Under Roman law before Christianity had gained control of the empire, a form of marriage existed known as "Usus," which secured much freedom to wives. It was entered into without the terrifying religious ceremonies which made "Confarraetio," practically indissoluble and the wife the veritable slave of the husband, who held power even over her life. Neither did it possess the civil formality of "Coemptio" under which the bride purchased entrance into the marriage duties and her husband's household by the payment of three pieces of copper.1 "Coemptio" like "Confarreatio" gave the husband entire power over the person and property of the wife, while "Usus," a form of simple consent, left the wife practically free, keeping her own name and property. The real origin of this form of marriage is not fully known. Maine declared it to be as old as or even older than the Twelve Tables, under which woman possessed the right to repudiation in marriage. These laws, a compilation of still older ones, were afterwards incorporated into statutes by a woman of Athens, and were received by the Romans as extremely pure natural laws.2 Plato
refers to an early Athens entirely ruled by women, its laws of pre-eminently just character. Tradition, whose basis is half forgotten, half remembered history, attributes the origin of Athens to the ancient Atlantians. The former existence of this submerged continent is daily becoming more fully recognized. The explorations of the "Challenger," the "Dolphin," the "Gazelle," and the discoveries of Le Plongeon in Yucatan, at later date, confirming olden tradition. Maine thus ascribes a much older origin to "Usus" than Gibbon, who attributes it to the effect of the Punic triumphs.3 In reality "Usus" seems to have been a reminiscence of the Matriarchate, incorporated into the law of the Twelve Tables, and accepted by Rome as a more just form of the marriage relation for women than the religious "Confarraetio" or the civil form of "Coemptio." But as Rome increased in wealth and luxurious modes of living, the influence of the Patriarchate correspondingly extended, the perception of justice at the same time diminishing. Pomp and ceremony were associated with the marriage rite among patricians, while "Usus" was regarded as a plebeian form especially suited to the populace. But at later
date when Rome rebelling against the tyranny of her rulers, tended towards a republican form of government, "Usus" again became general. It was impossible for patrician women not to see the greater freedom of plebeian wives under "Usus," a form that while equally binding in the essentials of the union did not make the wife a marital slave,4 and "Usus" eventually became the basis of Roman legal conception of marriage, against which Christianity from the first waged a warfare of ever increasing fierceness,5 the very foundation of that religion being the subordination of woman in every relation of life. Under "Usus" the mere fact of two persons living together as husband and wife was regarded as a marriage. If during each year the wife remained away from the home for three days, she kept herself from under her husband's power. She remained a part of her father's family; her husband could not mortgage or in any way alienate her property. This was absolutely contrary to the laws of the Christian form of marriage, under which the wife surrendered her person, her property, and her conscience, into the indisputable control of the husband. Under "Usus" a large proportion of Roman property fell into woman's hands. She became the real estate holder of the Eternal City and its provinces, and in consequence was treated with great respect; the holding of property, especially of real estate
conducing to that end. Under "Usus" the cruelties sanctioned by "Confarraetio" were rended impossible; a wife could no longer be put to death, as was formerly the custom, for having tasted wine, a treacherous kiss from her husband upon his return home, betraying her, nor could her infant daughter be exposed or murdered at the pleasure of her husband who as inexorable master was frequently wont to refuse her pleadings for the life of her babe, calling her prayers naught but the scruples of a foolish woman.6
Thus under "Usus" human life became more sacred, and woman endowed with a greater sense of personal security. It affected an entire change for the better, in the moral sentiments of the Roman empire.7 A complete revolution had thus passed over the constitution of the family. This must have been the period, says Maine, when a juriconsulist of the empire defined marriage as a life long fellowship of all divine and human rights.
Not alone Maine, but also Reeves, failed not to see that the disruption of the Roman Empire was very unfavorable to the personal and proprietory rights of woman.8 The practical effect of the common Roman form of marriage being the absolute legal independence of the wife, under which a large proportion of Roman property fell into the hands of women, the
wife retaining her family name and family inheritance. All this was changed as soon as Christianity obtained the rule. Under Christian forms of marriage a wife was taken from her own family and transferred into that of her husband the same as a piece of property. She assumed his name, the same as the slave took that of the new master to whom he was transferred. That this idea of the wife as a slave did not belong alone to the earlier christian period, but is a part of christian doctrine of to-day is clearly shown by the continued custom of a woman's dropping her family name upon marriage and assuming that of the husband-master.
For this middle Roman period carried its blessings to wives no longer than until the empire became christianized, when the tyranny of ecclesiastical marriage again fell to womans' lot. While under the influence of "Usus," Roman jurists of the middle period had declared the ownership of property by married women to be a principle of equity this drew forth opposing legislation from the christians, and under christian law, the husband again became master of his wife's person, and property, her children also falling under his entire control, the mother possessing no authority over them. From that period down to the twentieth century of christianity, under all changing civil laws, woman has ever felt the oppressions of ecclesiasticism in this relation.9
Guizot strangely declares that woman's present, and what he terms, superior, position in the household to-day, is due to feudalism.10 The isolation and
strife under which the nobility lived during the feudal period, warring against each other when not engaged in foreign aggression, compelled to certain forms of social life within each castle, thus creating the modern family, or the family under its present social form. At that period the feudal wife with her retinue of household serfs and a vast number of her husband's retainers in charge, held a more responsible position than that of woman under primitive christian habits of life. But the knights and lords of these feudal castles were lecherous robbers, rather than men of kindly regard for womankind. Their inclination was not towards justice or family life, but the despoiling of all beneath them, and even of their equals with whom they were not upon terms of amity. The ruins of such castles, like the nest of the eagle, perched upon some inaccessible rock, add to-day an element of picturesque beauty to the Rhine and other rivers of Europe, but owe their elevated and isolated positions to the evil character of their owners, the banditti of the middle ages.11 When not engaged with their king in warfare, they made the despoiling of serfs and the betrayal of wives and daughters their chief diversion, the robbery of burghers and travelers their business; churchmen equally with laymen living by the same means.
During the year 1268, Rudolph of Germany, destroyed
sixty-six castles of these christian robber nobility in Thuringia alone, and hung twenty-nine of these "family builders" at one time in Erfurt. He compared Rome to the lion's den in fable; the footsteps of many animals to be found going thither, but none coming back. At this period the soldiers of Christian Europe found pleasure in torture for its own sake, chiefly selecting women as their victims. In mediæval England the condition of woman was one of deep degradation. Wives were bought and daughters sold for many hundred years after the introduction of Christianity.12 Although England was christianized in the fourth century, it was not until the tenth that the christian wife of a christian husband acquired the right of eating at table with him, nor until the same century did a daughter gain the right of rejecting the husband her father might have selected for her. While the sale of daughters was practiced in England for seven hundred years after the introduction of Christianity, we note that by the ancient law of India, a father was forbidden to sell his daughter in marriage, or receive the smallest present therefor. In mediæval England the daughter was held as a portion of the father's property to be sold to the highest bidder. The Mundium" recognized the father's right to sell his daughter to the husband he might select for her, usually the highest bidder in point of wealth or political influence. While Marquette pertained to kings, feudal lords, and men of no family relationship to the victim, Mundium inhered in the father himself.
Through it he sacrificed his own daughter for money or power.
The practice of buying wives with cattle or money was regulated both in the laws of King Æthelbert and King Ine. In event of the woman who had been thus bought, becoming a widow, half of the sum paid for her seems to have been set aside for her support, provided her husband had not died without issue. The other half remained absolutely the property of her father, brother, or guardian by whom she had been sold. At a somewhat later period the church doctrine of celibacy influenced all ranks of men, while at the same time an unmarried woman because of her maidenhood was regarded as disreputable. A bachelor held honorable place, even though all celibate men were looked upon as libertines of especially impure life. Warnings against matrimony were the ordinary topics of conversation, while virtue in women was held so little sacred that no nearness of relationship was security for either a married or a single woman.14 Husbands trafficked in the honor of their wives, fathers sold their daughters,15 yet if under temptation, a woman
fell, outside of such sale, her punishment was most severe. To a husband was accorded the power of life and death over his household, and either personally or by means of a hired assassin he not unfrequently assigned his wife to death or to a punishment more atrocious and barbarous.16 Disraeli says:
If in these ages of romance and romances the fair sex were scarcely approached without the devotion of idolatry, whenever "the course of true love" altered; when the frail spirit loved too late, and should not have loved, the punishment became more criminal than the crime, for there was more selfish revenge and terrific malignity than of justice when autocratical man became the executioner of his own decree.
The English christian husband of that age is paralleled by certain North American Indians of the present day.17 The horizon of woman's life was bounded by the wishes of her father or husband. Single, she was regarded as a more or less valuable piece of property18 for whose sale the owner was entitled to make as good a bargain as possible. It was as a bride that the greatest sum was secured.19 Prominent among
the laws of the first Christian king of Kent, were provisions for the transfer of money or cattle in exchange for the bride.20 The theory of woman's ownership by man was everywhere carried into practice, and with great severity in case the wife proved unfaithful to her enforced vows. The facts that her consent to the marriage had not been asked, that mayhap the man she was forced to wed was utterly repugnant to her, that her affections might already have been bestowed, that she was transferred like a piece of goods with no voice upon the question, were not taken into consideration, and did the husband not choose to kill his derelict spouse, the question still remained one of property,21 and a new bride was demanded of the lover in place of the wife whose love he had gained.
A husband, attracted by a new face, more wealth, greater political influence, or for any reason desiring to be rid of his wife, was regarded as justifiable in hiring an assassin to strangle her, or if walking by a river-brink, of himself pushing her into the water where her cries for help were disregarded. Those in whose hearts pity rose, were prevented from giving aid, by such remarks as, "It is nothing, only a woman being drowned."22 A horse or other domestic animal
received more consideration than the women of a household. Notwithstanding this period, the early part of the fourteenth century, before the days of printing or rapid intercourse between nations, yet the evil fame of christendom reached distant lands. Its hypocrisy and baseness were known by those very Saracens from whom the Crusaders attempted to wrest the Holy Sepulchre. To Sir John Mandeville the Sultan of Egypt mercilessly criticised the Christianity of England23 and the christian method of serving God; the total disregard of chastity, the sale of daughters, sisters and wives. We cannot agree with Disraeli in his doubts if there was a single christian in all christendom at this period. To the contrary, it may be regarded as an epoch when the doctrines of Christianity were most fully sustained, the church at that time carrying out the principles of both the Old and the New Testament regarding women. From Moses to Paul, the Bible everywhere speaks of her as a being made for man, secondary to man, and under his authority by direct command of the Almighty; the state, as coadjutor and servant of the church, basing her codes of law24 upon its teachings. Under these codes woman has not only been looked upon as naturally unchaste, but also regarded as a liar, the state demanding the testimony of two or three, and in some instances of seven women to invalidate that
of one man; the man even then in extreme cases clearing himself by his single oath. Condemned as having brought evil into the world, woman's every step was looked upon with suspicion, and the most brutal treatment as far short of her just deserts. To speak well of her was to cause misgivings of one's self. The system of defamation inaugurated by the church in reference to women, was later recognized by the Jesuits as a most effective plan for the personal subjugation of men. Busenbaum, an influential writer of this order, directing:
Whenever you would ruin a person you must begin by spreading calumnies to defame them. Repetition and perseverance will at length give the consistency of probability, and the calumnies will stick to a distant day.
The astute Jesuits learned their lesson from church treatment of women. Its practical results were ever before their eyes in the contempt with which woman was regarded, and her own consequent loss of self-respect. Under early and mediæval christian law, as in most states to-day, the father alone had right to the disposal of his children. He possessed the sole power of giving away his daughter in marriage; if he died, this right devolved upon the eldest son; only in case there were no sons was the right of the mother in any way recognized. If neither father or brother were living, the mother gave her daughter away in marriage, and this was the only instance in which one woman possessed control over another woman, the law allowing the mother no voice in the marriage of her daughter unless she was a widow without sons. So greatly enslaved were daughters, that non-consent of the victim in no way impaired the validity of the
marriage.35 A girl was simply a piece of family property to be disposed of as the family thought best. Although wives were simply the slaves of husbands, yet the condition of an unmarried woman was even more deplorable. Deprived of the society of young persons of her own sex, not allowed speech with any man outside of her own family, she was fortunate if she escaped personal36 ill-treatment in her father's house. Not permitted to sit in the presence of either her father or her mother, continually found fault with, the laws constraining her to marry while giving her no preference as to a husband, and marriage still more fully taking from her the control of her own person, yet it was anxiously looked forward to as at least a change of masters, and the constant hope that in the husband she might find a lover who for dear love's sake would treat her with common humanity.
Such was the condition of women during eighteen hundred years of christianity. Legislated for as slaves, imprisoned for crimes that if committed by a man were only punished by branding the band; buried alive for other crimes that committed by men were atoned for by the payment of a fine; denied a share in the government of the family or the church, their very sex deemed a curse, the twentieth century is now about to open showing no truly enlightened nation
upon the face of the earth. From the barbarism of inhumanity the world is slowly awakening to the fact that every human being stands upon the plane of equal natural rights. The Church has not taught the world this great truth, the State has not conceded it; its acknowledgment thus far, has been due to the teachings of individual men and women, that self-constituted authority over others is a crime against humanity. Under christian teaching regarding woman, the daughter was looked upon as a more remote relative and heir than the son, and this upon the ground of her inferiority. Blackstone, although admitting that such views did not pertain in Rome, yet speaks of males as "the worthier of blood." Such views were not held by pre-christian Britain. Under common law, before that country accepted christianity, property was equally divided between sisters, and only by special custom, between brothers.31 But as early as Henry II, it was the general rule that a woman could not share an inheritance with a man. An exception sometimes existed in a particular city where such custom had long prevailed.
Until quite recently, English women have not been permitted to express an opinion upon political questions, although the Primrose League and other similar organizations have effected a great change within a few years. Yet it is but little more than two hundred years, in 1664, at Henley-upon-Thames, a woman having spoken against the taxation imposed by Parliament, was condemned for this freedom of political criticism, to have her tongue nailed to the body of a tree at the highway side upon a market day, and a paper fastened to her back detailing the heinousness
of her offense. It was thus the state deterred similar politically-minded women from the expression of their views, and in line with the church used its most stringent measures to retain woman in the "sphere" to which both church and state assigned her. Many savage tribes of Africa exhibit the same grade of civilization that was extant in christian England from the fourth to the eighteenth centuries.
