THE WROUGHT IRON BRIDGE COMPANY, OF CANTON, OHIO, V. THE COMMISSIONERS OF HIGHWAYS OF TOWN OF UTICA. SAME v. COMMISSIONER OF HIGHWAYS OF THE TOWN OF DEER PARK.-Opinion by MULKEY, J., affirming, Filed Sept. 26, 1881.

1. Evidence-Under general issue in assumpsit.-Under the general issue in assumpsit it devolves upon the plaintiff to prove the defendant's promise as charged in the declaration by direct proof, or to show by the evidence a state of facts from which the law will imply such promise.

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2. Pleading-Sufficiency of declaration admitted pleading the general issue.-By pleading the general issue in assumpsit the defendant, as a general rule, impliedly admits the legal sufficiency of the declaration, and the right of the plaintiff to recover, upon proof of the facts therein charged. But there are cases in which notwithstanding this implied admission, the declaration will be insufficient to support a judgment for the plaintiff.

3. Practice-Finding of facts by Appellate Court is final and conclusive.-The decision of the Appellate Court upon all questions of controverted facts is made final and conclusive upon this court by the statute, except as to certain classes of cases enumerated therein.

4. Same-What questions of fact are not reviewable.The statutory provision making the judgments of the Appellate Courts "final and conclusive as to all matters of fact in controversy," embraces not only the principal facts upon which a right to recover is claimed, but also the evidentiary facts, or facts which are mere evidence of the principal facts. In other words, it includes the ultimate facts to be proved on the trial, together with all subordinate facts offered as evidence of their exist

ence.

5. Same-Inference as to the facts from a finding against plaintiff.-Where an issue or issues of fact are found against the plaintiff by both the Circuit and Appellate Courts, the legal inference is that the plaintiff failed to prove the principal facts upon which his right to recover rested; in other words, that the evidentiary facts did not sustain the principal or ultimate facts.

6. Practice-Decisions of Appellate Court not conclusive on questions of law.-If, during the progress of a trial, the court improperly admits or excludes evidence, or otherwise commits error, except in passing upon questions of fact in its final determination, and such erroneous ruling, or other error is preserved in the record, and the Appellate Court fails to correct it, it may be done in this court.

7. Same-Mode of presenting and prserving questions of law on a trial by the court.-In a trial by the court alone, if the counsel has any doubt as to the correctness of the court's view of the law of the case, he should prepare and submit written propositions of law as he understands it, to be held or refused by the court, and thus preserve for review any erroneous view of the law applicable to the case which the court may entertain.

8. Same-General objection to evidence goes only to its competency, etc.-Objections of a general character to the admission of evidence will be regarded as going only to its competency or relevancy.

WILLIAM TRUESDALE ET AL. v. THE PEORIA GRAPE SUGAR COMPANY.-Opinion by DICKEY, J., affirming. Filed Sept. 26, 1881.

1. Injunction-Laying railroad track in street by consent of city.-A court of equity will not take jurisdiction to restrain the laying of a railroad side-track by a company in the public street in front of its property to connect with the main track of a railway, under license by the city council, by ordinance, on a bill by private individuals owning property in the vicinity, but not abutting on the part of the street to be used.

2. Streets-Damages by laying railroad track in.—Any damages that may be sustained by property owners in a city by reason of the construction of a railroad track under the license of the city holding the fee of the street, must be sought in an action at law.

ABIAH G. WEBSTER v. ANNIE E. NICHOLS ET AL.-Opinion by DICKEY, J., affirming. Filed Sept. 26, 1881. 1. Leasehold-Purchaser of, takes subject to burdens on

assignor. The purchaser of a leasehold estate by a transfer of the lease will be held to notice of all the provisions of the lease, and as having assented to them, and in equity must be bound to bear the burdens attached to the estate.

