regulates the status of 19 out of 20 marriages in this country, he could not do better than take the words of Shakespeare, in which, when Portia gives her hand to Bassanio, she says:

Myself, and what is mine, to you and yours
Is now converted: but now I was the lord
Of this fair mansion, master of my servants,
Queen o'er myself; and even now, but now,
This house, these servants, and this same myself
Are yours, my lord.

That, which was a true description of the common law, was true to this day. Marriage, in fact, operated as an absolute gift to the husband of all that the wife had or which would come to her during marriage. It was true that in the case of real property the husband could not sell it without her consent; but he received the rents during their joint lives, and might dispose of this interest; and in respect of her leasehold property and personal property, it was practically under his absolute control. So also if, in order to maintain her family, she earned money in any of the ways open to women, her earnings and her savings were equally at his disposal. The savings banks announced to depositors that they were ready to pay over to the husband on demand the savings which had been deposited by the wife. The husband did as he thought fit with her property, as, indeed, with his own; he was

subject to no control on her part, and if he was unfortunate it went to his creditors; if he was reckless she could not restrain him. Indeed, at common law the wife had no separate existence from that of her husband. She could not contract or sue or be sued. She and her husband were considered as one person, but that person was not a combination of the two, but was represented by the husband alone. Blackstone, after stating the effect of the common law, remarked that the very disabilities to which women were subjected showed how great a favourite they were to the law. No women he thought, would agree to that. Nor, in fact, did the court of equity. It would be easy out of the practice and judgments of the judges in equity to pronounce the condemnation of the common law which it deserved. At what time the equity judges first introduced these exceptions it was now difficult to trace; whether it was due to the old ecclesiastical chancellors or to the lay chancellors, like Lord Ellesmere and Lord Nottingham, who first transplanted some of the more equitable doctrines of the civil law, we could not now tell. All that we could say was, that from a very early date equity had recognised the separate existence of the married woman and the possibility of her having a separate estate. If Shakespeare had lived in the present day he would probably not have described the high-spirited, noble, and wealthy Portia as so completely handing over herself and her property to her husband; she would have made favourable arrangements for herself, and by means of marriage settlements and trustees have provided for a separate estate during marriage, free from her husband's control. It would not be uninteresting if he were to point out the various stages by which the courts of equity have advanced towards carrying out a more just policy to married women. They began by recognising the fact that through trustees a separate estate could be secured to the wife free from the control of her husband; they then went a little further, and conceded to her what was called an equity to a settlement-that was, in the case of any money coming to her after marriage, they recognised that in certain cases the wife was entitled to a portion of this to her separate use, so as to secure her against her husband's improvidence. At the same time, they had proceeded very timidly and cautiously, not liking to give her all. By way of illustration he gave two cases; in one, a married woman, whose husband had become insolvent, and who was utterly unprovided for, became entitled as next of kin to 1,000l. She applied to the court to have it settled to her separate use free from her husband's creditors. Lord St. Leonards would not give her the whole of it; he directed 600l. to be given to the wife and 400l. to the creditors, who, he said, with curious logic, were entitled also to some compassion for their wives and children. In another case a husband had deserted his wife, leaving her unprovided for; he was living with

another woman, under circumstances which made it impossible to suppose that he could ever return to his wife. The wife became entitled to 6,000l., and applied to have the whole settled upon herself; the court would not give her the whole, but directed one-fourth of the sum to be paid to the scoundrel who was her husband. Lord Cottenham in a case before him stated the grounds for giving a wife what is called her equity to a settlement in a way which clearly showed how inadequate the process of equity is for really dealing with the case. Lord Cottenham said:

The common law gives to the husband the property of the wife, upon the ground that he is liable to maintain her, and makes no provision for the event of his failing or becoming unable to perform that duty. If the property be attainable at law by the husband or his assignee at law, the severity of this law must prevail; but if it cannot be reached otherwise than by the interposition of this court, equity, though it follows the law, and therefore gives to the husband or his assignee the life estate of the wife, yet withholds its assistance for that purpose, until it has secured to the wife the means of subsistence; it refuses to hand over to the assignees of the husband the income of the property which the law intended for the maintenance of both.

The courts of equity had not only given to the wife her equity to a settlement, and recognised the possibility of her having a separate estate, but they had given her in respect of her separate estate all the incidents attaching to property, the right to contract with respect to it, and to sue and be sued in the courts of equity. A woman in equity could be a separate trader; she could also sue her husband in equity; and the court would in some cases hold him to be a trustee for her, and compel him to do what is right. Through these decisions of Chancery a system had grown up, under which, by virtue of marriage settlements, the wealthy classes, almost without exception, escaped from the operation of the common law. No man of position or wealth would dream of allowing his daughter to marry under the simple condition of the common law, no matter how favourable appearances might be. He would very possibly insist on a marriage settlement, to secure her against the husband's misfortunes or neglect. If the lady were wealthy a portion of her fortune would be settled on her to her separate use. It rarely happened in the upper classes, therefore, that a wife found herself under the provision of the common law only, but exceptional cases were sufficient to condemn that law, and he presumed few persons would fail to recollect some case of hardship to married women, even among the wealthy. The very fact that the wealthy as a rule set aside the law was the best evidence that they were not satisfied with it. But if this were so with the wealthy, far more so was it with the humbler classes. It was universally admitted that marriage settlements and trusteeships were quite inapplicable to the case of very small fortunes, or to cases where women were earning small incomes by professions or

by wages. The result was that these people were left without any protection from the effect of the common law, and the consequences were often disastrous. If the marriage turned out well, if the husband were prudent, trustworthy, sober, and kind, no harm resulted; but if he proved reckless, improvident, vicious, self-indulgent, drunken, or even only unfortunate, everything the wife had would be swallowed up, and her position would become one of great hardship. The fact that the husband had uncontrolled property in his wife's savings and earnings was then the fruitful source of wretchedness. It often acted as an inducement to the husband to become idle or drunken; it prevented the wife having that moral control over him which she might otherwise have; it sometimes took from the wife the motive for exertion, and urged the family downward in its career of misery. The census showed that out of 3,200,000 wives in this country upwards of 800,000 were employed in professions and trades of various kinds. Almost without exception these persons were without the protection from the common law which the wealthy had found so necessary; their earnings belonged to their husbands and not to themselves. Yet it seemed that what a woman earned by her own exertions ought to be far better secured to her than anything even which comes to her by bequest or descent. If we reflected for a moment upon the number of those women who, having made an unfortunate choice, found themselves bound for life to bad husbands, some idea might be gained of the amount of unhappiness and wretchedness resulting from the operation of the common law, unhappiness which might be greatly alleviated, though not perhaps removed, by its change. There was, perhaps, no one in the House who had not become acquainted with some cases of peculiar hardship. He could mention many, but would refer only to two. In one case a wife who earned money by her own hard work had, unknown to her husband, put by a little store in the savings bank against a bad day; her husband, a dissipated improvident man, suspecting the fact, tested his wife by suddenly saying to her, "Do you know the savings bank has failed?" The poor woman fainted from the shock, and her hnsband immediately went off and drew out her money. In another case, which he had been told was very common, a married woman, who was clever and industrious and could easily earn money, had for a husband an engineer on board a man-of-war, whose practice it was to come back to his wife after his cruise, and in a few weeks to clear his wife out by living upon her savings and the proceeds of a sale of her small stock in trade. As he was not cruel to her within the meaning of the law, and as his absence on a cruise could not be deemed desertion, she could get no reparation; she had no resource but to submit to his periodical visitation. He would not multiply cases; they were matter of common knowledge, and he was certain there was