A father will sell his daughter among Unyamwazi, Africa, for one up to ten cows. A Lomali asks of a poor wooer from ten to twenty horses, of a wealthy one from 100 upward, together with fifty camels and 300 sheep. On the other hand, in Uganda, four oxen are sufficient to buy the most perfectly formed village belle, provided six needles and a box of cartridges are thrown in.
The sale is the same, the payment alone of different character. An African girl in case of a wealthy wooer, bringing even more than was ordinarily received during the middle ages for an English christian maiden. The patriarchal spirit wherever cropping out exhibiting the same characteristics, whether among Jews, Christians, or African savages. This is the more not-able as among civilized or savage races yet governed of the principles of the Matriarchate, the position of woman is very high. In Samoa, no woman is compelled to work, all labor of whatever character being performed by the men. The celebrated traveler, Prof. Carl Lumholz, in his work "Among the Cannibals," makes some interesting statements in regard to the course adopted by the natives of Georgia River, Australia, to save women from giving birth to undesired children, and to prevent the needless suffering and infant mortality so common in christian lands.
Among the methods adopted in christian countries
for a continuance of the crimes common in the marriage relation, have been more or less stringent laws against divorce, ever falling with heaviest force upon her whom christian marriage laws have made a slave. The "Christian Union" declares as a significant act of evil import, that "in Wyoming, where the power of woman in affairs of government is greatest, one divorce takes place in every six marriages, the proportion being greater than in any other state." But if this assertion of the "Christian Union" is true, it is proof that a share in making the laws which govern her is wisely used by the women of that state; and it marks a new era in civilization, when woman holding political power in her own hands, refuses longer to degrade herself by living in a relation that has lost the binding power of love. The laws of church and of state during the christian ages originated with man, and it is a promising sign of woman's growth in self-reliance, independent thought, and purity of character, that she thus protests against the bondage of a relation which virtually holds the wife as slave of the husband; for despite the changes of the last four and a half decades, we still find the general tone of legislation in line with the church teaching of woman's created inferiority to man. We still find belief in the wife's duty of obedience to the husband; we still discover the church, the state, the world, all regarding the exercise of her own judgment even upon the questions most closely related to herself as woman's greatest sin. As free as woman is called to-day, she has not yet as daughter secured perfect liberty of choice in marriage, the power of the family too often compelling her into a hated relation. Money still leads parents to prefer one suitor above another, even in
the United States; while in many European countries, marriages are arranged by friends, or through a broker, entirely without the girl's consent, who is frequently taken from a convent or school to be thus sold to some wealthy and perhaps octogenarian wooer, who covets the youth or beauty of the victim.28
The burning of twenty missionaries in a portion of savage Africa, a few years since, filled the civilized world with horror. But for several hundred years after the introduction of christianity into Great Britain, the penalty for simple theft by a woman slave was burning alive, and all the other women slaves were compelled to assist at her auto-de-fé. Upon such an occasion mentioned by Pike, eighty other women each brought a log of wood for the burning.29 By the old Roman Code, burning alive as a punishment was forbidden because of its barbarity, but christianity reintroduced it, and for long centuries after the destruction of the Roman Empire, that other land aspiring to control of the sea, which proudly boasts that the sun never sets on her possessions., kept it in her criminal code for the punishment of helpless women.30 So
rigorous was woman's slavery that the friendships of women with each other, or with men, were strictly prohibited; yet the deep affection of one man for another to whom he consecrated his life and fortune, and of whom he spoke with that deep tenderness, was highly commended.31 The despotic, irresponsible power of husbands in christian England at this period is shown by the diverse manner in which the murder of a wife by a husband, or a husband by a wife, was regarded. For a husband to murder a wife either by his own hands or those of a hired assassin, was of frequent occurrence, but as she was his slave over whom he had power of life and death, this was looked upon as a trivial affair. But under the laws of both church and state, the murder of a husband by a wife was regarded as petty treason, to be punished with the utmost severity, burning alive being a not uncommon form.32
Under christian legislation not alone the wife's person but her property so fully became her husband's that her use of any portion of it thereafter without his consent was regarded as theft; and such is still the law in the majority of christian countries; it is less than sixty years since a change in this respect took place in any part of the christian world. While a wife may steal from her husband it is still the law that a husband cannot steal from his wife. If she allows him to transact business for her, or in any way
obtain possession of her property even for a moment, he has acquired its legal ownership. Since the passage of the Married Woman's Property Act, the courts of England have decided that a husband cannot steal from his wife while she is living with him. A case before Baron Huddleston, 1888, commented upon by the "Pall Mall Gazette," under head of "Stealing from a Wife," called attention to the superior position of the mistress in respect to property rights over that of the wife.
Can a husband rob his wife? Baron Huddleston yesterday answered this by saying he can not rob her at all under the common law, which regards all the wife's property as the husband's; and, theft is only robbery under the Married Women's Property Act, when the wife is living apart from her husband, or when he is preparing to desert her. It is really quite amazing how many advantages a mistress has over a wife in all matters relating to property and to person. It almost seems as if the object of the law was to inflict such disabilities on wives in order to induce the fair sex to prefer concubinage to matrimony.
The separate moral codes for man and woman in all christian lands, show their evil aspect in many ways. Adultery, in all christian countries is held to be less sinful for men than for women. In England, while the husband can easily obtain a divorce from the wife upon the ground of adultery, it is almost impossible for the wife to obtain a divorce from the husband upon the same ground. Nothing short of the husband's bringing another woman into the house to sustain wifely relations to him, at all justifies her in proceedings for a separation; and even then, the husband retains a right to all the wife's property of which he was in possession, or which may have fallen into
his hands. Less than a dozen years since, an English husband willed his wife's property to his mistress and her children of whom he was the father. The wife, (in what is known as "The Birchall Case"), contested the will, but the courts not only decided in its favor, but added insult to that legal robbery, by telling the wife that a part of her money was enough for her, and that she ought to be willing that her husband's mistress and illegitimate children should share it with her.
Woman's disobedience to man is regarded by both the church and the state as disobedience to God. As late as the first half of the present century it was held as constructive treason, in England, punishable by the state, for a wife to refuse obedience to her husband's commands or in any way to question his authority. She was required to be under submission to him as the direct representative of the deity. For the woman who protested against this annihilation of her individuality, a flogging was the customary form of punishment and so common was the use of the whip that its size was regulated by law.33 The punishment of petit treason34 was more severe for woman than for man because her crime was regarded as of a more heinous character. She was dragged on the ground or pavement to the place of execution then burned alive; a man was drawn and hanged. It was long after the conquest before even a man convicted
of treason secured the right of being carried to execution on a sledge or hurdle. Blackstone comments upon the extreme torment of being dragged on the ground or pavement. In case of a woman the wounds and lacerations thus received must have greatly added to her intensity of suffering, yet so blinded was he through those laws, that he calls her punishment of burning, a tribute to the 'decency due to the sex.'35
During a portion of the christian era the wife has not been looked upon as related to her husband. The residuum of this disbelief in the relationship of husband and wife, occasionally shows itself to the present day.36 She was his slave under both religious and civil law, holding the same relations to him as the subject did to the king, and liable to punishments similar to those inflicted upon unruly slaves, or disloyal subjects. Rebellion against the husband's authority was treason punishable by law, similarly as treason to the king. The difference was but in name. Down to the end of the eighteenth century in England, the wife who had murdered her husband was burned alive; if the husband murdered his wife he suffered simple decapitation, "the same as if he had murdered any other stranger." For the wife's crime of petit treason the penalty was that of the slave who had killed her master. It is scarcely a hundred years since the punishment
of burning the wife alive for the murder of her husband, or the female slave for the murder of her master, as petit treason, passed out of the English penal code; the last instance occurring in 1784, eight years after our declaration of independence. This same code was operative in the colonies; the last woman thus punished in this country, being a slave in 1755, who had murdered her master, America having twenty-nine years precedence in the abolition of this penalty.37
A cablegram from Europe, September 1892, proves the continued existence in this last decade of the nineteenth century of the crime of petit treason, and also the barbarous punishment still inflicted under christian law, upon the wife who murders her husband. This case, occurring in Finland, was carried up to the Court of Appeals, which not only affirmed the decision of the lower court but decreed additional punishment. Because the wife had also forged her husband's name for small sums of money, having, under law, first been robbed by him of her earnings. the judgment of having her right hand cut off, was added to the original sentence. She was then decapitated, her body fastened to a stake, covered with inflammable material and burned to ashes. Although this wife was not burned alive, the barbarity of her punishment was most atrocious, and took place under the christian laws of the church and the state, in a Protestant country in the "year of our Lord," 1802. That the punishment was infinitely more severe than would have been inflicted upon the husband in case
he had murdered his wife, was due to christian teaching of woman's inferiority and subordination to man; thus making the wife's crime that of petit treason, under law only a trifle less heinous than murdering a king, or attempting destruction of the government. Had the husband murdered the wife it would have been, according to legal prevision, the same as if he had killed "any other stranger." The marriage ceremony robbed her of her property and earnings, but in equity the money she was accused of stealing from him belonged to her. Under the laws of most christian states, a woman is robbed of herself and all of her possessions by the simple fact of her marriage. Under christian law, the services of the wife in the marital relation are all due to the husband,38 her earnings all belong to him; she is a slave owning nothing and with no rights in the property her husband calls his own. This wife's crime was provoked by pre-existing criminal legislation of the christian church and state. Possessing no legal right to the control of her own person, property or conscience, the wife was held to have sinned against a divinely appointed master to whom she owed more than human allegiance: she was a criminal so great that the punishment of severing her hand and head were deemed entirely inadequate, and her body fastened to a stake was covered with inflammable material and burned to ashes.39
While the external government of Finland, as declarations of war, peace, treaties, etc., is under control of the Czar, or Grand Duke, yet in the internal ad. ministration of affairs this country is an Independent State, under a Constitution dating 1772, and confirmed by three successive czars. It became Christianized in the twelfth century but is not under the Greek church; its established religion is Evangelical and Lutheran, under control of the arch-bishop of Abo, and the bishops of Bogia and Knopo; an ecclesiastical assembly meeting every ten years; and the Diet, composed of representatives of the clergy, nobility, citizens and peasants, every five years. Without consent of these bodies no laws are enacted or repealed; but woman possesses no representation either in ecclesiastical or civil affairs.
The old law of marriage instituted by the church, which held the wife as belonging body and soul to the husband who not alone possessed control over her actions but decided her religion, is still extant. In but few countries do we see a tendency towards its abolition, even those that have somewhat favorably legislated upon the question, still retaining the general principle of a wife's subserviency to her husband. A few years since an English lady desirous of uniting with the Catholic church was refused consent by her husband, "a staunch churchman." Unknown to him she was received into that body, which proved occasion of an animated controversy between the husband and the late Cardinal Manning, the former basing
his opposition and his letter of remonstrance to the cardinal upon the ground of the admitted legal right of a husband, under English law, to ordain the form of his wife's religion.40 Nor do we find material difference in the United States. In Virginia, in the winter of 1891, a wife, despite the opposition of her husband, caused her infant to be baptized by an Episcopal clergyman into that church, the husband openly expressing his disapproval while the ceremony was in progress, and afterwards suing the clergyman for an interference with his vested rights over wife and child. This supreme authority of the husband in Christian countries is shown in many strange ways. Among the Hindoos the naming of the child belongs to the mother. If the father expresses desire for a different name, each one is written upon a paper over which lighted lamps are set, the one burning the longest deciding the choice of name. But in Rhode Island as late as 1892, a controversy between the parents as to the naming of a child was settled by law. The father and mother each filed a certificate with the registrar; the father employing a lawyer who to the satisfaction of the city solicitor proved his client's prior right, and an order was issued to the registrar in favor of the father's choice of name.41 The claim of the Christian husband in each of these instances was that of his supreme and prior right, on the church theory incorporated into law, that both wife and child belong to the husband. The celebrated Agar-Ellis case in England during the latter part of the seventies, was brought by a wife to compel the keeping by a husband of his pledges in regard to the religious education of his children. The decision was against
the wife, upon the general ground that a wife had no rights in law as against a husband. A man's pledged word broken at the gaming table renders him infamous and subjects him to dishonor through life. But a husband's pledged word broken to his wife, under ruling of the highest court and the profoundest legal talent of England, the Court of Appeals, and the Vice-Chancellor, is just, implying no dishonor, but rather entitling him to respect as a man who in a befitting manner has maintained his marital rights and authority. The judge instructed the wife that she had no right to teach her children what her husband did not believe, even though she herself most fully believed what she taught. He impressed upon her that she was not rearing her children for herself, bout as her husband's property, over which she possessed no control only in so far as the husband made her his agent. In affirming the order of the Vice-Chancellor, the court of appeals declared that the father had the legal right to bring up the children in his own faith, and in pledging his word to the contrary he had in no way forfeited or abandoned his authority. This decision of the English Court of Appeals, is in accord with the laws of the United States. The Albany N. Y. "Law Journal" in commenting upon this case under the head of "Curious Question," declared the decision to be in harmony with the general rule as to religious education; the child is to be educated in the religion of the father.
The "English Women's Suffrage journal" in its comments, declared English law to be based upon the Koran, quoting, in proof, from a writer in the "Contemporary Review":
The East has long been noted for the subordination
of its women, and this subjection is not only preached by Mussulmans and Buddhists but even by Christian churches. Woman is not regarded as a person but as a field, cultivable or not, as the possessor desires. As a field can neither have faith, nor intellect, nor a will of its own, it would be absurd for a man to occupy himself about what a woman believes, thinks, or wishes. She is absolutely nothing but her husband's domain. He cultivates it and reaps the harvest, for the harvest belongs to the proprietor.
According to the "Women's Suffrage journal," this condition accurately depicted the spirit of the injunction laid upon Mrs. Agar-Ellis, by Lord Justice James.
To the wife and mother he declared that she had no right to teach her children what she believed, but must, to the contrary, teach them what her husband believed, whether she believed it or not; the law not concerning itself with what a woman believes, or wishes, as she is in law absolutely nothing but her husband's domain.