2. Chancery-Jurisdiction-Enforcing payment of note by assignee. When vacant lots have been leased at a yearly rental, the contract reserving a lien upon all improvements to be made upon the same for the rent, the insolvency of the lessee and his assignment of the lease to a non-resident, who neglects to pay the rent, suffers the property to be sold for taxes, and threatens to remove the improvements, will give a court of chancery jurisdiction to enforce payment of the rent by sale of the improvements, and the appointment of a receiver to collect rents of the occupants under the assignee.

3. Lien-By contract on property not in being at the time.-Courts of chancery will recognize the force of contracts for the creation of a lien on personal property not at the time in esse, and enforce them, when there are no intervening rights to be affected. The statute relating to chattel mortgages has no application to such a case. 4. Lease-Assignee when bound by readjustment of rent on renewal as per original lease.-Where a lease of lots for a term of years, provided for a removal for a like term, upon the expiration of the first term, the amount of the rent to be adjusted by the County Court by an appraisal of the property, and a purchaser of the leasehold estate was notified of the proceeding to readjust the rent, and attorneys employed by her were heard in the name of the original lessee, and she acquiesced in the rate so fixed by paying rent under the renewal, such assignee of the lien will be held bound by the new rate.

5. Contract-Damages recoverable for failure to pay taxes. When a lessee of premises agrees to pay all taxes upon the premises, but neglects to do so, and they are sold for taxes, the lessor will not be limited under the contract to a recovery of the amount of the taxes due at the sale, but may recover the sum paid by him in demption. By neglecting to pay the taxes the lessee becomes chargeable for all the consequences naturally arising therefrom.

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There are more than a thousand cases on the calendar of the Supreme Court of the United States-as much work as the Court could properly dispose of in five years; this statement is sufficient to satisfy every reflecting person of the absolute necessity of immediate legislation respecting this Court.- Washington Law Reporter.

SUPREME COURT OF OHIO.

JANUARY TERM, 1881.

Hon. W. W. BOYNTON, Chief Justice; Hon. JOHN W. OKEY, Hon. WILLIAM WHITE, Hon. W. W. JOHNSON, Hon. GEO. W. McILVAINE, Judges.

TUESDAY, November 1, 1881.

GENERAL DOCKET.

No. 6%. Lake Shore & Michigan 'Southern Railroad Co. v. John C. Hutchins, guardian &c. Error to the Court of Common Pleas of Cuyahoga County. Reserved by the district court.

MCILVAINE, J. Held:

1. A petition by a guardian alleged that his wards were owners in fee simple of a certain woodland, that the timber thereon was cut down and removed by a person unknown and without any authority whatever, and that the same was taken, used and possessed for its own use and without any authority whatever by a certain railroad company, which company was afterwards consolidated with other railroad companies, under and by the name of the defendant, and that by reason of the conversion by said first named company his wards were greatly damaged, &c., praying judgment against the consoli

dated company, &c. Held: That on demurrer, the petition stated sufficient facts to constitute a cause of action for the conversion of personal property.

2. Where a discretionary power to sell lands is given by a will to the testator, such discretion cannot be delegated. But where an attorney in fact of such executor assumes to make such sale, the subsequent receipt of the purchase money, by the executor, is an adoption and ratification of the sale, and is equivalent to the exercise of the discretion by the executor himself.

3. A judgment determines the rights of the parties according to the facts stated in the pleadings; and if, after issue joined, a change takes place in the rights of the parties, it must be shown by supplemental pleading, otherwise it should be disregarded.

4. In an action for the conversion of chattels against an innocent purchaser from a person who had previously converted the property to his own use, and had afterward added to its value by his own labor, the measure of the damages is the value of the chattels when first taken from the owner, whether the first taker was a willful or an involuntary trespasser. L. S. & M. S. R. R. Co. v. Hutchins, 32 Ohio St. 571, approved.

Judgment reversed for error in the charge restricting the damages to the value of the trees while standing, instead of their value when severed from the land, unless defendant in error waives the error in the charge. If such waiver is entered within 30 days, judgment will be affirmed.

