LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

WIFE-BEATING.

[TO THB EDITOE OF THE n SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Permit me to remind your courteous correspondent " F."" that his proposed remedy for wife-atrocities,—namely, " to with- draw woman from the labour market, refusing her, too, a political arena, but placing her where nature intended," &c., has been already tried on a very large scale, and with results the reverse- of satisfactory. If the women in those countries where the " withdrawing " system has prevailed for some thousands of years —India, China, and Turkey, to wit—have been less often kicked to death than their Western sisters, it has been, I fear, only because slippers were less convenient instruments for the purpose than hobnailed shoes, and the sack or the bowstring accomplished the same end, without fatigue to the muscles of their masters.

Endeavouring to bring my first letter within the narrowest limits, 1 was, perhaps, guilty of passing too rapidly, and without indicating the intermediate steps of my argument, from the evil of wife-beating to the remedy of the political enfranchisement of women. I am, however, entirely prepared to maintain each of those intermediate steps :- 1. That one of the chief causes of outrages on women is the deconsideration and contempt wherewith they are regarded by the lower class of men.

2. That those contemptuous sentiments are largely due to the position of women under the law.

3. That the concession of political rights to qualified women would, indirectly, but very efficiently, tend to educate men better to respect their sex.

4. That that concession would also 4irectly lead to some serious and probably successfsl efforts to put down the crimes. of

wife-beating and wife-murder, which are now the disgrace of our country.* By a singular chance, since 1 wrote my first letter, an American newspaper has come to me from Boston containing the following -apposite passage :-

" We publish, in another column, items entitled Crimes against Women,' all of them cut out of the newspapers of a single day. Day after day, and month after month, our newspapers chronicle such horrors as these. They occur in this country at the rate of hundreds every month, of thousands every year. They are mostly crimes of violence, and all of them committed by men against women. Very rarely we read of a man killed by a woman, but so seldom that it always strikes us with a sense of incongruity. The public accepts these shocking occurrences as a matter of course. Thirty years ago, we road con- tinually iu the Southern newspapers of similar outrages inflicted upon negroes by white men. They were then justly regarded in the North as a direct result of the subjugation of the coloured race, and were quoted to arouse an intelligent hostility to slavery. Since emancipation, we no longer hear of them to anything like the same extent."

The writer goes on to draw the parallel between the subjection of women and that of these negroes. For my own part, I have always shrunk from using the common illustration of slavery for this sub- ject, because,as regards the condition of Englishwomen of the happier classes, it is absurdly exaggerated and untrue. But for the poor -creatures of whom I now write, wbo are literally trampled to death by their inhuman masters, the name of White Slaves would not

exceed by one jot the dreadful reality of their condition,—a con- dition which good men like you and your contributor " F." indeed deplore, but which it is impossible you can regard with the burning indignation wherewith it fills a woman's heart.

In the days of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," we can many of us recall how the Southern slaveholders—their English advocates used to assure us that if the Negroes were now and then cruelly treated, it was all the fault of the Abolitionists, who disturbed their minds and produced ill-blood—and that if these troublers could all be hanged, with John Brown, the state of the slaves would thenceforward become quite paradisiacal. The Spectator did not attach much faith to such promises in those days, nor do I'now look for the relief of the miseries of women from extin- guishing the woman-suffragists, and returning, as " F." would have us, to the status quo ante.

Permit me, in your great kindness, to add two words more in rejoihder to your own remarks. You say that the form of

-rbitan suffrage which I advocate (namely, the extension of the franchise to women possessing the property qualification, and to them alone) is " illogical." Surely it is not our Bill which is illogical, but the law, as it stands, which, while professedly basing representation on the tenure of property, refuses repre- sentation to a seventh part of the property-holders in the king- dom. I am aware that you apply the term because, like most of our opponents, you persist in assuming that we ought to ask for votes for wives as well as for spinsters and widows. Whether it be fair or expedient that wives should be deprived of property

by the common law is a question which I am not concerned to argue. It is not we spinsters or widows who have deprived them

of it. But we do question the " logic " of refusing to A. and B., who possess property, those rights which on constitutional principles belong thereto, because C. has been deprived of both her property and her rights together.—I am, Sir, &c.,

FRANCES POWER COBBE.

[How does Miss Cobbe know that her own indignation at cowardly and ruffianly acts towards women is any greater than that of like-minded men ? We cannot compare the two, but we should think it very improbable that it is so.—En. Spectator.]