The mistake of the "Journal" lies in ascribing this law to the teachings of the Koran, instead of the teachings of the Bible, which in general tone, and through particular instruction, places woman upon the same level as a man's "flocks and herds, oxen and cattle." We do not find the personal rights of women in the United States differing from those of the women of England. A famous suit was tried in Ohio, 1879, known as the "Lucy Walker Case," a former wife sueing the present wife for alienating her husband's affections. Great attention was called to this suit from the high position of the parties; Judge Seney, former husband of one, and present husband42 of
the other wife, being widely known as author of a "Civil Code," bearing his name. The suit gained still greater notoriety from the principle enunciated in his decision rendered against the plaintiff, by Judge Dodge, before whom the case came to trial; he dismissed it upon the ground that a wife had no rights as against her husband. All testimony upon part of the injured first wife was excluded upon the same ground. He decided:
First: That the husband has a property interest in his wife which the wife does not possess in the husband.
Second: That the law protects him in this right of property in her.
Third; Upon the ground that he holds her and dares the world to meddle with him in the holding.
Fourth; But on the contrary the wife looks alone to the husband, the law compelling her to do so,
Thus less than fifteen years since, the legal decision was rendered in the United States, that a wife is a husband's property; that the husband has a pecuniary interest in the wife, the law protecting his right of property in her, while the wife possesses no reciprocal right of property in the husband.
The "Toledo Bee" gave the full text of judge Dodge's decision:
The question submitted is this: Has a wife such a property in her husband, has she such a legal pecuniary interest in him, that she can bring an action at law against one who injures him, against one who
imprisons him, and, finally, can a wife recover damages at law against a woman who has carnal intercourse with her husband without her consent? It will be at once admitted that the question is a novel one. Our courts adjudicate primarily upon property interests. A husband has a pecuniary, a property interest in his wife. The law protects this right of property.
A father can recover damages against a man who seduces his daughter, but a mother can not recover for the seduction of a daughter. Why not? Is she not as dear to the mother as the father? Nay, dearer, by as much as a mother's love exceeds a father's. But she has not property in her, is not entitled to her wages; neither is a mother bound to support her children. The father is the head of the family, not the mother. He, by virtue of his headship, is legally entitled to the services of his family. The husband is head of the wife; not the wife of the husband.
But can a husband sue his wife if she refuses to support him out of her property, to give him her earnings, or keep her marriage contract? Not at all. Can a father sue his minor child that refuses him obedience and service? Not at all. And why is this? For the same reason that he cannot sue his flocks or his herds, his oxen and his cattle--they are his. His to command. He is responsible for and to them. He cannot sue his own. He can sue any one who takes them away; any one who keeps or harbors them; any one who injures them; because they are his own. But the wife does not own her husband; the child does not own the father, and, therefore, I hold that the child cannot sue for an injury to the father, nor the wife for an injury to the husband. There is in her no property right upon which to found the action. 'My conviction is that the wife looks to her husband alone for the fulfillment of his marriage vows. If he refuses her the support, protection and love which he pledged her, she applies to a court to enforce the claim against him. Every dollar he has, every penny of his earnings, all his arm can gain or his intellect can attain are subject to her right. But she looks to her husband
alone, the law compels her to do so. The husband enforces his claim to his wife by striking down every one who interferes with his right to her. He holds her and dares the world to meddle with her. The law protects him in holding. The law gives courage to his heart, strength to his arm in defending his position. But the wife looks to the husband. She relies upon his pledge and his promise, which the law will enforce, and she looks to that alone. The law does not permit her to go forth to smite the seducer of her husband, nor the man or woman who entices him away.
But as showing the rapid growth of public opinion in favor of the wife's equality of right with the husband, through the persistent rebellion of woman against established laws and usages of Church and States, thus forcing an advancing civilization upon the world, was a decision rendered 1891, twelve years later, in the state of Indiana. The case was that, of Leah Haynes, plaintiff, against Flora Knowles, defendant; a suit similar in character to the "Lucy Walker Case." Judge Elliot in Supreme Court of that State, on appeal from the decision of the Circuit Court of Dearborn County, reversed the finding of the lower court, deciding in favor of the right of a wife to sue for the alienation of her husband's affections. This decision, so contrary to common law, and to ordinary christian legislation for woman, is proof of an advancing civilization which does not look to the church for approval. Court decisions of this character establishing a precedent, are of far greater value in demonstrating the growth of a purer public sentiment, than are simple legislative victories upon school or municipal questions. They speak even more clearly than do the host of newly opened industries, freer opportunities for education, married woman's property
laws and similar legislation, of a growing recognition of woman's personal rights, and of a civilization founded upon the common rights of humanity, and no longer upon church authority.
The general spirit and letter of the christian laws of husband and wife was most fully carried out by a husband of the state of Missouri a few years since. Mrs. Olive Davenport of St. Louis, suing for a divorce, upon the ground that her husband required her to obey him in all things. "Davenport's rules for his Wife" were offered in evidence.
RULES FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF MY WIFE'S CONDUCT WHILE AWAY FROM ME, June 1, 1879:
First: Not to speak to any person or allow any person to speak to her on the car except the conductor and porter in the discharge of their duty.
Second: Go directly from depot in New York, to Mrs. Haight's house, and occupy room with mother and sleep only in room.
Third: Speak kindly and politely to "Mrs. Haight, but not in a friendly or familiar manner. Say to her you do not wish to meet any one in the house. Ask for a table to yourself, with only your family or go somewhere else.
Fourth: Never sing in the parlor or sing in your room when any person except your immediate family be present.
Fifth: Never leave mother day or night for five minutes at a time for any reason whatsoever. Do not walk, ride, or go anywhere without her, even with your own brother.
Sixth: Do not call on any person whatsoever, and allow no one who may call on you to see you unless they be your brothers or their wives. Do not speak to any person you may meet whom you have not known in the past.
Seventh: Write every night to me a full, truthful
and exact account of everything you have done, where you have been, to whom you have spoken, and whom you have seen. This must be done every night.
Let nothing but sickness or death prevent your keeping these rules, for I will excuse no breach on any account.
Do not leave New York even for one hour without my permission, except to Brooklyn or Harlem.
If my wife cannot keep these rules in word and spirit, I desire never to see her again.
BENJAMIN R. DAVENPORT.
The divorce suit showed the married pair to have been separated once before, Mrs. Davenport, unable to bear her husband's tyranny, returning to her mother's house. At that time her husband required her to eat only what he directed, and to wear only those clothes he bade her wear, selecting even the color of her ribbons. The only fault he had to find with her was that she "talked back," which has always been deemed an unpardonable crime in woman; one for which the Ducking Stool and Scold's Bridle were invented. After she left him, Mr. Davenport wrote affectionate letters to his wife, calling her the sweetest and best of women, imploring her to return. She relented and lived with him once more, but her husband again put his rules in force. She then sued for a divorce, which the court granted. Mr. Davenport's treatment of his wife is by no means exceptional. The following excerpt is from a letter in the Terra Haute, Ind., Mail, 1884.
An individual who considers himself a representative man in the city, and perhaps he is, said in the presence of several persons. "I went home at three o'clock this morning and found my wife sitting up. She burst into tears and asked me where I had been and why I
treated her in that manner? I just told her if she said another word I would leave the house; that as long as she had a comfortable home where she could spend her evenings it was none of her business where I spent mine. Now, if I did not provide for my family, it would be a different thing but so long as my wife was well provided for, she has no right to complain and I don't propose to allow it." These are the man's own words, and there are a great many men who hold the same opinions. If their wives protest because they drink, gamble and spend their nights away, they say. "You have a good home and enough to eat and wear; what more do you want?"
A lady of Richmond, Va., anxious to know from a legal source just what her rights as a wife were, consulted a lawyer of that city.
"Well, Madam," he replied, head thrown back, thumbs in armholes: "Well, Madam, you have a right to comfortable food, a fire to keep you warm, and two calico dresses a year. These are your legal rights; all beyond these are the gifts of your husband. Luxuries of food and clothing, journies and books, these are not yours by law; it remains with your husband to decide whether he will furnish them to you or not."
And this is Christian civilization for woman at the close of the nineteenth century of this era.
Although married women of the State of New York have enjoyed certain property rights since 1848, subsequent legislation in various ways increasing that power, it was not until 1882, that the Court of Appeals decided them to be the rightful owners of articles of personal adornment and convenience coming from their husbands, possessing power to bequeath them at death to their heirs. The same year the Supreme Court of that state decided that a wife may sue her husband for damages for assault and battery.
The influence of these decisions in recognizing woman's rights of person, especially that of the Supreme Court in deciding the right of the wife to punish the husband through the courts for brutal treatment, can scarcely be over-estimated. It opened a new era for woman:
First: A recognition of the wife's personality.
Second: Holding the husband responsible for his treatment of the wife.
Third: An acknowledgment of the wife's right to protection as against the husband. It destroyed, in this state the old femme covert teaching of Christianity, and recognized a wife as possessing the common rights of a human being.
The United States, making pretense of the greatest governmental freedom in the world, and in reality according it to men of every color and degree of intelligence or property, still denies such liberty to woman. In many of the states, the old restrictions of modern common law still prevail. There are states where the property of the wife upon marriage falls into the control of the husband, to do with as he alone pleases, the wife not retaining the right to its use or its management in anyway whatsoever. There are other states where the separate property of the husband and the wife is made communal, but in those states the control of this communal property is in the husband's hands. In most states the old restrictions still exist, and a woman cannot make a will; cannot act as executrix or administratrix; can neither sue nor be sued. In the largest proportion of the states in which the separate property of the wife is recognized, the husband still has the advantage in heirship. In less than one-fifth of the states has the wife the same
control over the children of the marriage as the husband. In the remaining four-fifths and over, the father is assumed to be sole owner of the children, who can be bound out, willed or given away without the consent or even knowledge of the mother. Can barbarism go farther than this?
So that even in this year 1-892, within eight years of the Twentieth Christian century, we find the largest proportion of the United States still giving to the husband custody of the wife's person; the exclusive control of the children of the marriage; of the wife's personal and real estate; the absolute right to her labor and all products of her industry. In no state does the law recognize the legal existence of the wife, unless she relinquishes her own name, upon marriage, taking that of her husband, thus sinking her identity in his; the old femme covert,--or covered woman,-idea of the law books under state and church. That woman is an individual with the right to her own separate existence, has not yet permeated the thought of church, state or society. A letter to the American press from Rev. Robert Laird Collyer, while re-visiting his native country a few years since, gives the unbiased views of a native-born English clergyman, as to woman's position in that land of christian civilization, the husband being represented as king of the household, the wife as his dutiful subject. The letter was headed:
MARRIAGE CUSTOMS IN ENGLAND.
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THE MAN KING OF THE HOUSE, THE WOMAN HIS DUTIFUL SUBJECT.
The man is the king of the English household, and the wife is only the prime minister. There is no confusion
or overlapping of authority. The will of the husband is law. He has not only the place of honor but of ease. The arrangements of the house, the company entertained, and the service employed, all have respect to his wishes and to his convenience. The wife conducts the affairs of state for the king. She has her household and, more than likely, her personal allowance, and she renders a strict account of stewardship either weekly or monthly.
The wife's personal expenditures are less, much less than the husband's. In many instances he will spend more on his dress as a man than she does as a woman, for the rule is, the Englishman is the best-dressed man and the English woman is the worst dressed in the civilized world.
"The will of the husband is law," the wife possessing no freedom, but renders "a strict account of her stewardship, either weekly or monthly." Kicks, blows, wounds inflicted upon the wife under the countenance of the civil law; the will of the husband as undisputed law; her person, her property, her children under his sole control; what is the condition of the wife in England to day but one of degraded slavery? That every woman does not endure all these wrongs is simply because she has a lenient master. Like Adolph under St. Clair, in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," she has freedom because a good master allows her to take it; under a bad master she suffers as Adolph when falling into the hands of Legree. Personal rights are the basis of all other rights; personal slavery is the root of all other wrongs. Neither freedom of the intellect or conscience can exist without freedom of person. Thus civilization has not yet existed, that which has borne the name having been but the thought of the few; the civilization of the present is not enlightened it belongs to the barbarous ages; authority and not justice is the rule. To the present time the lenient
sentence imposed upon the English husband who beats his wife is such as to invite a repetition of the offense; knocking a wife down, beating and bruising her with a poker are rights secured to the husband under present English law.
A man named Hefferon, at Rotherham, finding his wife had gone to some place of which he disapproved, knocked her down and beat her violently with a poker. She bled from both ears, her throat was scratched, and she was badly bruised on her back and arms. Mr. justice Day practically told the jury to acquit. He said the case ought not to have come before them, and he suggested that the prisoner had been merely exercising that control over his wife which was still sanctioned by the law of England.43 The jury acquitted promptly, as directed.44
To such extent is this abuse of woman under law as to have called forth a vigorous article in the "Westminster Review,"45 under head of "The Law in Relation to Woman."