BOYNTON, C. J., and WHITE, J., dissented from the fourth proposition.

87. Swift's Iron and Steel Works v. Dewey, Vance & Co. Error to the Superior Court of Cincinnati. OKEY, J.

1. D. agreed in writing to deliver to S. a certain quantity of iron ore, at a specified price per ton, " on the landing at C.," and gave him an order therefor, and S. brought an action on the agreement, alleging that D. refused to deliver the ore: Held, it is competent to show that by the settled, uniform usage at C., well known to the parties when they contracted, one holding such order is entitled to have the ore taken from the pile on the landing and placed in his boats; that ore is not permitted to be removed, nor is it practicable to remove it, in any other manner; and that the ore is weighed when it is carried in the boats to its destination, and then payment therefor is made.

2. In an action for refusing to deliver ore, prosecuted on an agreement in the same form, it appeared that the seller resided at another place, where he refused to deliver such order, and informed the purchaser that he would not comply with the agreement: Held, that it was not necessary for the purchaser, after such refusal by the seller, to take boats to C. for the ore, or demand the ore at C., the purchaser being able and willing to comply with such agreement as it existed in view of the usage. Judgment affirmed.

78. The Western Union_Telegraph Company v. Giles O. Griswold et al. Error-Reserved in the District Court of Cuyahoga County.

BOYNTON, C. J. Held:

1. While a telegraph company may, by special agreement, or by reasonable rules and regulations, limit its liability to damages for errors or mistakes in the transmission and delivery of messages, it cannot stipulate, or provide, for inmunity from liability, where the error, or mistake, results from its own negligence. Such a stipulation, or regulation, being contrary to public policy, is void.

2. Where in an action against the company for damages resulting from an inaccurate transmission of a message, such inaccuracy is made to appear, the burden of proof is on the company to show that the mistake was not attributable to its fault or negligence.

3. The plaintiff's agent sent to them from Woodstock Ontario, a message in these words:-" Will you give one fifty for twenty-five hundred at London. Answer at once, as I have only till night." The court instructed the jury that the message was not in cipher or obscure, within the meaning of a stipulation in the agreement under which the message was sent, that the company "assumed no liability for errors in cipher or obscure messages."

Held,-That the instruction was correct.
Judgment affirmed.

MOTION DOCKET.

No. 151. Henry Roney v John W. Gornell. Motion to dismiss cause No. 289 on the General Docket for want of printed record as required by the statute. Motion granted.

155. Gerinan Aid Society v. Anna Kummer. Motion to dismiss cause No. 1026 on the General Docket for want of printed record as required by statute. Motion granted and counter motion for leave to file printed record overruled.

183. Andrew S. Core v. The West Virginia 'Oil and Oil Lands Company. Motion to dismiss cause No. 1110 on the General Docket for want of printed record as required by statute. Motion overruled.

184. Andrew S. Core v. The West Virginia Oil and Oil Lands Company. Motion to dismiss cause No. 1096 on the General Docket for want of printed record. Motion overruled.

187. W. W. Gilliland et al. v. Eva Reynolds et al. Motion to dispense with printing in causes Nos. 1197 and 1198. on the General Docket. Motion granted.

188. Cyrus H. Coy v. Phillip W. Smith. Motion to dismiss cause No. 937 on the General Docket for want of necessary parties. Ordered, that plaintiff in error make the stockholders charged by the decree, defendants in error within 60 days, otherwise the petition will be dismissed.

189. J. B. Brading et al. v. John Zollinger et al. Motion to dismiss cause No. 639 on the General Docket for failure to comply with former order of the court respecting printing of record. Motion granted.

190. Andrew S. Core, v. West Virginia Oil and Oil Lands Company et al. Motion to extend time for filing printed record in No. 1096 on the General Docket. Motion granted and leave to file printed record in ten days.

