It does seem a bit hard on the poor man certainly. If he keeps a dog the animal may have his first bite at his neighbour free of expense, and when he gets to hear about it he can send the dog away. But with a wife there is no question of _scienter_. You may not suspect that your good lady is given to slander, assault and such like indiscretions, but, if it so happens, you have to pay. Nor do I see what steps you can take to hinder the lady from trespasses which she has the mind to commit. For if you were to place her under lock and key I believe a sentimental High Court judge would grant her a _habeas corpus_ that she might go out again into the wide, wide world and exercise her undoubted right of committing wrong at her husband's expense. And I set down these disadvantages of husbandry as some sort of excuse for the meanness and dishonesty of the man who uses "his wife's name" to protect his assets and injure his creditors. I have in my mind a commercial married man auditing in his debit and credit mind the matrimonial balance sheet. "See," he says, "my liabilities under the law of husband and wife. Surely there must be some assets of the relationship in which I am entitled to participate!" Then he studies the Married Women's Property Act, and chuckles. Whether this is so or not, there is no doubt that, since the Act of 1882, "Everybody's doing it," and when the bailiffs come in the furniture and the stock-in-trade are always found to be "in the wife's name." It is a form of conspiracy, you would say, and the police should put a stop to it, but "Old Father Antic the Law" has his answer for you there--a wife cannot be guilty of conspiracy with her husband, for husband and wife are one. There was a story illustrating the prevalence of this custom in the precincts of Strangeways, Manchester. Mr. Isaacs, who had been absent from business for some time, returned to his workshop looking pale and white and very weak. A sympathetic neighbour put his head in at the door, and, full of pity, said: "Dear me, dear me, you look very ill, mine friend. Vot is the matter with you?" "Ach," groaned Isaacs, "I have had a terrible time, a shocking bad time." "Vot vas it all about?" "I vill tell you," replied Isaacs. "The veek before last two doctors came to mine house and took avay mine appendix." "Bah!" muttered his friend contemptuously. "I vonder at you. That vos all you own fault: you should have put it in the vife's name. Then they could not touch it." The story might be told in a Scot's accent, or even a Welsh one for that matter, and it would represent with equal truth the prevalent outlook of mankind on the commercial advantages of matrimony. I by no means desire to suggest that "the wife's name" is made a baser use of by the eastern communities of Strangeways and Whitechapel than among the fair-haired Saxons of Surbiton and Chorlton-cum-Hardy.