There is another cruel injustice to woman, which is so notorious as to have become a mere truism. It is referred to almost daily, yet familiarity has bred such contempt, that it goes on unchecked and unabated. We refer to the monstrously lenient sentences passed upon husbands who assault and beat their wives. In one of our criminals courts recently, two men and a woman were sentenced to six years penal servitude for stealing a watch by force, while a man who assaulted and greviously wounded his wife and mother-in-law
with a reaping hook, got eighteen months' imprisonment. An instance occurred the other day in a small municipal court. A man pleaded guilty to assaulting and kicking his wife and another woman with effusion of blood and injury to their persons. He was fined a pound for each female. Shortly after two men were convicted of injuring public seats belonging to the municipality, by knocking them about, etc., they were fined two pounds each. Clearly, therefore, in the eves of this magistrate a municipal seat is worth exactly twice the value of a woman. Parallel sentences to these may be seen almost daily in the newspapers in any part of the United Kingdom. In the police courts, wife-beaters often get off with a few days imprisonment, sometimes with an admonition. If it be argued that theft is such a common offense that it is necessary that it should be punished with greater severity than cruelty, we rejoice that the argument applies quite as forcibly to wife-beating. which, unfortunately is as common an offence as can be found among a certain class of society.46
The comparison here shown between the penalty of criminally assaulting and wounding women, not alone the man's wife but also her aged mother, most forcibly shows the entire disregard of Christian England in the last half of the nineteenth century, for the personal rights of all women. No proof is needed other than such decisions; nor is the United States far in advance. Within ten months from the formation of the "Protective Agency for Women and Children," organized in Chicago, April 1886, it had investigated nearly one hundred complaints. Although in a majority of these cases the a agency was successful in securing redress, it yet found there was not legal remedy where
the husband and father failed to provide for his family, and that in cases of crimes against women, its efforts were crippled by the disposition of police justices to regard such crimes as venial offenses, either dismissing such cases upon frivolous pretexts or imposing light sentences. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate woman's degraded condition in the nineteenth century of christian civilization, than the almost universal demand for laws securing better protection to women and children. These two classes, unrecognized by church or state, are still largely. without that pale of protection man has reared for himself. January 23, 1886, the "Inter Ocean," gave more than six columns to an account of the dreadful crimes committed against women and children in Chicago alone, within the short period of the preceding four months. It also showed the ease with which criminals of that class escaped punishment, not alone from laxity. of protective legislation for their victims but still more from the tendency of magistrates to more crimes perpetrated by men against women; this condition being the natural result of the teaching of the church in regard to woman. In the city of Boston, 1884, the Chief of Police, testified that there were at least fifteen cases of brutal wife-beating in that city every week, and this is but one type of the injuries perpetrated upon women for which the teachings of christianity are directly responsible. So common this crime and so ineffective all efforts to stop it, that the State of Delaware has re-established the long abolished whipping-post, for offenders of this character, thus acknowledging christian civilization to he a failure, and resorting to the retributive punishment common among barbarians. But the remedy for crimes against
women, and for the indifference of magistrates, does not lie in the punishment of the offenders, but in different sentiments in regard to woman in both church and state. Their teachings are the real foundations of the evil. Within the past ten years, the judge of an English Court decided that the flogging of a wife in the presence of her son did not constitute cruelty, sustaining his decision by reference to Blackstone and other learned christian jurists. It was during that same year (1884) that the chief of the Boston police testified to the many cases of brutal wife beating in that "Athens of America," every week. So common this form of assault that a bill was introduced in the Massachusetts lower House for the punishment of wife beaters, by a public whipping of not less than ten or more than thirty lashes.47 For those refractory wives of mediæval christian England, whom whippings failed to subdue, other punishments were invented; such as the "Ducking Stool," the "Scold's Bridle," etc.48 The Scold's Bridle, also known as the Witches Bridle and the Brank, was an extremely painful method of torture, although not as absolutely dangerous to life as the Ducking Stool, yet fastened in the mouth, its sharp edges pressing down upon the tongue, if the "Brawling Woman" attempted to speak her tongue was cut and the torture great.49 An American clergyman describing in a public lecture an "ancient machine" seen by him in christian England,
"for curing a scolding wife," accompanied his description by the very clerical intimation that it could now be made by an ordinary blacksmith. Two curved plates of bronze conformed to the shape of the head, were delicately hinged and provided with hooks to place in the corners of the mouth. When adjusted, the machine was buckled back of the head.50
The Ducking Stool51 consisted of a chair securely fastened upon a long plank balanced upon upright standards, and so arranged that the victim could be launched sixteen or eighteen feet into the pond or stream, while the executioner of the sentence stood upon dry ground. The back and arms of the chair were engraved with representations of devils torturing scolds. The culprit securely fastened in this chair, so confined as to be entirely helpless, was sometimes drowned; the chair being plunged once, twice, or thrice in some muddy stream or slimy pond. The suggestive and usual place of storing the Ducking Stool, when not in use, was the church-yard. Almost every English town of importance possessed one; their use was continued until the present century. The Leominster
Ducking Stool, still preserved, was used in 1809, by order of the magistrates, upon a woman named Jane Corran, who received her punishment near Kenwater, Bridge. As late as 1817 Sarah Leeke was wheeled around town in this chair, although the lowness of the stream prevented the ducking52 she would otherwise have received. Railing and scolding or "answering back," were deemed crimes on the part of the wife, who, "commanded to be under obedience," was expected silently to submit to oppression of every kind. That she did not--that she dared revolt by words--that women in sufficient number to cause the invention of such an instrument, were rebellious in midst of the horrid oppression created by the church, speaks well for the womanly nature and thrills the heart with admiration the same as when old Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, refused to lay her head on the block at the executioner's mandate, declaring that as she was innocent, she would not voluntarily place herself in position for death. While England has the shame of originating the Ducking Stool, the "Pilgrim Fathers," fleeing from religious persecution, failed not to take with them the implements of cruelty used in the domestic oppression of woman. The Ducking Stool, and the "Stool of Penitence" figure in the early annals of New England. Upon the latter, the Scarlet Letter of shame affixed upon her breast, the unmarried mother was forcibly seated beneath the pulpit, under public gaze, while her companion in sin protected by church and state, perchance held his place among the elders in the jury box, or upon. the bench as the judge who had condemned her. Old Colonial legislation makes us acquainted with the various
methods in use for punishing the free speech of women in this country two hundred years since.
"A Law to Punish Babbling Women" enacted by the General Assembly, of Virginia, 1662.
Whereas, many babbling women slander and scandalize their neighbors, for which their poor husbands are often involved in chargable and vexatious suits and cost in great damages. Be it therefore enacted by the authority aforesaid, that in actions of slander caused by the wife, after judgment passed for damages, the wife shall be punished by ducking; and if the slander be so enormous as to be judged at greater damages than 500 lbs. of tobacco, then the wife to suffer ducking for each 500 pounds of tobacco adjudged against the husband, if he refuses to pay the tobacco.
As this was the state in which wives were bought in exchange for tobacco, it is not surprising to find the penalty of her free speech to be paid in tobacco, the wife to suffer ducking for each 500 pounds penalty in excess of the first. Massachusetts was not long in following the example of Virginia, and in 1672 ten years later, passed
A LAW FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF SCOLDS IN MASSACHUSETTS.
Whereas, there is no express punishment (by law hitherto established) affixed to the evil practice of sundry persons by exhorbitancy of tongue in reviling and scolding; it is therefore ordered that all such persons convicted before any court or magistrate that hath proper cognizance of the case, shall be gagged, set in a ducking stool and dipped over bead and ears three times, in some convenient place of fresh or salt water, as the court or magistrate shall judge meet.53
Nor must we believe that the punishment of women
for use of the tongue, is of past ages. Even in the United States, women are to this day sometimes arraigned for free speaking. Laws to punish "babbling women" enacted in colonial days are still in force. It is but a few years since a women of St. Louis was arrested and brought before a magistrate as a common scold.54 In the State of New Jersey, 1884, a woman was brought before the courts, convicted, on the old grounds of being a "common scold" and fined $25, and costs. Death not infrequently accompanied the use of the ducking stool, the poor gagged victim, her hands securely fastened, being utterly unable to help herself. But we do not learn that either the magistrate or the husband was held responsible to the law for such death. The sufferers, like those under the catholic inquisition of the fourteenth century, were deemed outside of the pale of sympathy or human rights, and the devils depicted upon the back of ducking stools as laying hold of their victims, were conceded to have but taken their rightful prey.
Such has been part of Christian legislation for women in America, and yet she is told to see how much Christianity has done for her. To such extent has this church doctrine of man's superiority to
woman, and the right of the husband to control of the wife proceeded, that many husbands believe they possess the right to sell their wives. Since the reformation her sale in the market-place as an animal, held by a halter about her waist, has been recognized by English law even as late as the present century. Although forbidden, the practice of wife-sale is still occasionally found both in England and in America. But when the law takes cognizance of such a sale its penalty is visited upon the innocent wife and not upon the guilty husband. The "English Women's Suffrage Journal" of December 1st. 1883. reported such a case.
November 13th. 1883, Betsy Wardle, was indicted for having on the 4th of September, 1882, married George Chusmall, her former husband being alive. The prisoner pleaded guilty, but said her former husband gave her no peace and sold her for a quart of beer. She imagined this was a legal transaction, and that she could marry again. The second husband was asked how he came to marry the prisoner. He answered "Well, I bout her." The judge said, "You are not fool enough to suppose you can buy another man's wife?" on which he replied, "I was."
Mr. Swift asked his lordship not to pass a severe sentence. The prisoner imagined that because she had been sold for sixpence there was nothing criminal in marrying again. His lordship said it was absolutely necessary to pass some punishment on her to teach her that a man had no more right to sell his own wife than his neighbor's wife, or cow, or ox, or ass, or anything that was his.
The reason given by the judge for punishing the woman, is extremely suggestive of woman's condition under the law. The wife who had been sold, the innocent victim of this masculine transaction, was sentenced to a week's imprisonment with hard labor, while the man who sold her and the man who bought her
escaped without punishment or censure. The judge in quoting the tenth commandment, graded the wife with the ox and the ass in the belongings of a man; the decision thus ranking her with the cattle of the stable.53 To add to the infamy of this trial, it was the occasion of much unseemly jesting and laughter. It took place at the Liverpool Assizes before Justice Denham. His judgment paralleled the decision of the
"Seney Trial" in Ohio, 1879. The selling a wife as a cow56 in the market place was by no means uncommon during the early part of the century in England. Ashton57 gives numerous instances of such sales.
The laws of England are those of Christianity based upon the theological teaching of man's superiority over woman; she is his servant, subordinate to him in all things, a condition except where removed by special statute, existing to-day.58 Returned missionaries who refer to the wife as waiting upon the husband at table in heathen countries not eating until he is satisfied, as proof of the different customs brought about by christianity, should inform themselves of the condition of the Christian wife for nearly a thousand years in what is regarded as the foremost Christian country in the world. He will then have learned that circumstances
quite contradictory to ecclesiasticism finally permitted the English wife to assume a seat at the table with her husband, a place she was not allowed to take for many hundred years after the introduction of christianity Into that island. In every country where christianity exists, women now are, and during all the years of its civil power have been, legislated for as slaves. They have been imprisoned for crimes which if committed by a man were punished by simply branding on the hand; they have been condemned to be buried alive for other crimes which if committed by a man, were atoned-for by the payment of a fine. Having first robbed woman of her property and denied her the control of her own earnings, the Christian religion allowed her to suffer the most agonizing form of death, a living burial, for lack of that very money of which she had been civilly and ecclesiastically robbed. The law so far controlled family life that for many hundred years it bound to servile labor, all unmarried women between the ages of eleven and forty. The father possessed absolute control over the marital destiny of his daughter.
Instances of wife sale are not uncommon in the United States, and although the price is usually higher than that given for English wives, reaching from three hundred to four thousand dollars, still. as low a sum as five cents has been recorded. A prosperous resident of Black Hills, Dakota, is said to have begun his business start in life through sale of his wife. If a wife is a husband's property the same as a cow, it is manifestly unjust that legal punishment of any kind should fall upon her because of her master's action. She is irresponsible. The right of sale logically goes with the right of beating, of taking the wife's property
and holding her earnings, of owning her children, and she should be exempt from punishment for her own sale. In a much larger measure we find the same rule of punishing wives for the crimes of husbands, enforced in the United States, in the penalty of dis-franchisement of the women of Utah for the polygamy of the men of Utah. And this penalty was extended not alone to the wives of polygamous husbands--themselves possessing but one husband--victims alike of church and state, but the non-Mormon, or "Gentile Women" of that territory, were also disfranchised by the XLIX. Congress of the United States because of the polygamy of a portion of the Mormon men; all women of that territory were deprived of their vested rights, rights that had been in existence for seventeen years, because of the crimes of men.59 Against this injustice, the Woman Suffragists of the country protested through means of a committee in a
MEMORIAL.
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To the President of the United States:
The National Woman Suffrage Association, through this committee, respectfully present to you a protest against that clause of the anti-polygamy measure passed by congress, which, whether in the Edmunds bill of the senate or the Tucker substitute of the house, disfranchises the non-polygamous women of Utah.
The clause relating to the disfranchisement of women has no bearing on the general merits of the end sought to be attained by the measure, since Mormon men are the majority of the voters of the territory.
The non-polygamous women of Utah have committed no crime. Dis-franchisement is reserved by
the United States government for arch traitors. Justice forbids that such a penalty should be inflicted on innocent women.
Non-polygamous Mormon women and the Christian women of Utah being thus disfranchised--the former for their opinions and the latter for the opinions of the former--a precedent is established subversive of the fundamental principles of our government, and threatening the security of all citizens.
If congress deems it necessary to disfranchise citizens because of injurious beliefs, discrimination between sexes is manifestly unjust.
It bas been held by the foremost statesmen of the nation that the right of suffrage once exercised, becomes a vested right which cannot be taken away. Gratz Brown once said, in the senate of the United States, that if the idea that suffrage could be taken away at pleasure once crystallized in the minds of the people, it would "ring the death knell of American liberty." Mr. Vest, of Missouri, on the 25th, day of this month, said, on the floor of the senate: "Suffrage once given can never be taken away. Legislatures and conventions may do everything else; they never can do that. When any particular class or fraction of the community is once invested with this privilege it is fixed, accomplished and eternal."
Thus every argument for justice, equal legislation and the safety of our republican form of government calls for the defeat of this clause.
We, therefore, respectfully urge you, as guardian of the rights of all American citizens, to veto any measure coming before you which disfranchises the women of Utah.
LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE,
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE,
CAROLINE GILKEY ROGERS,
MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL,
CLARA B. COLBY,
SARAH MILLER, p. 345
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT,
HARRIETTE R. SHATTUCK,
LOUISA SOUTHWORTH,
Committee
This memorial, supplemented by personal argument from the committee demonstrating the political dangers connected with such a denial of vested rights, together with the greater injustice of punishing women for the crimes of men, was met by reply of the President that as great changes were frequently made in bills before their final passage, he had as yet not given the subject much thought; promising, however to give it his fullest attention whenever brought before him. The method taken by the president to avoid responsibility of decision, is notable as he neither signed nor vetoed the bill, but allowed it to become law through such non-action. Crimes of omission being parallel with those of commission, the women of the United States can but hold Grover Cleveland equally guilty with the XLIX. Congress in punishing women for the crimes of men.
