In the early history of nations, woman has always been the slave. She is still such, confessed, in all barbarous or but partially civilized tribes. Condemned, by custom or her lord’s caprice, to menial offices, she has pandered to his transient emotion, suffered its hardest consequences, and still drudged on. Save in name, in what does this description differ from that of thousands of our own women? They do not, in their best estate, it is true, bear the nominal burdens of life, the hoe and the venison meat, the tent pole and the paddle; but a queen’s finery, to the higher natures of our time, may be far heavier than these. In former days, or in distant lands, husbands have held for their wives the tenure of life or death; were they disobedient, or their fidelity even questioned, the bowstring or sack of the Bosphorus, or being built aside by masonry while still alive, in countries perhaps nominally Christian, are but a portion of the penalties that were meted them. In what, save in being easier to bear, do these differ from enforced seclusion, as in private lunatic asylums not so very many years ago, or the still more dreadful divorce, where not desired and not deserved, with all its attendant publicity? In by-gone times, and among heathen, as at present in a remote valley of our own great land, so jealous of the honor of its people, and so lenient towards their crimes, women have been openly held as concubines, to possess an abundance of whom were as worthy as to number one’s children. What variance in this from the secret amours and liaisons of our own time, so easy to indulge in, so difficult to detect, in consequence of the almost universal knowledge of the means of preventing or escaping the natural consequences of illicit sexual indulgence? In days long past, and in tribes far down in ignorance and superstition, it has been the custom to slaughter new-born infants, to avoid the trouble of their support, or to appease the gods. In Sparta, it was alleged that such destruction of the puny or deformed was justified for the sake of preserving the race in all its pristine beauty and vigor. Is such a deed, at the hands of even a heathen Greek, to be compared for wickedness with the pre-natal murders of the present day, daily in occurrence, fashionable even, and bepraised by professing Christians, repeated over and over again by the same married woman and mother? You will exclaim with horror that it is not! And yet, in a very large proportion of instances, this shocking and atrocious act is advised and abetted, if not compelled, by the husband—by us men. Who enjoys asking now, “Is it I?”