“Woman Under Kentucky Law,” written by Laura Clay and published in the Kentucky Law Journal, v. 2, July 1882.

            When last fall the American Woman Suffrage Association convened in Louisville and received cordial attention both from the people and the newspapers, it inspired hopes in the adherents of the cause that the question of woman suffrage, which has already been much agitated in a number of our sister States, would henceforth receive from thoughtful men and women in Kentucky that consideration demanded by the importance of its claims.

            In this hope I avail myself of an opportunity offered me to present to the readers of the Kentucky Law Journal an outline of some of the reasons urged for the reform advocated by the woman suffragists.

            In the first place, our claims are based upon the great principles of our Declaration of Independence:  "All just governments derive their power from the consent of the governed;"  "Taxation without representation is tyranny."  Our great republic has been built upon these principles; our national and State Constitutions take them as their foundation; our orators never cease to glorify this country as an example of their working; our mothers teach us at their knee that the men who enunciated them deserve our reverence and gratitude forever.  To each young man, as he grows up, the republic entrusts the ballot as the seal and security of his Heaven-given rights; but all our young women grow up under the sinister influence of the fact that, as a class excluded from the benefit of these principles, they stand alone, but not, not quite alone--the category runs.  "Lunatics, idiots, felons and women."  Can any human being who believes that causes produce adequate effects doubt that this unjust exclusion, this degrading association, lowers the self-respect of women?

            Historians point out that in all ages and nations increased enjoyment of political rights by any class is accompanied always by increased mental vigor; thus, women are not only injured in their self-respect, but are also shut out from a powerful stimulus to self-development.

            But while these are grievances more or less apparent according to the turn of the individual mind, there are others whose force no one can deny.  I mean, of course, the unjust inequality of the laws, as between men and women.  Look, for instance, at our Kentucky laws:

            1.  By the laws of Kentucky a woman is deprived of all share in the affairs of the Government and the administration of its functions.  Many of the avocations, honors and positions open to men are closed to her, and she is denied the equal protection of the law in this respect.

            2.  The General Statutes of Kentucky have adopted as part of the law of our State the old enactment passed in the time of Charles II, giving a father the right by will to appoint a guardian to his infant children, even to the extent of depriving the mother of the right to the custody, and education of her infant child.  The Statute pays no attention to the moral and intellectual qualifications of the mother for discharging these duties to her child, if the deceased father has disregarded them in his will by appointing a guardian for the children.

3.  The Statute laws of Kentucky recognizes it as an offense on the part of the liquor dealer to sell whisky to an inebriate husband, but do not give the wife the right to recover damages for such wrong except upon precedent conditions which are dangerous to the security of her person.

            4.  The Statute law of Kentucky denies to a married woman the right to make a will, except as to her separate estate, or in the exercise of a written power to that effect.

5.  The laws of Kentucky tax women without giving them the right to vote for representatives.

6.  By the common law, the husband may give the wife moderate correction, as he is responsible for her misbehavior.  If the husband thinks proper, he may use a whip or a tan to enforce what is styled the "salutary restraints of domestic discipline."  This doctrine of the common law has been enforced by the highest tribunal in our sister State of Mississippi.  Sec. 1, Walker's Mississippi Reports, chap. 157.  This position of the common law has not been repealed by statutory enactment in Kentucky and if it is not enforced here, it shows that the sentiments of the people have outgrown the progress of the law.

7.  By the laws of Kentucky, a woman is not qualified to act as juror, and is virtually denied the benefit of trial by a jury of her peers.

8.  The common law of Kentucky allows the husband to recover damages for the loss of the services and society of the wife, but does not allow the wife to recover for the loss of the services and society of the husband.  This difference proceeds upon the idea that the husband has a property in the services of the wife, whilst the wife has none in those of the husband.

9.  By the law of Kentucky, if money be due the wife, the husband may collect or release the same.  If the wife be injured in her person, the husband may collect the claim for damages, even though he does not discharge the duty of supporting and protecting his wife.  It is declared by our Appellate Court, that in such a state of case a divorce is the only protection from the rapacity of an unfeeling husband.

10.  By the Statute law of Kentucky, the husband gets, as distributee of his wife, all the wife's chattels which have not previously accrued to him as husband, and which (being her separate property), she may not have disposed of by her will, whilst the wife, in no event, gets more than one-half of the husband's personalty, as his distributee.

11.  The husband, as tenant by curtesy, gets a life-interest in all lands owned by the wife, whilst the wife, as doweress, only gets a life-interest in one third of the lands owned by the husband.

            Now the injustice of many of these laws is apparent to every mind.  Plenty of our lawyers and statesmen are ready to declare them a hundred years behind our times, unjust, barbarous; but still there is found no class of men, no plank in any party platform, pledged to reform these evils.

            The taxes of women go to pay the salaries of Legislators, whose business it is to make just and equal laws; but they are too busy attending to the interests of the men whose votes can keep them there, to have time to think of the claims of a class powerless to enforce attention.  Nor does the conscience of the ordinary Legislator require him to do anything but represent what he considered the wishes of his constituents, who are men; and do not these laws appear to be to the interest of men, though at the expense of women?

            And now, in closing, I wish to say one word in appeal to the lawyers of Kentucky.  This cause has its foundation in justice, and has no ends in view except the best interests of humanity.  But it can appeal to no selfish feelings of men; its success must come through the advocacy of those who love the right for the right's sake.  Many of these, however, are misled by deep-seated prejudices, or are daunted by the traditions of ages.  Who are so fitted, then, to take the lead in this movement as the lawyers, whose daily experience is with the facts involved, whose studies given them clear ideas of abstract justice, and should inspire them with courage to follow all its dictates?  It rests much with them, then, whether women must wring the ballot from the men of Kentucky by long and wearisome importunity, or whether it shall be bestowed upon them with the noble generosity and sympathy that can endue the payment of a debt with all the grace of a gift.