The Code of England, from which that of the United States is largely borrowed, was the outgrowth of Christianity, based upon a belief in man's superiority and woman's subordination to him as entering every relation of life. All legislation was class; the line was sex. During the early and middle ages man exhibited an antagonism towards woman,60 which if not wholly created by religious belief was strenuously
fostered by the church. Man's basest, passion, love of power, was appealed to and he was assured by what he had been trained to regard as indisputable authority, that God had ordained his rule over woman. A quick response met all such priestly teaching. Christianity has ever been a religion of the emotions rather than of the reason. The former was cultivated; the latter bitterly condemned. The church has ever found its most powerful enemy in reason, hence the exercise of reason has ever been a crime in her eyes.
During the Christian ages the different code of morals for man and woman has created infinite wrong. Open and notorious vice among both churchmen and laymen passed unreproved, but an heiress forfeited her possessions by unchastity, and wily plans were laid to thus gain possession of her property, the betrayer receiving payment from the guardian, whose tool he was, for his perfidy.61 To this moral code we trace the present legal condition of girls, daughters having no status in the courts in case of betrayal. The father alone, as master and owner, can sue for loss of her services, while the injury to herself is passed by, even upon so momentous a question as the paternity of a child born out of wedlock.
Many of the most flagrant wrongs perpetrated against woman can be traced to a denial of a right of ownership, beginning with the denial of her right to herself. Even the Salic law which in France was used to bar the succession of woman to the throne, was not specifically or primarily in favor of males; it was a property law growing out of the patriarchal idea of property in woman. Under Christian form of
marriage, woman was transferred to another family whose name she took. She not only became the property of her husband but all real or personal estate which she possessed, also became his. Thus her property went to the enrichment of another family. Her home was, no longer with her own people, but where her husband chose to make it. Salic law derived its name from Sala, a house. Salic land, said Montesquieu, was the land belonging to the house.62 At time of its adoption the line of descent was male. Under it during the middle ages when a daughter married, she received merely a chaplet of roses. Thenceforth, her interests were elsewhere, and her children became part of another family; she was entirely lost to the family of her birth. As she was no longer a part of it she did not receive inheritance. "It was not a subject of affection but gens."
Guizot with a fine sense of irony, termed Salic law essentially a penal code. Its application to woman was incontestibly penal. In France its action has been most pronounced. Robertson speaks of the Salic law as the most venerable monument of French jurisprudence, although the real period of its birth has never yet been fully acknowledged. While during the struggle of Phillippa de Valours, and Edward III. for the crown of France, this law was invoked to prevent the succession of Phillippa, yet we know that in Gaul during the time of Cæser, mothers had sole authority over their children, even boys remaining in entire charge of the mother until old enough for instruction in arms. Wives also possessed property rights, upon marriage the husband adding the same
amount of property he had received with his wife. This was kept as a separate fund, the survivor taking the whole. Hallum designated the contest between Phillippa and Edward as in every way remarkable, but especially on account of its result in the exclusion of woman from the succession,62 then first suggested. It was the Latin races rather than the Scandinavian or Teutonic that first essentially degraded woman. The Riparian Franks, pre-eminent as lovers of liberty, were the first who broke away from the rule of this law. Both the Scandinavians and Teutons possessed prophetic women or priestesses to whom the highest deference was shown. The Teutonic races were early noted for the high respect in which they held women, a respect closely bordering upon veneration. The greatest deference was shown to their opinions even upon war, the chief business of men's lives. Victoria received the title of "Mother of Camps," and was an especially venerated person. Veleda by superior genius, directed the counsels of the nation and for nine years prevented the progress of the imperial armies of Rome. The most momentous questions of state and of religion were submitted to woman's divine judgment.
The relation between the wrongs of woman and her non-ownership of property, and of herself, are very complicated. The custom of Marquette originated from the theory of property in woman; the Suzerain or lord possessing not only a certain property right in his male vassals, but a double right to the woman who as a bride became the property of his vassal. Thus Marquette
was the outgrowth of the husband's property right in his wife, and a secondary result of man's assumed right of property in woman. In France, where the Salic law possessed greatest strength we find the custom of marquette most prevalent. Next to marquette, the law known as "Mund" or "'Mundium" offered the greatest indignity to woman, and in some respects may be called more vile. While the baseness of marquette took its victims from a class beneath the lord in social standing, Mundium entered the family, the father selling his daughter to such wooer as he chose, or from whom he received the greatest payment, entirely regardless of the wishes of the daughter herself. The Salic law seemed to have been founded on the principle of the Mund, as under it a sum was paid by the husband to the family of the bride in consideration of the transference of the authority they possessed over her, to the husband, and this payment was known as "Mundium" and the bride as a "Mund" bought woman. In Denmark, to which country the custom of mundium extended, her appellation was "mundi-keypt-krom," signifying a mund bought woman. At that period descent was reckoned from the father, to whom alone the children were held to be related, and his relinquishment of authority by sale of his daughter, transferred her relationship from her father to her husband, and she thus became a component part of another family. She no longer belonged to the family of her birth, but to that of her purchaser. The Franks were the first to break Salic customs and to permit a father to settle an estate upon his daughter and her children.64 Under the law of Gavelkind as it existed in Great Britain, daughters never inherited, although
the rights of even an illegitimate son was recognized as equal to those of legitimate sons. By the laws of gavelkind, property could not descend to women, but the County of Kent possessed more freedom than in any other part of England. There was a custom of privilege annexed to all lands of this kind in Kent, among them, that the wife should be endowed with a moiety; gavelkind land was devisable by will. Ordinarily in gavelkind, property was kept in male hands, descending from father to son. The very name gavelkind is said to bear this signification, the word Kynd in dutch signifying a male child, thus gife eal cyn, means give all to the son. Its modern signification is the custom of partition of property among males alone, or the greatest share to the oldest son.
Lord Coke looked upon the practice of gavelkind among the Irish as a mark of their descent from the ancient Britons. At this period wives were not entitled to dower, thus in respect to property, all women of the family were equally disinherited. But it was the opinion of Lord Holt that by the Common Law, both before and after the conquest, all the children, both male and female inherited both the real and the personal estate, and in like proportion. But in the reign of Henry I. daughters, in case there were sons, began to be excluded from the real estate. These laws, so essentially Salic, it can readily be seen, originated in the mundium. Passing as a mund woman, into another family, the succession of property to her under this slave45 condition, was contrary to sound domestic policy. To bestow property upon a daughter
was to enrich another family at the expense of the one from whom the slave-wife was purchased, and her disinheritance was but a logical result of her legal condition. If we admit the premises we must admit the wisdom of her exclusion from succession.
It is curious to note the difference in woman's position which possession of property has ever made. This difference especially noticeable during Feudalism in case of an heiress with fiefs, is no less so, at the present day. It is a mark of an unripe civilization that the rights of property have ever been regarded before those of person. Walker66 over sixty years since, recognized the power of property in ameliorating woman's condition, then declaring that the first step toward an acknowledgment of her equality, must be a recognition of her rights of property; his broad knowledge of ancient law having taught him the close connection of property rights and personal rights. During many ages battle was done for possessions and the protection of what a man owned. Even the war of the American Revolution was begun for property rights rather than for those of person. The Stamp Act and the tax on tea roused the Colonies to resistance. A woman first spoke the words "inherent rights," and by the time nationality was proclaimed the colonists had learned far enough to say that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." Consent is an important consideration in all questions affecting humanity, and is one in which woman is most deeply concerned. At close of the civil war Frederick Douglas advised colored men to get property. He had not failed to learn the connection between property and personal rights. Since Mississippi, in 1839,67
Pennsylvania and New York in 1848, and Rhode Island about the same period, secured property rights to married women, there has been a great and rapidly increasing change in woman's position, and as she constantly enters new industries, earning and controlling money, we find her as constantly more free and respected. When the English "Married Women's Property Bill," based upon that of New York, became a law a few years since, the "London Times," with the perspicuity of our great thinker, Walker, said:
"It probably portends indirect social effects much greater than the disposition of property, and it may in the end pulverize some ideas which have been at the basis of English life. Measures which affect the family economy are apt to be 'epoch making'; and probably when the most talked of bills of the session are clean forgotten this obscure measure may be bearing fruit. "
The exception of married women in the demand for political rights by the women of England, owes its origin to the old monkish theory that marriage is debasement, and celibate life in either man or woman a much higher condition. After the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, during the civil war, John Stuart Mill declared that married women was the only class of slaves remaining on earth. As long as a condition of religious or political subjection continues for her, a belief in the sanctity of womanhood cannot exist and crimes against her will be lightly punished. The most debased men of England and the United States, if arrested for cruelty to wives, agree in the indignant questioning protest: "Is she not my own that I should punish her as I please?"
Such has been the power of the priesthood over the consciences and lives of men, that we find whatever is, bad in the laws, either directly or indirectly traceable to
their influence.68 Our Anglo Saxon forefathers were early amenable to religious authority and for a period of many hundred years clerical influence was exceedingly powerful over them.69 The church is responsible for the severity with which the simplest infraction, of law was visited upon the most humble and helpless classes, and the greater penalty awarded to those least capable of resistance. It was for the free man of low estate, for the slave, and for woman that the greatest atrocities were reserved. If a free woman stole she was to be thrown down a precipice or drowned, which Pike regards as the origin of dragging witches through a pond. If the thief was a slave and stole from any but her own master, she was condemned to be burnt alive, and her fellow slaves were compelled to assist at the incineration.70 None dared to speak a good word for women in opposition to church teachings. All her instincts were held as evil. As the law and the father robbed the daughter, so the law and the church alike robbed the family. By ancient English law, as before noted, every person who made a will was bound to remember his lord with the best thing he possessed, and afterwards the church with the next best thing, but as the church gained power it took supreme place in the testament.71 The peasant was looked upon as but slightly above the cattle he cared for. A certain degree of sameness in material and intellectual conditions everywhere existed. The masses over christendom were alike under bondage of thought
and modes of action; social life showed no marked change for many hundred years. Freedom was an unknown word, or if by chance spoken, found itself under the ban of the church and the state. justice was unthought of; the only question being, "has the church ordered it?" A complete system of espionage existed under both church and state. As late as the time of Alfred, in England, every nine men were under charge of a tenth. No man could work outside of his father's employment to which he was bound; at nine o'clock curfew bell, all fires and lights were extinguished. A mechanic could not find work outside of his own village; monasteries and castles contained all there was of power and comfort. As late as the reformation we find the condition of English society lax and immoral. Henry the VIII. was a fair type of the nation; the court, the camp, the church were all in line moulding the sentiment of community. Although Henry had declared the church to be an entire and perfect body within itself, possessing authority to regulate and decide all things without dependence upon any foreign power--meaning the pope,--he did not fall to generally define the supremacy of the church as united with and dependent upon the temporal government of the realm; the king, instead of the pope, becoming its spiritual head. Many new and restrictive canons were promulgated. Under Henry the prohibitory laws regarding nearness of relationship in marriage exceeded those of the Catholic Church. It is but a few decades since these prohibitions commencing with "a man shall not marry his grand-mother;" "a woman shall not marry her grand-father;" and extending down to remote cousinship,--were to be found printed upon the fly leaves of every New Testament.78
For a long period after the reformation, English women were not permitted to read the Bible, a statute of the Eighth Henry prohibiting "women and others of low degree," from its use.73 Apparently for the purpose of preventing conversation among women regarding the tyranny under which they were kept, a law was passed forbidding the residence of more than one woman in a cottage, and this after the Protestant religion had been confirmed as that of the realm. As late as Elizabeth, 31-2. it was held a "heinous offence" for a cottager to give a home to his own widowed mother or homeless sister. The especial criminality of thus "harboring" one's female relatives lay in the fact of their being "masterless." As late as the XVI. century the law still entered houses, and magistrates bound out to servile labor all women between eleven and forty years of age.74 The degradation of women under the reformation was still more gross than under catholicism. The worship of the Virgin Mary, and the canonization of many women as saints in the Romish Calendar, threw a certain halo about womankind that is impossible to discover in the Protestant Church, or since the reformation.
The church of whatever name taught woman's innate depravity was so great that forcible restraint alone prevented her from plunging into vice. While Christian women outside the Levant were not confined in a harem under watch and ward, yet various methods of restraint
have been used in christian lands within the past few centuries. Among the most noted of these, the "Chastity Belt," three are yet known to be in existence. One is preserved in the museum at Cluny, France, another is in keeping of the Castle of Rosenburg, Copenhagen; the third was exhibited in the United States, 1884, by Dr. Heidmann's traveling museum. According to tradition the one preserved at Cluny was in use during the XVI. Century, in reign of Francis I., who ascended the throne January 1, 1515; the remaining two in Denmark under Christian IV. in the seventeenth century. At this period Denmark was greatly agitated by a religious war, which, however, did not include woman's freedom in its demands. These belts are hideous proofs of the low estimate in which woman's moral character was held, and equally striking evidence of man's freedom and immorality.
The disrespect shown by the clergy towards marriage as compared with the celibate condition, has influenced thought in many singular directions. England's married women under the combined influence of church and state, deprecate the claim Of suffrage for themselves, although asking it for single women and widows.75
The bill referred to in the Memorial, 49 Vic, extended Parliamentary franchise to single women alone.
Second Sec. For all purposes of and incidental to the voting for members to serve in Parliament, women shall have the same rights as men, and all enactments relating to, or concerned in such election shall be construed accordingly. Provided that nothing in this Act contained shall enable women under coverture to be registered or to vote at such elections.
The word "coverture" expresses a married woman's subordinate condition, both civilly and religiously.76 It means, under the power of the husband; controlled by the husband; possessing neither personal nor individual rights; a being not allowed to use her own judgment unless such judgment is ratified by the husband. Under coverture, the wife can make no contract without the husband's consent, the law holding her incompetent. A woman under coverture is an irresponsible being except in case of crime. When married women refuse to seek the same freedom for themselves they ask for single women, they practically endorse the judgment of church and state in favor of celibacy. When married women thus ignore their equality with single women, they practically condemn that relation, practically affirm the superior purity of a celibate condition.77 The low estimate of women in England as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is shown in its literature, especially that emanating from its great universities. The betrayal of women formed the basis of story and song; not content with portraying their own vices, these men did not hesitate to put a plea against chastity in the mouths of mere children. Of such character is "A Ballad" emanating from this source, but professing to have been "composed by Miss Nelly Pentwenzle, a young lady of 15," to be sung to the tune of "Scraps of Pudding. "
A periodical entitled "The Old Woman's Magazine" printed in London, without date, but from internal evidence shown to belong to the latter part of the eighteenth century, forcibly protests against the destruction of innocence, which was the chief amusement of the men of this period. It asks:
Why should it be less a crime to deceive an inexperienced girl whose youth renders it impossible that she should know the world, than it would be to lead a blind man to the brink of a precipice?
