It may not be absolutely unconstitutional for Congress to collect such statistics, but it is contrary to the spirit of the constitution. Congress has nothing whatever to do with such social questions, which are exclusively matters of state legislation. It has allowed itself to be made a cat's paw by the National Divorce League for its retrogressive policy. The welfare of society is deeply concerned in breaking up all unhappy, discordant marriages, which are simply nurseries of misery and crime. Every generous sentiment should prompt us to go to the relief of the large number of women who suffer in secret from tyranny and brutality, while from poverty, timidity, helplessness, and a dread of publicity or censure, they endure their wrongs in silence, and continue to bear children cursed from their conception with intemperance and brutality. And when they seek to escape, a barbarian law comes in to give the brutal husband the ownership of their offspring; and thus they are bound fast as galley slaves in their unhappy position. The Legislature of Massachusetts had the opportunity of redressing this wrong at their present session; but, like other masculine legislatures in the past, they were deaf to the voice of mercy, and the press quietly reports (March 18) that "Inexpedient was reported by the House judiciary committee on equalizing the respective rights of husband and wife in relation to their minor children, and on equalizing their interest in each other's property." The ladies who are so active in behalf of woman suffrage might have taken more interest in this vital question, which was so easily disposed of. A great wrong remains unredressed. The barbarous policy of the church of Rome, which has been finally abolished even in Catholic France, where divorce is now permitted, our clerical bigots would revive in this country, as if it were the business of the state to encourage or compel the propagation of the worthless and criminal classes! It is not the interest of the state to encourage human multiplication at all, for it is already too powerful and progressive. It is the public interest to check all propagation but that of good citizens, and to protect all women from enforced maternity, whether enforced under legal powers or by the arts of seduction and libertinism.