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8 Letterto the editor: “the english divorce bill” October 3, 1857 New York, New York Rose’s trip abroad in the prior year brought renewed contact with women in Europe, allowing her to follow more closely the progress of women’s rights in the countries where she had traveled. When this newly passed British legislation gave men rights in divorce and remarriage that were denied to women, Rose was outraged. In this letter, published in the October 21, 1857, edition of the Boston Investigator, she excoriates the “unblushing shamelessness” of male legislators and clergy who clothe themselves in sanctimony as they misuse their power to restrict the freedom of women to the advantage of men. n Mr. Editor:—At a Woman’s Rights Convention, held three years ago at Cleveland, (Ohio,) while speaking on the injustice and inequality of the laws in regard to woman, I stated that not only does the civil code bear testimony that it was formed by one sex only, as it seems to be made almost exclusively for the benefit of that sex, but that the moral code, from the same reason, is stamped with the same impress. And as laws tend to favor public opinion, therefore what public opinion considers a sufficient crime in woman; to cast her out not only from society, but almost from the pale of Humanity, is, when perpetrated by man, the law-maker, considered a mere peccadillo and not only tolerated, but perfectly pardoned by all classes of society; and hence, while the poor victims of vice are degraded and outcast, the perpetrators fill the most honorable positions in church and state. This but too evident truth, called out the righteous indignation of a Reverend present, who, though not willing to defend the State, stood up for the purity of the Church, of which I need hardly say, that very few present were convinced. But if any doubt could possibly have existed on the subject, the long looked for, but recently passed English “Divorce Bill,” (an extract of which I send you from the N.Y. Tribune,) must set that doubt aside for ever. I will not comment on it at present, having had a severe attack of sickness, from which I have not sufficiently recovered to be able to write without injury, nor do I think that it needs any comments, for it carries its own condemnation on its own face. 9 But I must say, that low as my estimate has ever been of men who rob woman of her identity, her property, and her offspring, of statesmen and legislators who enact laws in defiance of human rights which recognize no sex, it falls far short of the utter contempt if not abhorrence with which “The grounds of the dissolution of marriage,” “on the part of the husband,” have inspired me with. The vitiated taste, the unblushing shamelessness exhibited by these civil and ecclesiastical law-givers, in thus shielding and fencing around the depravity and corruption of their own sex, to the detriment and destruction of ours, far outdoes in impudence the Mormons themselves, and is a disgrace alike to the age, the country, and the sex. In giving this article and the enclosed one a place in the Investigator, you will oblige, Yours, for the Right, Ernestine L. Rose New York, Oct. 3, 1857 1856–1860 ...

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