Thus the laws and customs of family and social life, the literature of different periods, the habits of thought, the entire civilization of Christian centuries, has tended to the debasement of woman and the consequent destruction of moral life. The world stands where it does to-day upon all these great questions, biased by a non-recognition through the ages of the sanctity of womanhood, and a disbelief in her rights of person within the marriage relation, or without; taught, as this lesson has been, by the church, and emphasized by the laws of the state.
There have ever been many severities connected with dower in England. By old law if a widow married within a year from the death of her husband she forfeited her dower.78 This law accounts for the
superstitious sentiment as to ill-luck following the woman who ire-marries within a year and a day. Like the freedom of the Roman "Usus" kept up by a three days' absence in each year, this extra day of the widow's mourning seems to have been added as security for the dower; while under the most ancient law of Christian Europe, the widow lost her dower if she married again, the Turks recognizing the greater freedom of a widow, pay her who re-marries, a sum for parting with her liberty.
The general rule of dower79 held that when arranged at time of marriage, although the husband then possessed but a small portion of freehold and afterwards made great acquisitions, if no mention of new purchases was made at time of such arrangement, the widow could not claim more than the third part of the land possessed by the husband at time of marriage. In like manner if a husband had no land and endowed his wife with chattels, money, or other things, afterwards making great acquisitions in land, she could not claim dower in such acquisition. Neither could a woman dispose of her dower during her husband's life. This was quite unlike the freedom enjoyed by a wife in ancient Wales where the dower became absolutely her own, to dispose of as she pleased. Under English law the husband during the lifetime of his wife could give or sell or alien her dower in any way that it pleased him to do, and the wife in this, as in all other things, was obliged to conform to the husband's will. The wife's dower right in personal property can be aliened by the husband in the United
States. During the wife's lifetime he may give, sell, or in any way dispose of the whole of his personal property absolutely, and the wife has no redress; she is not held as having any right, title or interest in it as long as her husband lives.80 The husband can also alien his real estate, subject only to his wife's dower right in case she survive him; should she decease before him she has no power over it. The law in England, as laid down by Glanville, was that in case the wife withheld her consent to the sale of property she might claim her dower after her husband's death, but this could only have had reference to real property, and is the same in the United States. If the wife withholds her consent to the sale of real estate, it still can he sold away from her and she thus be deprived of a home. It is merely subject to her dower right in the value of the property at time of sale, and in case she survives her husband; should she die first, she has no redress. Sales of this character are constantly made, at a small discount, upon chance of the wife's non-survival, As dower right in real estate does not invest the wife with its ownership in fee, but merely the use of one-third during her natural life, it will readily be seen how very small is the wife's protection in dower-right even in this last half of the nineteenth century. Bracton gives two reasons why the English husband could sell the dower assigned to the wife without her consent:
First, Because a wife has no freehold in a dower previous to its being assigned to her. Second, because she cannot gainsay her husband.
As late as the last quarter of the present century, the learned Professor of Jurisprudence of Cambridge University, attempted to prove that it was no reproach
against woman's intellect that she was prohibited from making a contract during marriage; altogether failing in this attempt, he clearly succeeded in proving woman's condition of pecuniary and personal slavery in the marriage relation. He said:
It is not an imputation on the wife's experience or strength of mind, but is solely grounded on her not being assumed by common law to have sufficient command of her purse or of her future actions wherewith to procure materials for making a contract. The legal presumption then is, that she did not intend to make one, and therefore the allegation that she did make a contract would imply on the face of it a fraud.81
The legal presumption that the wife has neither sufficient command of her purse or of her future actions to guarantee an intent of making a contract. needs no further assertion to prove her enslavement. The person neither possessing control of property, or of their own actions is a slave, regardless of or under what verbiage of law or custom that condition is represented. Attempts are constantly made both in the United States and England to take from woman the dower right now accruing to them. During 1883, an Act was passed taking from English wives all dower right, giving the husband power to bar the wife in all cases; and scarcely a legislature convenes in the United States that has not a similar bill introduced before it. As dower rights increase the complication of land transfer, just as soon as the law which gave the husband the power to bar this right became operative in England, conveyancers began to insert a debaring clause in every deed of conveyance, thus systematically despoiling, the wife even when the husband might not otherwise have been so disposed.
As "masterless women," widows in England have received similar contemptuous treatment as accorded single women, to whom that country long showed such barbarity. It is curiously noted by Alexander82 that Moses placed widows in the same rank as harlots and profane women.83 The law of tenancy by courtesy, which gives a husband rights in the separate property of a wife, is very unjust when compared with the dower rights of a wife. In such case, provided she has borne a living child, even should such child breathe but once, the husband in case of the death of his wife, holds the entire real estate during his life, as "tenant by courtesy." He also takes the whole of her personal property absolutely, to dispose of as he chooses. In a few of the United States, the wife can defeat this by will, but in the large majority of christian lands, the full rights "of tenancy by the courtesy," still prevail. Where right of dower still prevails, the wife.. if there are children, takes but one-third of the personal property absolutely, one-half if there are no children, the rest passing to collateral heirs, who may be the husband's most distant relatives. In case no such relative can be found, the balance escheats to the state, although in the State of New York the widow, under such circumstances, receives $2,000 over one half. Of the real property she has the use of but one-third, in contradistinction to the use of the whole of her real property, which goes to the husband by "tenancy of courtesy." In tenancy by courtesy the children are robbed of the mother's real estate during the life of the father, and of her personal property, forever. In enacting property laws, man, under tenancy
by courtesy robs his own children. The law of inheritance in Spain, that country distinguished among European nations as "Most Christian land," compels a man to leave four-fifths of his property to his children, but does not make it obligatory upon him to endow his wife with the remaining fifth. Neither has the wife a dower right in property owned by her husband at time of the marriage. The suit of a Spanish widow for dower right, in an estate of several millions left by her deceased husband, was fully reported by the New York daily papers within the past few years. Suddenly reduced from affluence as the wife of this man, to the most abject poverty as his widow, this wife and mother brought suit against the estate and her children, who receiving all the property by the husband's will, left her absolutely beggared.
In ancient Ireland, the condition of woman was far superior to that of the christian women of England or Scotland. Two forms of marriage existed. Under that of "Equal Dignity," the rights of the contracting parties were the same, and took place when the man and woman possessed the same amount of land, cattle, or household goods. No force or sale accompanied it, the woman giving free consent equally with the man. This marriage was looked upon as a contract between equals. The property of the wife did not revert to the husband. She retained its control, loaning it and receiving interest entirely free from the interference of her husband.84 Ancient Irish law, also secured to the mother equal authority with the father over the children of the marriage. There is no trace of that arbitrary control over both wife and
children with which Christianity endowed the father.85 The daughter was held to be more closely related to the father; a son to the mother, this belief contributing an equality of right between the sexes. These laws were authoritative over the whole of Ireland until the invasion of the Danes, in the eight century, (A. D. 792).
It is remarkable what effect the ownership of property by woman has ever had in ameliorating her legal condition. Even in ancient Ireland the wife without possessions became the slave of her husband. Although the son was held as more nearly related to his mother, this ancient code provided that in case his parents were poor and he had not wealth enough to support both father and mother, he was to leave the latter to die in the ditch, but was to carry his father back to his own home.86 Tradition ascribes this code to St. Patrick in the fifth century. Under modern christian law, the legal obligation of a son to support his father is greater than it is to support his mother, quite in opposition to the old Scandinavian (pagan) law, which provided for the support of the mother, if but one parent could be cared for. Not the least among the wrongs inflicted upon Ireland by English usurpation, has been the destruction of the wife's rights of property. The right of the Irish wife to deal with her own property as she chose, irrespective of her husband's consent, was expressly declared
illegal by English judges at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
There are traces of separate property rights for women, early among Aryan peoples. By the old laws of Wales, a wife became legal owner of part of her husband's effects immediately upon marrying him, and had the sole disposal of this portion even during her husband's life. Debt owed by a husband to a wife was as binding on him and his heirs and executors as a debt to any other parties. After the English laws were introduced into Wales, innumerable disputes arose upon this ground, the Welsh woman being persistent in her determination to cling to her old rights, and for nearly two hundred years her will upon this subject was stronger than the will of English legislators, as proven by legal records.87 In other respects the ancient law of Wales favored woman. A husband's fetid breath was held as good cause for divorce on part of the wife, who in such case took with her the whole of her property. While still living with her husband, the Welsh wife possessed the right to three kinds of property, cowyll, gowyn, and sarand, known as her three peculiars.88 Old Welsh law was unique in that it forbade both satisfaction and vengeance for
the same wrong. Even if detecting his wife in adultery, for which he should chastise her, the husband was forbidden any satisfaction besides that. In case of an illegitimate birth the law provided that the man should wholly maintain the child,89 a species of justice not found under Christianity. The laws of "Howell the Good," enacted at a later date under the supervision of the church90 favored the man at the woman's expense. Under these laws if a husband and wife separated, the father took two-thirds of the children, the oldest and the youngest falling to his share, while the middle one fell to the mother A woman was not admitted as surety, or as a witness in matters concerning a man.91 In the division of property the daughters received only one half the amount given to the sons.
Under the christian laws of England, by which the property of a married woman passed entirely into the control of her husband, the abduction of heiresses in that country was very common for many hundred years, no punishment following such a theft, although the most compulsory measures were used, even to forcibly bending the bride's head in affirmative response during the marriage ceremony. She was a woman; the law furnished her no redress. It regarded her as the legal wife of her abductor, to whom she thereafter under this christian law, owed service and obedience. The sole right to her person, her property, her children
then becoming legally invested in the robber husband. As noted in the opening chapter, the abduction of a woman, or even an immodest proposal to her, was punished in older un-christianized Scandinavia, by greater or lesser outlawry; rape being a capital crime, placing the culprit's life in the hands of any man. He was outside the pale of law.
France under frequent changing names and forms of government, and with a broader general recognition each year of human rights, is yet very closely allied to the barbarism of the middle ages in its treatment of woman, and its conception of her natural rights. This was shown even during the revolution of 1787, of which Madame Roland and Charlotte Corday were such central heroic figures. Although this revolution established an equal succession between sons and daughters, yet it did not tolerate the proposition of Sieyes and Condorcet that woman should be endowed with the suffrage. One hundred years later, in 1887, a bill was introduced during the legislative session, to secure to woman the same political rights accorded man. This bill was lost; "Le Gaulois," commenting upon it, declared that in whatever manner the question was discussed, it appeared grotesque and ridiculous. In the Legislative Assembly of 1851, M. Chapot, proposed the prohibition of the right of petition to women upon all subjects of a political nature. During the same session, Athenase Coquerel, the most distinguished member of a Protestant family of clergymen, presented a bill to the Chambers excluding women from political clubs. Woman's testimony is not accepted in regard to civil acts. They cannot attest to a birth or a death, nor is their testimony admitted in the identification of persons. Neither can
they become members of the family, council, nor are they accepted as guardians of their own children. It is only since 1886 that their condition has been in any way ameliorated. The re-marriage of widows is forbidden under ten months after the husband's death, and until within the last decade, divorces were of great rarity. The oppressed condition of woman in the marriage relation, was notably shown by the vast number of applications for release from the hated bond upon the passage of the new law; a number so great,--eleven thousand,--that two years scarcely sufficed to reach them all. No stronger argument against the evils of an indissoluble marriage is required, and as the greater number of applicants were women, it is farther evidence of woman's degradation under christian marriage laws.
According to the famous Code Napoleon, accepted by France as her modern system of jurisprudence and declared (by man) to he nearly, perfect in its provisions, every child born outside of wedlock is deemed to be fatherless unless such father of his own free will formally acknowledges his offspring. While fifty per cent of all children born in Paris are illegitimate, statistics prove that such acknowledgment takes place but once in fifty births. Thus forty-nine per cent of Parisian children under the Code Napoleon, theoretically come into the world without fathers--they are born fatherless. A still more heinous provision of this Code, forbids all research into paternity.97 The father of an illegitimate child--rendered illegitimate by church canons--is held as both morally and legally irresponsible for his fatherhood. Under this Code, upon the mother falls all the contumely associated
with such birth, together with the care and expense of rearing the child. We cannot be surprised at the prevalence of infanticide, a crime resulting from such unjust legislation, and for which the church is directly responsible. In the whole history of French jurisprudence, not a single case can be found where the father of an illegitimate child has been compelled to acknowledge his offspring.91 Under French law, woman is a perpetual minor under the guardianship of her own, or that of her husband's family. Only in case of the birth of an illegitimate child is she treated as a responsible being, and then only that discomfort and punishment may fall upon her. The same legal degradation of the unmarried mother, the same protection accorded the unmarried father, the same enticement of the law for man to assume a fatherhood freeing him from accountability, the same covert contempt of womanhood and of motherhood, also exists in Italy, its penal code forbidding all research into paternity. And this is not the legislation of the middle ages but of the nineteenth century.