191. Andrew S. Core v. West Virginia Oil and Oil Lands Company. Motion to extend time for printing record in No. 1110 on the General Docket. Motion granted and leave to file printed record in ten days.

193. Levi Croll et al. v. Village of Franklin. Motion to take cause No. 867 on the General Docket out of its order. Motion overruled.

194. J. H. Devereux et al. . Hugh J. Jewett, as trustee, et al. Motion for leave to file a petition in error to the Court of Common Pleas of Franklin County, and to take cause out of its order for hearing. Motion granted. Stay bond $50,000,00 conditioned to pay all damages defendants may sustain if the order sought to be reversed shall be affirmed.

195. David Curtiss, administrator, v. Martha E. Gregory. Motion for leave to file a printed record in cause No. 1124 on the General Docket. Motion granted, printed record to be filed by December 1, 1881.

SUPREME COURT RECORD.

[New cases filed since our last report, up to Nov. 2, 1881.]

1204. Ohio ex rel. Attorney General v. William H. Vanderbilt et al. Quo Warranto. Hon. Geo. K. Nash for the State.

1205. Joseph A. Moore v. James H. Dunn. Error to the District Court of Brown County. Loudon & Young for plaintiff; Thomas & Thomas for defendant.

1206. Isaac Robb v. J. N. Morrow et al. Error to the District Court of Highland County. Alphonso Hart for plaintiff.

1207. Henry S. Call et al. v. The Manufacturing Association, Seymour, Sabine & Co. Error to the District Court of Putnam County. Krauss & McClure for plaintiffs; C. J. Swan for defendants.

1208. Gertrude March et al. v. Aaron Albert. Frror to the District Court of Knox County. W. C. Cooper, and McClellan others for plaintiffs; Devin & Curtiss for defendant.

1209. Jacob C. Yoho v. Thomas McGover. Error to the District Court of Noble County. Hunter & Mallory for plaintiff; Belford & Okey for defendant.

UNIVERSAL MARRIAGE.

In the connubial joys to which every age and nation bears witness, the vast majority of this globe's inhabitants must have participated, from one era to another, with a certain voluntary adjustment of the reciprocal burdens, such as relieved both husband and wife of a sense of bondage to one another. And thus have the inequalities, the hardships of marriage codes proved less in practice than in literal expression. For whatever the apparent severity of the law, human nature, or love's divine instinct, works in one uniform direction, namely: towards uniting the souls once brought into the arcana of married life in an equally honorable companionship. Woman's weakness has been her strongest weapon; where her influence could not overflow, it permeated; and if her life had been, legally speaking, at her husband's mercy, her constant study to please has kept him generally merciful. She has not been superior to her race and epoch, but, on the whole, as well protected, as well advanced in her day as those of the other sex. Except for this, the wife's lot must have been miserable indeed, even under the most civilized institutions ever established. Codes and the experience of nations in this respect show strange inconsistencies: laws at one time degrading to woman, and yet marital happiness; laws, at another, elevating her independence to the utmost, and yet marital infelicities, lust, and bestiality.

Marriage among the ancient nations, and in the rudest types of modern society, tends to seclude from the world the individual woman at an early age, that she may with docility fulfill the desires of her lord, and bear him children. He may be a polygamist, and enjoy concubines, but her chastity, her singleness of devotion, is rigidly insisted upon. His life may be public, but hers is strictly private. He sits in the market-place, while she stays at home: her veil disguises her features whenever she goes abroad; domestic service, cookery, trifling accomplish ments, constitute, with religion, her sole education. Her daughters she trains up to be as compliant to man's rules as herself; and her husband, meantime, invested with the power of life and death over wife and daughters, is applauded by society if he slays the former when she is guilty of adultery. In the East, among both Jews and Moslems, the husband is to this day permitted to divorce his wife at sole discretion, being

merely required to give her a writing which states the fact and the cause of casting her off; and the only native women with genuine social free on in India have been the prostitutes. (See Van Lennep's Bible Lands; Butler's Land of the Veda.)

