Petitions for "Woman's Right" and changes of the laws were circulated in Massachusetts as early as 1848. In 1849, a year after the first Suffrage Convention, Ohio, Maine, Indiana, and Missouri, had passed laws giving to married women the right to their own earnings. A "Memorial" was sent by the Suffrage Association to the Ohio Constitutional Convention in 1850, from which I take the following: "We believe the whole theory of the common law in relation to woman is unjust and degrading." (Then follows political injustice.) "We would especially call your attention to the legal condition of married women." (Then follow general statements and quotations from the common law.) The attention of the memorialists was called by the proper authorities to the fact that the statute laws of Ohio had radically changed the general matters charged. In answering comment, Mrs. Coe said: "The committee were perfectly aware of the existence of the statutes mentioned, but did not see fit to incorporate them in the petition, not only on account of their great length, but because they do not at all invalidate the position which the petition affects to establish--the inequality of the sexes before the law; because if the wife departs from the conditions of the statutes, and thus comes under the common law, they are against her." She then adds: "There are other laws which might be mentioned, which really give woman an apparent advantage over man; yet, having no relevancy to the subject in the petition, we did not see fit to introduce them." The ignorance displayed here is phenomenal. Common law is operative only in the absence of statute law. The Ohio statute (as with all statutes) superseded the common law; and if the woman "departs from the condition of the statute," she suffers the penalty prescribed therein, without reference to her previous position before the law.