But French disregard for the rights of woman, as already shown, far preceded the Code Napoleon; that system but legally emphasized the low estimate of the feminine we have traced through the Salic, Feudal, and Witchcraft periods. Louis VII. referring to the number of girls born in his dominions, requested his subjects to pray unto God that he should accord them children of the better sex. Upon the birth of his first child, Margaret, who afterwards married
Henry Courtmantel of England, his anger was so great that he would not look at her; he even refused to see his wife. He afterwards accorded an annual pension of three livres to the woman who first announced to him the birth of a son. Although five hundred years have passed since the graphic portrayal of woman's condition, in the ballad of the Baron of Jauioz,, we find the Breton farmer whose wife has given birth to a daughter, still saying, "my wife has had a miscarriage." Question an ordinary French peasant in. regard to his family and if the father of girls alone, he will reply, "I have no children, sir I have only daughters."94
During the feudal period parents gave themselves up to merry-making and rejoicing upon the marriage of the last of their daughters.95 Even yet, in some countries, the birth of a boy is announced by a servant wearing a white apron and carrying two bouquets in her hand; if a girl she carries but one; in some countries the father of a boy annually received the gift of two loads of wood from the state; but a single one if the child was a girl. Even in the United States we yet see this contempt of the feminine variously manifested, although the kindness and affection of girls to their parents, is usually more notable, than that of boys.96 Family regard is usually manifested
in the descending, rather than the ascending line, yet Herbert Spencer declares that full civilization is dependent upon the respect and affection shown to parents. France is not the only christian land that invalidates a woman's testimony, receiving the assertion of the woman with less authority than the denial of the man. In Scotland in case of an illegitimate birth, the accused man is allowed to clear himself upon oath, in opposition to that of the woman. Under Scottish law the child born outside of marriage was formerly compelled to do penance in church for the sins, of his parents. Such has been the justice of christianity to women and children during the ages. These methods of christianity were in great contrast to those of heathendom. The early Anglo-Saxon (pagan) laws contained provisions for the punishment of assaults upon women. Crimes against her were punished by greater or less outlawry according to the attendant circumstances. Old Scandinavia possessed many laws for the protection of woman. It has sometimes been asserted that these laws were a dead letter, so many instances of loose connections are recorded in the Iceland Sagas. It is, however, a question of fact that these illegal relations, according to the same Sagas were much more frequent after the introduction of christianity than before.97 Roman law presumed that no woman went astray without the seduction and arts of the other sex, upon whom alone the punishment fell. Under old Saxon, Gothic and Scandinavian law, rape was punished by death. Under the Conqueror,
its punishment was castration and loss of the eyes, which continued English law until after Bracton wrote in time of Henry III. A lighter punishment then superseded it, but the effects of this leniency was so evil the old penalty was restored. While forbidding woman control of her own property, common law, under one of those anomalous renderings which mark the constant injustice of Church and State towards woman, held twelve years as the age of female discretion or consent, rape after that age not being regarded as criminal.
Germany with sudden strides has coalesced from a number of independent principalities through the management of him of the iron hand, into a magnificent empire, based upon the destruction of human life. In this empire, where war underlies all, we find woman much more deeply degraded than during the old pagan days, when as chieftain and prophetess her voice was heeded even upon the battle-field. Now, while men are preparing to kill other men, the agriculture of the country and the lowest forms of mechanical labor fall into her hands. But it is not as responsible owner we thus find her; she cultivates the fields as a drudge, upon whom falls all the most severe portion of work. Equally in Germany as in other christian lands, is the wife looked upon as the servant of the husband, to whom she bears children that are his alone, and to whom greater deference is paid by the mother when a large number of little ones call him father.98
has been the custom to reward a husband in proportion to the number of children borne him by his wife, and it is but a year since a Parisian journalist suggested that for each additional child borne by his wife, the husband should be allowed half a vote. In Germany as under the common law of England, the wife is subject to chastisement by her husband, its severity being left to his discretion. But the height of barbaric absurdity and wickedness is found in that provision of the Prussian common law which decrees that a husband can determine the length of time his wife must nurse her child. As might be expected, at his death the wife is not regarded capable of caring for the children, and must accept a guardian for them; the law going so far as to declare her under age. similarly to that French law which makes woman a perpetual minor. It matters not if the family property all came through the wife, or was accumulated by her labor, she is still held as not of sufficient judgment for its control. In Prussia, woman is still forbidden to take part in political or other public meetings.99
Morganatic or left-hand marriage still continues the, custom in Germany. Under its provisions the wife does not take the husband's rank, nor do the children inherit the father's property, as they are not regarded as of full legitimacy. This form of marriage is recognized by the civil law of Germany, and is sustained by the church. The custom, at first confined to princes, gradually extended to the higher aristocracy, and as the moral perceptions of a nation bends itself to unison with civil law, the inferior gentry began to contract marriages of this kind. Under a morganatic union woman is still more debased than in the ordinary marriage relation. Aside from the ceremony, the wife is scarcely other than a concubine. The children of the morganatic marriage do not bear the father's name, nor inherit from him, under the law of the state. Neither they nor the wife have more lasting claim upon him in these respects than had the concubines known as "the Honored Ones" upon the priestly destroyers of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
Several notable instances of morganatic marriages have occurred within the present century. It is but a few years since the Grand Duke, Louis IV. of Hesse-Darmstadt, son-in-law of Queen Victoria, made a morganatic marriage with Madame de Kalamine, whose lover he was long known to have been, and with whom he had previously lived outside of this relation, she having borne him several children. From the high position of the morganatic husband, and because of the previous relationship of the parties, this marriage became the talk of all Europe, and to some extent of the United States. Queen Victoria herself did not escape criticism, notwithstanding the prudery for which she is famed, because of her entertaining the Grand Duke at Windsor soon after this marriage unaccompanied by his wife,100 for the purpose, it was intimated, of placing him under the influence of Princess Beatrice. The very fact of such suggestion, whether true or not, as well as the fact that Queen Victoria universally conceded a prude in reference to infractions of the moral law by those of her own sex, received the Grand Duke at her especial home of Windsor soon after his morganatic marriage, is a vivid commentary upon the two codes of morals extant in christendom and their influence even upon woman herself. Morganatic marriage degrades the wife of the right hand ceremony equally with her of the left hand, as it is a recognition by the law of a christian country to-day of man's right to become a bigamist, provided he but gives his left hand instead of his right, to the bride during the marriage ceremony. It is a system of legalized concubinage under protestantism, which throws the shield of protection around man in illicit relations, and like all other forms of woman's
degradation, it reaches back for authority to that religious teaching which proclaims woman to have been created inferior and subordinate to man. Because of woman's former superior position there, no country but Germany can as fully show the degradation of woman under Christianity. Not from pagan Greece can more vivid illustration of her moral degradation be shown, while pagan Rome shines clear and bright beside the Germanic races of to-day. While even left-handed marriages among the higher classes are encouraged and protected, yet among the lower orders in Germany the ordinary marriage is cumbered with so many restrictions, as to have become almost an impossibility, and no disgrace or loss of character falls upon the girl of this class who becomes a mother outside of legal prevision, but such motherhood upon the contrary is looked upon as the means of a higher position and greater wages as nurse. As amme in a rich or noble family she becomes a person of arrogance, part of the pomp and show of the house.101
Despite these wrongs of the ages towards woman, of late so vividly presented, we still find both Church and State opposing a free discussion of the question. Within the last decade two northern European countries have strangely exhibited such hostility, the opposition coming upon ground of woman's surpassing sinfulness.102
But the most notable opposition has been against the works of two eminent literary men. "The Doll's House"103 by Ibsen, the dramatic poet of Norway, attacking the irresponsible position of the wife under present marriage law, brought about the social ostracism of its author.104 Sweden's supremely great thinker of the present century, August Strindberg, recently published a work entitled "Giftas" (to marry), which incidentally treated of the influence of religion upon this relation.105 The State authorities at once ordered its confiscation.106 Instead of a Papal Librorum Prohibitorum, it fell under the censure and prohibition of a Protestant State. But no more ready method for increasing its circulation could have been devised; so rapidly was the first edition of four thousand sold that only four hundred fell into the grasp of the censorious government. In order to escape the farther penalty of imprisonment that had been pronounced against him, the author was compelled to temporarily leave the country. But his work was not without effect upon the minds of his countrymen, and upon his return a few months later, a great demonstration in his honor took place. Strindberg defined the rights of woman as those which came to her by nature but of which,
through a perverted social order she had been deprived. He declared that woman's desire for deliverance was the same as man's restless desire for deliverance. Let us, said he, therefore emancipate man from his prejudice and then woman will certainly be freed. To that end it is necessary to work together as friends not as enemies.
That a work of this moderate character, should fall under the ban of a protestant government, in the last half of the nineteenth century, should be confiscated and its author banished, is a striking proof of the degraded condition of woman in the marriage relation, and of the power still exerted for the continuance of this subjection. Opposition to discussion of this question in Sweden, is more strange in view of the excess of women in the population, as they outnumber the men some 40,000; while of single women over fifteen, there are 259,000. Despite the fact of this excess, impossible to provide for by marriage even were that condition one of equity and equality, all effort towards opening occupations to them, or the avenues of education, still meets with resistance from the church. The only opponent of Mr. Berner's Bill, 1882, for permitting women to take the first two degrees in the University, those of Arts and Philosophy, was from a clergyman. The bill passed the Odelstling, one of the two Chambers of the Storthing, with only his dissentent voice.107 It received the unanimous vote of the other house, the Sagthing, April 21, becoming a law June 15 of that year.
Russia, which we are accustomed to regard as less than a half civilized country, gives evidence of an early civilization which in the field of morals reached
a high place. Samokversof, a Russian author, has made a rich collection relating to pre-historic times, proving that as early as the first centuries of this era, the Slavonians lived in large societies, possessed fortified towns with treasures of gold and silver, silk, embroidered tissues, iron weapons, ornaments of gold, silver, bronze and bone; while sickles, and the grasses of wheat, oats, and barley, found in the graves of South Russia, show this people even to have been devoted to agriculture. The early history of Russia proves that women then held influential positions in the family, in the church, in the state; as was the case under the ancient common law of England, so woman among the ancient Slavs possessed the right of inheritance and the power of dividing such inheritance with her brothers. In the State we find woman's wisdom at early date still continuing to shape the policy of the Russian empire; to the wise statesmanship of the Czarina Olga is the unchanging plan of that country for the ultimate possession of Constantinople due. Visiting the Patriarch of the East, during the tenth century, she at once perceived the vast importance of Constantinople to the power desiring universal dominion; the possession of that city giving control of the Dardanelles, of Asia Minor, and Europe itself. Thenceforth she sought its annexation or seizure and her policy became that of the Russian nation, which for more than eight hundred years has made the ultimate possession of Constantinople the great object of its ambition. Nor has Olga's statesmanship less influenced the entire European continent, the allied powers constantly struggling to defeat Russia's aggressive plan, through maintenance of the "sick man" upon his throne.
From the advent of christianity, forced upon the Slav peoples a thousand years since by Vladimir, their baptism taking place by tens of thousands as driven into the rivers and streams mid-deep, priests upon the banks recited the baptism formula, a change was noticeable. As soon as the thorough establishment of the Byzantine church in Russia, which took no inconsiderable period, it being brought about by force rather than free will, its priests, like those of the Western Church, directed their principal efforts towards control of the marriage relation, and, through that, of the family. Nor are we to regard this as strange inasmuch as every form of christianity regards woman as an inferior being, the creator of original sin, rendering the sacrifice of a God necessary in order to re-establish the equilibrium overthrown by her.108 Edmond Noble, in tracing the cause of the present social upheaval in that empire, says:109
Scarcely had the priests of the Greek Church begun their teaching of the new faith when change began to unsettle the position of woman and burden her relationship to the family with a sense of inferiority * * * her status falling with the natural extension of the ecclesiastical policy. The Russian woman at last became the slave of her Christian husband; as much his chattel as if she had been purchased at marker or captured in war.
An examination of history proves that in Christian Russia as in Christian England the husband could release himself from the marriage bond by killing his wife, over whom under christian law he had power of life and death. Her children, as to-day in Christian England and America, are not under her control; she
is to bear children but not to educate them, for, as under Catholic and Protestant Christianity, women are looked upon as a lower order of beings, of an unclean nature. The assertion of Agathes the Sophist that he detected the smell of her whose hands had milked the cow, is more than paralleled under Greek Christianity, woman not even being allowed to kill a fowl under assertion that should she so do the meat would become poisonous. Wife beating enjoined as a religious duty became so common, says Noble, that love was measured by it, "The more whippings the more love." "The Domstroii," a household guide, compiled by a dignitary of the Greek Church in time of Ivan the Terrible, counseled use of the rod to keep wives, children, and servants in subjection. By it husbands were given almost unlimited power over wives, who were not even permitted to attend church without the husband's consent. The prominent ideas regarding woman under Byzantine Christianity have been her uncleanliness, her sinfulness and the small value of her life.110 She is regarded as a being of lower order than man, and as looked upon in a different light by God.
Where marriage is wholly or partly under church control, its very form degrades woman, her promise of obedience not yet having passed away. In the old Covenanter period of Scotland the records give a still more debased form, in which the man as head was declared united to an ignoble part, represented by the woman. But in modern times, both in Catholic and Protestant countries a more decent veil is thrown over this sacrifice of woman than in the Greek Church,
where the wife is sometimes delivered to the husband under this formula, "Here wolf, take thy lamb!" and the bride-groom is presented with a whip by his bride giving her a few blows as part of the ceremony, and bidding her draw off his boots as a sign of her subjection to him. With such an entrance ceremony it may well be surmised that the marriage relation permits the most revolting tyranny. And this condition can be directly traced to the period since Christianity was adopted under Vladimir, a thousand years since, as the religion of that nation. The old Slavs recognized the equality of woman in household, political, and religious matters, and not until Byzantine Christianity became incorporated with, and a part of, the civil polity of its rulers, did Russia present such a picture of domestic degradation as it shows to-day. The chastisement of wives is directly taught as part of the husband's domestic duty. Until recently, the wife who killed her husband while he was thus punishing her, was buried alive, her head only being left above ground. Many lingered for days before death reached them.
Ivan Panim, a Russian exile, while a student at Harvard College, 1881, made the following statement at a Convention of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Society:
A short time ago the wife of a well-to-do peasant came to the justice of one of the district courts in Russia and demanded protection from the cruelty of her husband. She proved conclusively by the aid of competent witnesses that he had bound her naked to a stake during the cold weather on the street, and asked the passers-by to strike her; and whenever they refused he struck her himself. He fastened her moreover to the ground, put many stones and weights (m
her and broke one of her arms. The court declared the husband "not guilty." "It cannot afford." it said, "to teach woman to disobey the commands of her husband."
Mr. Panim declared this to be by no means an extreme or isolated case, and that few became known to the public through the courts or the press. While the above incident illustrates the cruelty of the state towards woman under the Greek form of christianity, others with equal pertinence prove the cruelty of the church.
