“And now I appeal to you, in all seriousness, my friend,” the Doctor continued, addressing himself to Spalding, “if there is not something due to the wives and mothers of the present generation?  Is there not some relaxation of the law necessary in vindication of the civilization of the age, against the legal barbarisms still remaining on the statute books, and adhered to by the common law, in regard to wives and mothers?  Is the current of progress to flow by them for ever, bearing no reforms which shall affect them?  Do not misunderstand me.  I am no advocate of the practices of the ‘strong-minded women,’ who hold their conventions and public meetings, who unsex themselves by mounting the forum, and, throwing off the retiring modesty of the true woman, seek to secure notoriety at the price of popular contempt.  But there are evils which bear heavily, too heavily, upon the women even of this country, and which, for the credit of the civilization of the age, should be corrected.  As calm-minded, philanthropic men, we, the American people, should look into this subject, and, regardless of jeer and scoff, do what justice, humanity, and the right demand of us, in regard to some of the social and legal inequalities between the sexes, pertaining to the married state.”

“It is one of the mysteries of our system of jurisprudence,” replied Spalding, “that while everything else is on the move, while progress is written in letters of living light upon all other things, that remains stationary—­at least in a comparative sense.  The world moves on, civilization advances, science and the arts stride forward, but the law stands still.  A principle which may have been somewhat changed, modified, bent, if you please, into an adaptation to the exigencies of the present, and a fitness for the changed circumstances of the times in which we live, is suddenly thrown back into its old position by the exhumation of some ‘decision’ from the dust of ages, made by some judge away back in the olden times, resurrected by the research of some antiquarian lawyer, who loves to delve among the rubbish of past generations.  The learning, the wisdom, the philosophy of the present is discarded, and the spirits of a lower civilization are conjured from the darkness of vanished centuries, to settle rules for the government of commerce, personal conduct, and the social relations of the times in which we live.  There seems to be something paradoxical in the idea that the older the decision the better the law—­the more ancient the commentator, the profounder the wisdom of his axioms.  This might be well, were it true that civilization is ‘progressing backwards,’ the science of government retrograding.  In that case, it would of course be true, that the nearer you approach the fountain, the purer the stream would be.  But such is not the fact.  In all these attributes the world is on the advance, the science of government progressive; and to make the wisdom of centuries ago override the wisdom, or overshadow