Page:The Legal Subjection of Men.djvu/24

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4

Bias of Tribunals.

The settled bias of the tribunals in favour of the woman complainant, actuating magistrates, judge and jury, operates in two ways. In the first place a woman has only to complain against a man, and the tribunal is already convinced, of the justice of her claim. The tribunal is only impartial if the complaint is by one woman against another. In the next place, no adequate repression of crime or other injury by a woman against a man is even attempted.

Bias of Press and Public Opinion.

This tendency of the tribunals is confirmed and rendered irresistible by the action of the press and public opinion. All injuries to a woman are chronicled with flaring headlines. Injuries by women to men are laughed at, or worse still, passed over in silence.

The origin of this bias is a subject of deep interest, but not one capable of being discussed within brief limits. It is, of course, to be found in the history of England for some centuries past—practically since the Reformation—in so far as difference in the intensity of the sentiment differentiates England from other European peoples. It is to be found in the history of Europe and the race for many centuries before the period of the great European upheaval of the 16th century. It is enough for the present to note that the pro-feminist prejudice exists and is transmuted into positive rules of law, and legal administration by the action of public opinion and the press, Parliament, judges and juries, and crystallised into statutory enactment by an active pro-feminist propaganda of sex-conscious women's righters.

If anyone thinks the latter factor unimportant, it may be sufficient to remind him of the statutory innovation