WIFE - BEATING.
[TO THE EDITOR OF TER " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—Will you allow a woman to enter a protest against the severe, and as I think, unjust sentence pronounced on his countrymen by Sir Edward Strachey, in his letter to you last Saturday, that "brutality is a large element in the character of most Englishmen, gentlemen as well as boors"? So far from this being true, I believe,'on the contrary, that there is in Eng- lishmen an unusually large element of generous compassion and even tenderness for the weak and helpless ; and I would point, as a proof of this, to the fact that, wielding, as they do, absolute power over their wives, the instances of its abuse quoted by Miss Cobbe are, thank God, the exceptions, and not the rule. The. real source of the evil is the corrupting influence of irresponsible- power in itself. The Englishman is absolute master over- the women of his family. He may and does, as I have too often seen, make their home a hell, but no one can or will interfere with him. His religion, if he has any, does not check him, for he believes that it gives a divine sanction to his authority. The- law does not check him, so long as he stops short of physical, violence threatening life, and then but very leniently, unless he actually takes life. " Society " does not check him, so long as he observes the external decencies of the class he belongs to. Public opinion does not check him, for it holds his wife to be his property, and that he has a right to do as he wills with his own. I shall never forget the horrified amazement with which I listened, when a gentleman whom I knew to be himself incapable of cruelty told me that on one occasion, seeing a man cruelly beating a woman, he was rushing to the rescue, but on hearing from a bystander that the woman was the man's wife, he passed on, thinking it best not to interfere, and two gentlemen who were also listening agreed that they should have done the same ! Can we wonder that se tremendous a power as this, placed in the hands of men of all kinds, from the highest gentleman to the lowest ruffian in the land, is misused, and produces oppression, misery, and crime ? Shall we not rather wonder that the misuse is not a hundredfold greater, and admire the generosity and self-restraint which alone prevent it ?
It is, however, another question, and one requiring the greatest consideration from all lovers of their country, whether this is a healthy or desirable state of things ; whether it is for the good of the nation that one-half of it should wield this irresponsible and therefore corrupting power over the other, and that the phy- sically weaker half ; whether it is desirable that marriage should be at the sole will and pleasure of the husband,—a woman's crown of joy or the worst, because the most degrading, form of slavery ; whether national welfare is likely to be best promoted by the women, who are the mothers of the race, being crushed or- driven for refuge into the feebleness, the faults, too often the vices, of the slave ; whether the first principles of well-ordered liberty, that every duty is the co-relative of a right, and every right, be it of high or low, rich or poor, weak or strong, is under- the equal and swine guardianship of the lam, can be violated with impunity only in the relations between the sexes, which give all the rights to the men, and all the duties to the women?
Leaving it to others to answer this question, and only fore- warning them that sarcasm and invective, on one side or the other, will not answer it, I am, Sir, &c.,
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