Nevertheless, inclination aids religion in keeping the Eastern widow reverential towards her deceased spouse; for his sake the Hindoo relict devotes the rest of her life to misery, and, until the British government interposed, against her own wishes, would burn herself upon his funeral pile. Jewish history supplies illustrious examples, from both sexes, of domestic love and confidence. And the most superb mausoleum this world contains was built by a sovereign of India to commemorate to posterity the virtues and worth of his departed spouse. (Ibid.)

The Roman Empire, the successor of a once robust republic, absorbed gradually into its jurisprudence all the treasured wisdom of the heathen world. Here we may contemplate the most remarkable series of experiments ever performed upon the institution institution of marriage. Polygamy was unknown; and by solemn rites, emblematic of the mystic union of mind and body, the individual man and woman were set apart for one another in primitive times to become partners for life. But in those earlier rude but progressive centuries, both under Numa and the consuls, the Roman union was legally unequal; the husband took a young girl in marriage when he could readily mold her to his will, and exercised the Oriental jurisdiction of life and death, being lord of her person and sole master of her acquisitions. In the new servitude which she embraced when she left her father's house to become a materfamilias, the Roman maiden acquired, as Gibbon expresses it, the strange character of sister to her own children and of daughter to her husband and master. (4 Gibbon's Rome, chap. 44.) Nevertheless, all contemporary narratives attest the purity of domestic life among the republican Romans, the health and vigor of their progeny, and, what is of more significance, the strong and wholesome influence which woman exerted in the family as educator of both husband and children, and in the State itself. Rulers were deposed and the government reconstructed to avenge the sullied honor of a wife or virgin daughter. So powerful had woman's influence become after the Punic triumphs, and in the palmy days of the republic, that her wishes were indulged for a freer and more equal marriage relation before the law. The old nuptials, formerly celebrated by the pontiffs, fell into disuse; and man and woman subscribed to a marriage contract which protected the wife's estates against the husband, prohibited mutual gifts, and rendered the misconduct of either spouse a just ground for legal redress. Marriage and religion now became in a measure disconnected, and the sexes embarked their affections for the first time upon a sort of rational partnership for conjugal purposes,

wherein the more delicate spouse became transformed from legal pupil to legal companion of the stronger. (Ibid.)

From this new experiment might have been anticipated the happiest results: mutual elevation and refinement, the household directed by a combined intelligence, children born and reared. under equal parental counsels, connubial peace fortified by justice, the adoration of woman increasing as her angelic mission to society became enlarged. Such, however, was not the actual issue. The depravity of one sex increased with the depravity of the other. Matrimonial interests clashed; the sanctity of the home declined rapidly; the humbler conjugal duties were ill performed; upon unwelcome children were visited the sins of parents who had married out of ambition, pleasure, the greed of dowries, or absurd caprice, and who rebelled equally at a touch. For more than five hundred years previous, the husband had scarcely ever exercised his tyrannical privilege of putting away the wife; but now, the novel principle being established that marriage, like other contracts, might be readily rescinded for cause on either side, the divorce practice became enlarged, to the disgrace alternately of one and the other spouse, until, long after the republic had collapsed under the prodigious load of marital unfaithfulness, gross materialism, sensuality, unbridled desire, a mouldering patriotism, and that universal corruption of manners and morals which foreign conquest hastened rather than retarded, a line of Roman emperors might be seen relaxing and repressing in turn the license of divorce, and applying various nostrums to the diseased core of society. Males were obviously reluctant to marry, when Augustus urged them on the subject. Restrained, moreover, by maxims which equally forbade incest and foreign intermixture, so far as contracting legal marriage was concerned, the proud Roman citizen had meantime habituated himself to concubinage, enjoying in the companionship of some faithful consort of humbler rank many of the comforts usually associated with domestic life, without risking his independence upon an equal marriage with an imperious woman of his own station. It was by means of this secondary sort of union, which for nine centuries of the empire scandalized the noble matrons of Rome, that men manifested their natural preference for partners in life whom they might command, but to whose faithfulness and soft endearments their hearts were sure to yield. The philosophic Antoninus, best of rulers, set the example of such connections; and the concubine, inferior in station, doubtless, to the wife, but yet far superior to the prostitute, saw her offspring sometimes legitimated by later nuptials, or an act of adoption, and legally distinguished under all circumstances from the miscellaneous procreation of those vile, child-destroying times by the epithet of natural, and by partial rights of legal succession. (4 Gibbon's Rome, chap. 44.)

