"We do not presume error by inference from the record, nor do we declare it, except when it is made affirmatively to appear." (Danvers v. Durkin [Oregon S. C.] 12 Pac. Rep. 61.)

Where the crime was prosecuted by information instead of indictment, and came up to the appellate court on a certificate of division of opinion, but the constitutionality of prosecution by information was not one of the questions on which the judges divided, the Supreme Court of the United States held that it would not pass upon that question until the court below acted on it.-(United States v. Waddell, 112 U. S. 82.)

Under these rulings the validity of the title of the election laws of 1883 and 1886, were not before the court in the Harland case, and the opinion rendered by Justices Turner and Langford on that point are mere dicta-individual opinions outside of the case. They have no value except their intrinsic merits as statements of the law governing the construction of statutes.

Under the strict rule laid down by Justices Langford and Turner, the Supreme Court of the Territory was without jurisdiction to hold a session in January, 1887, or to hold the January Term, 1888. The reasoning, however, in that case has not been followed in subsequent cases where the court has affirmed the results in the Harland case.

Whether the Harland decision was a correct statement of law or not, and whether at any time since that decision was rendered, women were not competent electors, the objection to their voting is disposed of by the statute just passed. The chief opposition to the recognition of woman as entitled to vote comes from men who fear that the rights of property, which they claim, will be affected by female suffrage.

Liquor dealers claim an absolute right in their property which cannot be affected in any manner by legislation, and invoke the fourteenth amendment in their defense. Railroads claim the absolute right to fix freights and fares as they please, free from territorial legislation. The agents, however, of liquor dealers and of corporations persistently denied the right of adult women, who under our laws are recognized as equal to

men in civil rights, to exercise any political rights whatever. They placed property rights above political rights. Their claim is essentially this: That the Fourteenth Amendment can be invoked to protect property, but cannot protect political rights. That they have the right, provided they can command the majority of votes, to disfranchise a class of citizens whom they fear will be hostile to their interests and will attempt to regulate such interests for the benefit of the community at large. They would disfranchise the working men of this country, if they had the power.

So far the battle for woman suffrage has been won.

The best men of the territory, who believe that the inalienable rights of freemen belong to women as well as men, will sustain the law.

Seattle, W. T.

W. S. Bush.

MARRIAGE IN THE GERMAN MIDDLE AGES,

BY DR. E. FRIEDBERG, UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN.

II.

The greater emancipation of women was partly apparent when the right of compelling betrothal was taken away from the guardian, and when the laws of the Franks, Saxons, and Lombards all agreed in guarantying the independence of the woman. Whoever married his daughter against her will was laid under obligation to make good the harm which might thereby accrue to her, as if he had caused it himself.

Nevertheless it was a good German custom that the maiden in taking the important step of her betrothal should be guided by the counsel of her parents and friends. Ulrich von Lichtenstein, in his Book for Women, says: "Let a maiden who has no parents, follow the advice of friends; if she will give herself to a husband, she may truly have to live in disgrace." It is, perhaps, from this point of view that we can explain the heavy punishments with which the abduction and carrying off of women were followed, while yet there was a tendency to see the original form of the conclusion of marriage in this act, and to found the structure of German marriage upon a basis similar to that at Rome, where it arose out of the rape of the Sabine women. If the robber fled with the woman to the protection of a church, then, according to Friesian law, the judge was to burn the houses which he had entered on his flight, and which had been the scenes of his crime, and he was to break into the church, and draw forth the robber to severe punishment. The woman, too, who consented to the abduction, made herself guilty of a wrong act. and was deserving of

punishment, according to German law. Nevertheless, in the Middle Ages, abductions were numerous both in life and in romance. The laws, although severe in their terms, were mostly too weak, the power of the man was commonly too great, and the delight in dangers was too widely spread to make it otherwise than that bold chivalrous spirits should prefer such a wooing to the sober commonplace courting of parents and friends.

We may also here note the peculiar practice of the Middle Ages, which showed itself in the princes and lords frequently coming forward as suitors for their courtiers, and doing this under a title of right. If a maiden pleased one of the servants of the prince, or a youth engaged the affection of one of the damsels of the court, the prince sent his marshal to the house, and made him woo the person in question, and this was a wooing that could bear no contradiction and no refusal.

"Listen, ye masters, everywhere,

The king and marshal thus, declare,
And this command is what must be:
I here proclaim young A. with D.,
Infeft to-day, betrothed to-morrow,
Wed in a year withouten sorrow."

Thus sounds the verse which the imperial marshal was wont to sing in Frankfort-on-the-Mame before the house of the person wooed for. Down till the sixteenth century we find traces of this obnoxious custom, while a great number of documents gives us the proof of how zealously the cities sought to free them selves from such limiting and disregard of the free personality.

It was a further step in civilization when it came about that the sum to be paid for the bride was no longer given to the guardian, but was applied, directly or indirectly, so as to form a provision for the bride herself should she become a widow. At length the meaning of the purchase disappeared more and more, and, instead of it, we find only a symbolical or apparent purchase, of which there are still traces to be found in the traditions and usages of the present day.

The purchase of the right of guardianship thus came to appear only as a symbol; and as among the Franks it took the .

shape of the payment of a shilling and a penny, the opportunity was also given to the Church to introduce in place of the pieces of money another symbol, which has kept its place till our day as the most suggestive and beautiful symbol of all. This is the engagement ring.

The engagement ring was originally a Roman symbol, which it was customary to use from the oldest times at marriages. It was to be worn on the fourth finger, for from it, according to the Romans, there went a vein from the heart, and it was put on the left hand because it was nearest the heart. All this has become a custom consecrated by antiquity, and carried on to our own days, although the science of anatomy has long since shown the erroneousness of the idea underlying it. It may be observed, however, that the Dutch-the most sober-minded people in the world-have commonly no engagement rings.

The crusades introduced deep changes into the whole social life of the time, and they were not without enduring influence upon the relations of women generally,, and upon marriage in particular. Whole masses of people streamed together for the same purpose; they were united by the call of the Pope, and the Christian faith; and each of them presented the manifestations of a hitherto exclusive nationality, and each was ready spiritually both to give and to receive. It was-if the figure may be allowed-as if the waters of all the quarters of heaven had become united, to foam for a time in the same channel, and when they separated, what stream could be said to have kept its earlier current? What stream rather had not both given and received? Could it be otherwise than that the soil upon which the different populations thus met, presenting the ruins of the Greek and Roman civilization among which they pitched their camps, as well as the fantastic life of the East, should work strongly upon these receptive hearts?

The wild, rude warriors became polished knights, and the influence exerted upon the mental education of the women was equally marked. Here we may recall the fact that the women had been the subjects of culture from an earlier time, so that even Wolfram of Eschenbach could only transmit his poem to the after-world through the pen of a woman. Women