American Watchman And Delaware Advertiser

The legislature of Georgia, in her late abolition of the wife's right of dower, has shown an aberration of selfishness, as much at variance with justice as it is with the tender consideration which is due to the other sex. To protect and honour them is an indication of an improved state of society and an incumbent duty. Excluded as they are from a voice in legislation, to see that their rights are not lost sight of brings with it an obligation as much more honorable, as gratitude is than those duties, which, classed under the denomination of perfect rights, can be enforced by penal statutes.

When a woman marries, her rights of property become in a great degree merged in those of her husband; all her personal estate becomes ipso facto, his: all debts due to her and recovered pending the life of her husband, become his; she has no control of her real estate during marriage; can have no interference in the concerns of her husband as to the management of his property; nor can she make a last will and testament, disposing of her own, after her decease. The only control which she possesses even over the real estate which she may have had in her own right before marriage, is to leave it to her heirs at law, or to unite with her husband, of course with his consent, too often by his dictation, in the sale of it. There is one additional right, and that the state of Georgia has taken from her—that of dowering the use during her natural life, should she survive her husband, of the one-third of the real estate of which he may have been possessed during coverture.

If we call to our recollection that a wife has to share in all the griefs and many of the toils of the husband, to say nothing of those in which he never participates, and which are peculiarly her own; that her prudence, economy and best exertions may be of no avail to arrest a downward course in her husband's affairs, the result of his indiscretion, his negligence, his misfortunes, or his vices, perhaps of all. that her last hopes and those of a dependent family, in the event of her becoming a widow, may be the income of a third of his real estate; we may well say, that Georgia has turned a sword against her own bosom, and has gone counter to the accepted maxims and acknowledged obligations of most virtuous and civilized states.

N. Y. Times.