"A specious theory," observes the historian,

"is confuted by this free and perfect experiment, which demonstrates that the liberty of divorce does not contribute to happiness and virtue. The facility of separation would destroy all mutual confidence, and inflame every trifling dispute; the minute difference between a husband and a stranger, which might so easily be removed, might still more easily be forgotten." (Ibid.)

Whether, in setting at naught that identity of interests which is essential to domestic happiness, the later Roman scheme was fatally defective, or this conjugal decay was due to causes more latent, need not here be discussed. Certain it is, however, that wide-spread incestuous intercourse, licentiousness most loathsome and unnatural, followed in the wake of marital independence; and as the interests of husband and wife began to diverge, the bonds of family affection became weakened. When the empire. sank into utter dissolution, woman possessed a large share of cultivation and personal freedom, yet she had touched the lowest depths of social degradation.

This degradation it became the mission of the Christian Church to correct, during the lapse of the Dark Ages, by restoring the dignity of marriage-exalting it, in fact, to a sacrament, and almost utterly prohibiting its dissolution. The community or partnership system, moreover, which applies in modern times to the property of a married pair in countries like France, Spain and Italy, where the influence of the Roman jurisprudence continues, is something distinct from the civil law on separate property which prevailed in the age of Justinian. (See 1 Burge Col. & For. Laws, 202, 263.)

The law of England and the United States on this topic is now undergoing a remarkable change, and its principles are quite unsettled at the present time with reference to the rights and obligations of the married pair. This confused state of the law of husband and wife is exhibited in a contest still going on between two opposing schemes for adjusting the propertyrights of the married parties. The one is the common-law scheme; the other. resembles that of the civil law. The former is at the basis of our jurisprudence, English and American. The latter has had a powerful influence in modern times, moulding the doctrines of the equity tribunals and shaping recent legislation.

What are familiarly known as the "married women's acts," the product of our American legislation since 1848, and more recently engrafted upon the code of Great Britain, aim to secure to the wife the independent control of her own property, and the right to contract, sue and be sued without her husband, under reasonable limitations. These acts, therefore, substitute in a great measure the civil for the common law. It may be laid down that the common law, in denying to the wife the rights of ownership in property acquired by gift, purchase, bequest, or otherwise, did her injustice, and that a radical change became necessary; and this is

shown, not only in the legislation of our States, but by the fact that the equity tribunals gradually moulded the unwritten law of England so as to secure like results.

This enlargement of the property rights of a married woman leads, in the United States, to practical abuses; but, regarded by itself, it cannot be pronounced mischievous, so long as legislators and courts pursue their new course with circumspection. For, should men of self-respect, avoiding collision with rich wives, turn as a last resort, to poor girls instead, our marriage relations would be blessed indeed. One great danger to be apprehended, however, from all legislation of this sort is, that it will weaken the ties of marriage by forcing both sexes into an unnatural antagonism, teaching them to be independent of one another, and to earn their own living apart; another, that vulgar ambition and sensuous desire will corrode the hearts of both man and woman, overlaying the better impulses of their being. The raging sexual passion will be fed, but not the sacred flame. Individualism will usurp the place of idolatry. Minds desirous of moving worlds will despise love and the quiet

hearth-stone.

