THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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unknown ocean, in the undiscovered islands of the sea, what intellectual and moral darkness! Can we bear to think of, much less to relate in detail, the social degradation of woman in these dark places of the earth! Even where the heathen civilization had reached its highest mark, the condition of woman was scarcely one to be desired in point of personal respect and protection.
In the interval between 1492 and 1892 the social and legal development of woman was slow. The leaven of new ideas was working, but the mass of ignorance and prejudice, the accumulation of centuries, was not easily permeated. In England the condition of the widow was improved by granting to her a fraction of her husband’s personal property, in addition to her dower in his real estate. The power of the lord over the widow and children of his vassal disappeared with the complete abolition of the feudal system in the seventeenth century. On the Continent the contract capacity of woman was enlarged, and greater personal protection accorded to her by law. A few persistent women secured for themselves the benefit of a liberal education. Italy continued to honor women as professors in her University of Bologna.- Mary Somerville in England won recognition for her attainments, and here and there other women less known to fame gave proof of their ability and skill. But the gains of three hundred and sixty years were little compared with those of the last forty years. The long, slow process of seed sowing, the ages of germination, have been crowned in our time by wonderful fruitage. The inventions of science, which have brought together into closest relationship the nations of the earth, have also opened a highway for the advancement of women.
In order to get any adequate idea of the legal condition of woman in 1892 we must know of her present and past social condition and trace the. history of the ancient laws affecting her. For these ancient laws, some of which are still in force, are responsible for the present anomalies of woman’s legal condition. When enacted, they may have justly reflected woman’s social condition, but now they should give place to new laws, framed to meet the existing social environment. To go into minute detail is impossible, and this address would become a mere catalogue were it to be attempted. We shall consider first the higher education of woman at the present day; secondly, the professions and occupations open to her; thirdly, her political status; fourthly, her personal rights; fifthly, her property rights, and lastly shall attempt to draw some lessons and conclusions from this historical survey of the legal condition of woman.
I. THE HIGHER EDUCATION' OF WOMEN.
On the Continent of Europe women are admitted to the universities in Italy, France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, Roumania, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, and may in some of them receive university degrees.
In Great Britain the following are open both for instruction and degrees: The University of London, the universities of Ireland, and the Scottish universities of Edinburgh and of St. Andrews, the two latter very recently.
Women are excluded from the universities by express prohibition of law in Germany, Austria and Russia. In the latter country a medical school for women students, which was for a time suspended on account of political complications, is about to be re-established through the exertions of the czarina. While the conservative universities of Oxford and Cambridge in England do not admit to their lectures or degrees, they do permit women to take the university examinations, and we have not yet forgotten the triumph of Philippa Fawcett, who in 1890 overtopped the senior wrangler in the mathematical examinations at Cambridge. Under the shadow of these venerable universities, the colleges for women, Girton Newham and St. Margaret’s are distinguished by the high attainments of their students.
In our own land there are over a hundred first class colleges and universities open to women. Some of these, like Vassar, Wellesley, Smith and Bryn Mawr, are for women exclusively; some like Barnard College of Columbia University and the