The Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, JULY 28, 1870.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume V, Issue 176, 28 July 1870, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. THURSDAY, JULY 28, 1870.

The highly important measure brought before the House by Mr. Richmond under the title of the Married Women's Property Bill is one ■which, from the great social reform it is calculated to produce, calls for more than a casual notice. The object of the Bill is, to use Mr. Richmond's own words, "to place married women, in relation to their property, in the same position as that in which their husbands stand — or, at all events, to place them in the same position as unmarried women." The following are some of the more important provisions of the Bill : — lt proposes to reserve to married women, after the year 1871, the full control of all property they possessed at the time of marriage, or which they might acquire afterwards by gift, bequest, or by their own labor, and to extend the same privileges, so far as the future is concerned, to all married persons whatever. It empowers the wife to carry on business independent of the husband, and to sue and to be sued separately in matters affecting their property. It enables a woman to become the trustee and gu.rdian for children. It proposes to remove certain immunities from married women, so that they may be sued for debts, and be subject to the operation of the bankruptcy law except so far as imprisonment for debt. Although some of tbese proposals contain much that is antagonistic to the generally received ideas of " woman's place in creation," the Bill has been very favorably received in the House and is likely, with certain modifications, to become law, and really it would seem that some measures having a tendency to relieve women from the domestic tyrany to which some of them are exposed are become really necessary. In the reports of the police courts of the colony it may constantly be seen by those who are in the habit of perusing the local journals that where the husbands are living a life of drunkenness and idleness the wives are toiling and slaving to support their families, and when they have, perhaps, by dint of unwearied industry, contrived to put by a few pounds against some rainy day, the demoralised wretches to whom they are bound by legal ties have , returned to their homes and laid their hands upon every shilling of the hardearned savings of the unhappy wife. This occurs again and again until the wretched women, in utter despair at seeing their labours thrown away, give up their laudable endeavors to maintain their respectability as thoroughly hopeless, and too often sink to the same low level that has been reached by their degraded husbands. It may be said that the law as at present in existence gives the woman the right to obtain protection, but the wife's natural feelings but seldom allow her to appear in the courts of law to lodge a complaint against the man whose name she bears, aud who, debauched and degraded as he may be, is still her husband. The same thing, but perhaps without such evil results, is also to be found in the higher classes of society where a reckless, extravagant husband will often run through in a very short space of time the property belonging to his wife, to which she had looked to secure her and her children against the possibility of poverty and destitution. It is to prevent such evils as these that Mr. Richmond has introduced the Bill with which, as he ' says, he is anxious that his name should " be connected, and, as we have said before, ' there seems to be every probability of its becoming law, one of the great objections urged against it by some of the members having been overruled by- Mr. Travers who expressed his opinion that there was nothing in any of its provisions to prevent any arrange- . ment being made between intending [ husbands and wives which would bring the enjoyment of their property into conformity with the law as it at present ' stands. The Wellington Pest concludes a leader on this subject, with the following tribute to the introducer of the Bill : — " Mr. Richmond said that he entertained a wish to associate his name wiib the mea- ' sure ; and such a great social reform seems peculiarly adapted for having linked with it the name of the calm, intelligent, large-hearted man who has, while passing through the , trying ordeal of New Zealand political life, maintained the esteem of all parties, and whose bitterest political

enemies, even while condemning measures which might be mistaken could neve say a harsh word against the man from whom they emanated. We trust that our Legislature, which aims at setting an example of intelligence and liberality to neighboring colonies, will endorse his action and grant him his "not unworthy desire."