And such, indeed, has been the later tendency in the United States, as we may assume it to have been in the Roman commonwealth. We are taught to regard our "married women's property acts" as part of a social revolution similiar to that which Cato the Censor vainly resisted two thousand years ago, Partaking in this great modern republic, of the impulses of the age towards freedom of the individual, woman is seen advancing her standard and demanding what no government ever yet accorded, and human nature itself proscribes: that in the community all men be regarded as brothers and all women as sisters, and that the sexes be allowed to jostle through life shoulder to shoulder, all persons working out the manifest destiny of this three-score span with equal opportunities. Equal opportunities, indeed; the one united, the other wishing to regard that as a physical incident which nature makes the chief function of her life. It is not equality but superiority, of which proud spirits are emulous. Legislators, however, yield one point after another, some from conviction of justice, more from policy, or that very courtesy to the sex which contradicts their professions. Education moulds the intellect while it refuses to cultivate the morals. Religion is kept at the gate until the liberal mind can weigh impartially the respective merits of Brahminism, Atheism and Christianity, which it never will, because the investigation is irksome. The penurious farmer is encouraged by his own daughters to let them see life; he throws them upon the world, like his sons, to sink or swim, and gets rid of their support. Youths of both sexes forsake home and the simple pleasures of the country and hurry to the perilous allurements of the populous cities. As clerks, shop-waiters, factory operatives, but by no means in domestic service, American women mingle promiscuously with

men, and the sexes throng in every avenue to public or private preferment, the one cheapening the service of the other, all rivals and fellows, with the slightest possible barriers to a dangerous intimacy. Licentious prints inflame the passions; the press propagates festering scandals; women discuss upon the rostrum, before a mixed audience, social problems at whose mention their grandmothers would have blushed.

With all this sexual freedom, we find that, while intemperance may have decreased in the United States, licentious crimes are on the increase; some theorists, indeed, upholding, in the spirit of freedom, the right of prostitution by common consent of parties. Marriages, too, are inconsiderate; divorce laws become lax, and divorce is constantly invoked to free those from the compact whose self-will, petulance, sordid taste, or roving passion furnishes no slight element towards rendering the matrimonial life unhappy.. In the regulation of the household, the choice of visitors or guests, and the eduation of children, the conjugal pair pursue a distracted rule. Even the "property acts" of our States tend to loosen the marriage singleness of purpose, by encouraging the wife to go out one way to make her fortune while the husband goes another to make his; a policy commendable, perhaps, in theory, but in practice perverting the rule of nature that the one who bears and nurtures the children and cares for them has not only a sphere which she alone can fill, but earns rightful support from the other, whose out-ofdoor toil is manliest when bestowed in order that wife and children may share in the recompense.

There is no social stability, no inseparable barrier, between barbarians and the civilized. The race, vigorous in mind and body, rises to predominance, and sinks when that vigor.is lost. Tacitus saw in the savage Germans, not the Romans' masters, yet a race of men who respected. the counsels of their women, and loved them with tenderness. But the freedom of the German wife was not that of the Roman. Later still, the Anglo-Saxon home has been proverbial, for peace and purity, with the man as the "house-band," binding all parts together. Marriage, notwithstanding all the female disabilities of coverture, stood well at the common law. Nor is it probable that, in the American Union, wellordered households, happy spouses, thriving offspring, are now in greater proportion to the population than at the commencement of this century. On the contrary, the progress of the present experiment in sexual freedom strikingly resembles that of Rome. In New England, where the woman's cause receives the strongest intellectual impulse, and the females outnumber males in population the proportion of divorces to marriages has alarmingly increased between 1860 and 1880; men, and probably women, incline more and more to celibacy, while among those united in wedlock the size of the family decreases. Couples whose parents and grandparents had families of a dozen or more children, produce now hardly more than one or