A peasant in the village of Zelovia Baltic, having reason to doubt the fidelity of his spouse, deliberately harnessed her to a cart in company with a mare-a species of double harness for which the lady was doubtless unprepared when she took the nuptial vow He then got into the cart in company with a friend, and drove the ill-assorted team some sixteen versts (nearly eleven English miles,), without sparing the whip-cord. When he returned from his excursion he sheared the unlucky woman's head, tarred and feathered her and turned her out of doors. She naturally sought refuge and consolation from her parish priest; but he sent her back to her lord and master, Prescribing further flaggellations. An appeal to justice by the poor woman and her relatives, resulted in a non-suit, and recourse to a higher court will probably terminate in the same manner.
Popular Russian songs allude to woman's wrongs in the marriage relation. The wife of a son living with his father, is looked upon as an additional animal to be urged to the utmost exertion. She is treated almost like a slave and with less consideration than a horse or cow. Lady Varney,111 gives the chorus of a song in the "Lament of a Young Russian Bride," which portrays the father-in-law's part.
CHORUS.
"Thumping, scolding, never lets his daughter sleep,"
"Up you slattern! up you sloven sluggish slut!"
The wife also entreats her husband for mercy.
"Oh husband, only for good cause beat thou thy wife
Not for little things."
"Far away is my father dear, and farther still my mother. "
While demanding marital fidelity from wives, Russian husbands do not bind themselves to the same purity; and aside from wife-beating, the husband's infidelities form the general subject of songs. Peter the Great, severely beat his Empress Catherine, but while demanding marital fidelity from her, was notorious for his liaisons with women of low rank.112 Women were not counted in the census of Russia until the reign of this monarch. So many "souls" no woman named. So long continued has been this treatment of woman, that the poet Nekrasof says:
Ages have rolled away, the whole face of the earth has brightened; only the somber lot of the Mowguk's {Russian peasant--jbh} wife God forgets to change.
Man's opinion of woman is shown in the proverb, "A hen is not a bird, neither is a woman a human being." Nekrasof makes one of his village heroines say: "God has forgotten the nook where he hid the keys of woman's emancipation," which woman's despair has changed to the proverb "God remembers everything but the Slavonian woman; he has forgotten where he hid the keys of her emancipation." The
system of indulgence is as marked in the Greek as in the Catholic Church, but under slightly different aspects. The worship of saints is an important part of the Byzantine religion There are two saints, to whom if a person prays as he goes out to commit a crime, however heinous, he takes his pardon with him.113 The present condition of Russian affairs is ascribed by Edmond Noble, to a long felt revolt in the minds of the people, against the social, political and religious system of that country. While the peasant implicitly obeys the czar, regarding his position as divine and all his commands as just, there is an element that recalls the former period of freedom, with intensity of desire for its re-establishment. To this class, permeated as it must be with the spirit of the age, the efforts for constitutional change, and what the world knows as Nihilism, are attributable. It is in reality a mighty protest against that christianity which in destroying political freedom, instituted a monstrous spiritual and material tyranny in its place. Nihilism is not wholly nor even chiefly a form of political change; it has a depth and a power much beyond mere social or governmental change; it looks to an entire overthrow of that religious system which permeates and underlies all moral and political tyranny in Russia.
Class legislation of extreme character is still constantly met in all christian lands. The English Bill of 1887, for extending Parliamentary Franchise to woman, as shown, having as its last clause, "Provided that nothing in this Act contained shall
enable women under coverture to be registered or to vote at such elections." In this Bill, the State recognized the marital subordination of woman, held by law as under her husband's control not possessing freedom of thought, judgment, or action upon questions of vital importance to herself. Walter Besant declares:
That it is only by searching and poking among unknown pamphlets and forgotten books that one finds out the actual depth of the English savagery of the last century that for drunkenness, brutality and ignorance the Englishmen of the baser kind, reached the lowest depth ever reached by civilized men * * * a drunkard, a brawler, a torturer of dumb beasts, a wife-beater, a profligate."
It is not necessary to search "unknown pamphlets and forgotten books," in order to find out the depths of English or other christian savagery of the present century. Every newspaper report, every court decision, every Act of Parliament or Legislature, every decree of king, or czar, or other potentate; every canon, decree or decision of the church, proclaims the ignorance, brutality and savagery of Christendom. Nor is it among men of the baser kind with their infliction of corporal punishment upon wives, but in the subtler and more refined methods of torture made use of by men of the highest position, that we most truly find out the depths of the savagery of the nineteenth century. Profligacy among men of the highest position never flourished more luxuriantly than at the present time; drunkenness has by no means passed away; wife-beating is still a common amusement; the law still fails to extend a protecting arm around those most needing its defence; the church yet fails to recognize a common humanity in all classes of people. Old traditional
customs of thought and action still prevail, and the men of a hundred years hence will look upon the present time with the same criticising astonishment that the historian of to-day looks upon the last century. Savagery instead of civilization is still the predominant power in christendom. In comparison with the treatment many wives receive in christian lands, that of women among the American Indians, or the most savage races of the old world, is far more humane than shown in England, America and other christian lands, where even maternity does not free woman from the coarsest brutality upon the part of husbands, nor the illness incident upon bringing a new being into the world, from writs of "contempt," even though the death of mother or babe result. In 1890, the Press of New York City reported the case of Mrs. R. Bassman, who was summoned to appear before the Surrogate Court, for a funeral debt. Being in confinement she was unable to appear. Thereupon an order for her arrest for Contempt of Court was issued, and while still unrecovered from her illness, she was arrested and incarcerated in Ludlow Street jail. Her newly born babe deprived of its mother's care sickened and died; and this is part of Christian civilization for woman, in nearly the two thousandth year of its existence.
Booth's "Darkest England"114 relates a somewhat parallel case, parallel in so far as it shows the enslaved condition of the English wife under present christian laws.
A woman who lived just opposite had been cruelly kicked and cursed by her husband, who had finally bolted the door against her, and she had turned to
Barbie, as the only hope, Barbie took her in with her rough and ready kindness, got her to bed and was both nurse and doctor for the poor woman till her child was born and laid in the mother's arms. Not daring to be absent longer she got up as best she could and crawled on hands and knees down the little steep steps, across the street, and back to her own door; * * it might have cost the woman her life to be absent from her home more than a couple of hours.
That brutal men exist everywhere, that women and children are in all lands abused, that prize-fighting with its concomitants of broken jaws, noses, heads, takes place in christian lands, are undeniable facts, usually although in defiance of law and subjecting their perpetrators to punishment. But the peculiarity of the cases noted and of ten thousand others, is that they are done under the authority of the law, to a being whom the law seems not bound to protect. No husbands in the world are more brutal than lower-class Englishmen into whose hands the wife is given by law, and he protected by the law in his ill-usage of her. It is Christian law of which complaint is made; it is the effect of Christian civilization, in its treatment of woman, to which attention is called. "Darkest England" furnishes still fuller statements of woman's degraded condition in that country. In the opening pages of that work it is said:
Hard it is, no doubt, to read in Stanley's pages of the slave-traders coldly arranging for the surprise of a village, the capture of the inhabitants, the massacre of those who resist, and the violation of all the women; but the stony streets of London, if they could but speak, would tell of tragedies as awful, of ruin as complete, of ravishments as horrible, as if we were in Central Africa; only the ghostly devastation is covered,
corpse-like, with the artificialities of modern civilization.
The lot of a negress in the Equatorial Forest is not, perhaps, a very happy one but is it so much worse than that of many a pretty orphan girl's in our christian capital? We talk about the brutalities of the dark ages and we profess to shudder as we read in the books of the shameful exactions of the rights of feudal superiors. And yet here, beneath our very eyes, in our theaters, in our restaurants, and in many other places unspeakable, it be enough but to name it, the same hideous abuse flourishes unchecked. A young penniless girl, if she be pretty, is often hunted from pillar to post by her employers, confronted always by the alternative--starve or sin. Darkest England, like Darkest Africa, reeks with malaria.
It should be impressed upon the mind that the difference between "Darkest Africa," and "Darkest England," lies in the two facts, that one is the darkness of ignorant and savage races who are in the very night of barbarism; while the other is the moral darkness of christian civilization, in the very center of Christendom, after 2,000 years of church teaching and priestly influence. A few years since, in Massachusetts, an action for cruelty on part of a husband came before a court, the charge being that he came home one night in February, when the thermometer was ten degrees below zero, and turned his wife and little child, with his wife's mother of eighty, out of the house.115 While the wife was giving testimony, the judge interrupted, saying:
"The husband had a right to do so, there was a quarrel between the husband and wife, and he had a legal right to turn her out and take possession of the house, that was not cruelty."
From the newspapers of April, 1886, we learn that:
At Salem, W. Va., Thomas True drove his wife out of doors and swore he would kill any one who would give her shelter. Robert Miller took her into his house, and was killed by True.
The system of marriage recognized by the church has ever been that of ownership and power by the husband and father, over the wife and children, and during the Middle Ages the ban of the church fell with equal force upon the woman, who for any cause left her husband, as upon the witch. The two were under the same ban as the excommunicated, denounced as one whom all others must shun, whom no one must succor or harbor, and with whom it was unlawful to hold any species of intercourse.
The "boycott" is not an invention of the present century, but was in use many hundred years since against a recalcitrant wife, under sanction of both church and state. The advertisements of absconding wives seen at the present day, whom the husband sets forth as having left his bed and board and whom all persons are thereafter forbidden to trust upon his account, are but a reminiscence of the wife-boycott of former years, when all persons, were forbidden to "harbor her" under penalty, unless it could be proven that her life was in danger without such aid. The husband was held to possess vested rights in the wife, not only as against herself, but as against the world, and it is not half a decade since the notice below, appeared in a Kansas paper,116 accompanied by the cut of a fleeing woman.
A $50 CAPTURE.
A woman who ran away from her husband at Lawrence some time ago, was found at Fort Leavenworth
yesterday by a Lawrence detective and taken back to her home. The officer received a reward of $50 for her capture.--"Leavenworth Standard," Kas., Dec. 21, 1886.
This advertisement and others of a similar character to be seen in the daily and weekly press of the country, are undeniable proofs of the low condition under the law, of woman in the marriage relation, and read very much like the notices in regard to absconding slaves a few years since. Kansas was one of the very first states which recognized the right of a married mother to her own child, that provision having been incorporated in its constitution at early date as an enticement for bringing women emigrants into that state, at a period when the anti-slavery and pro-slavery contests within its borders had made it bloody ground. Although the married woman's property law and the spirit of free thought has rendered such action less frequent than formerly, it is less than forty years, as before noted, since the New York Court of Common Pleas rendered a judgment of $10,000 in favor of a husband against the relatives of his wife, who at her own request "harbored and sheltered" her. The Christian principle of man's ownership of woman, for many hundred years under English law, rendered the party giving shelter to a fleeing wife liable to the husband, in money damages, upon the ground of having aided a runaway servant to the master's injury. Under but one circumstance was such shelter admissible. In case the wife was in danger of perishing, she could be harbored until morning, when she must be returned to her master by the person who had thus temporarily taken care of his perishable property. In England as late as 1876, the case of a Mrs. Cochrane, who had lived apart from her husband for years, and showing an
other phase of property law in the wife, came up before judge Coleridge. Her character was not at all impeached, but she indulged in amusements which her husband considered reprehensible, and through stratagem she was brought to his lodgings and there kept a prisoner. A writ of habeas corpus being sued out, the husband was compelled to bring her before the court of the Queen's Bench. The decision of the judge rendered in favor of the husband's right of forcible detention, was declared by him to be upon ground that English law virtually considered the wife as being under the guardianship of the husband, not a person in her own right, and this distinctly upon the ground of her perpetual infancy;117 she must be restored to her husband. As late at 1886, the "Personal Rights Journal" of England called attention to the suit of a clergyman for the "restitution of conjugal rights" and custody of child. The wife not being able to live in agreement with the husband, had taken her child and left him. A decree for such restitution having been pronounced by court, the husband, Rev. Joseph Wallis, advertised for his absconding wife, Caroline Wallis, offering one hundred pounds reward for such information as should lead to her discovery
£100 REWARD.
WHEREAS, A Decree was pronounced in the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division of the High Court of justice, on the 5th day of June, 1886, in the suit of Samuel Joseph Wallis versus Caroline Wallis, for restitution of conjugal rights, and for custody of the child, May Wallis, to the petitioner, the said Samuel Joseph Wallis. And WHEREAS it has been ascertained that the said Caroline Wallis has lately been seen at Whitstable and the Neighborhood,
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN,
That the above Reward will be paid to any Person or Persons who shall give such information as will lead to the discovery of the whereabouts of the said Caroline Wallis, and the recovery by the said S. J. Wallis of the custody of the said Child.
Information to be sent to me, Richard Howe Brightman, of Sheerness, Kent, Solicitor to the said Samuel Joseph Wallis.
This brutal advertisement in the dying hours of the nineteenth century had the effect of rousing public attention to woman's enslaved condition in the marital relation, and a rapid growth of public sentiment in recognition of a wife's individual and distinct personality, took place between 1886 and 1890, a period of four years. During the latter year another English husband, one Jackson, forcibly abducted his wife who lived apart from him, holding her prisoner with gun and bayonet, threatening her friends with death-as was his legal right-in case of her attempted rescue. When this was known, hundreds of letters poured into the press, upholding the right of a wife to the control of her own person, and writ of habeas corpus compelled her production in court. Under the pressure of a public sentiment he found it wise to conciliate, the judge decided in favor of her right to live away from her husband, who was also restrained from farther molesting her. The Supreme Court of Georgia recently rendered a decision in regard to the rights of husbands as related to the wife's rights of property, in which the church theory of her subordination was maintained.
"The wife has been much advanced by the general tenor of legislation of late years in respect to her property. She has acquired a pretty independent position
as to title, control and disposition, but this relates to her own property, not to his. The law has not yet raised her to the station of superintendent of her husband's contracts and probably never will. In taking a wife a man does not put himself under an overseer. He is not a subordinate in his own family but the head of it. A subjugated husband is a less energetic member of society than one who keeps his true place, yet knows how to temper authority with affection. "
During the famous Beecher trial, Hon. Win. M. Evarts defined woman's legal position as one of subordination to man, declaring "that notwithstanding changing customs and the amenities of modern life, women were not free, but were held in the hollow of man's hand, to be crushed at his will." In exemplification of this statement he referred to a recent decision of the New York Court of Appeals, and to the highest tribunals of England. He gave his own sanction to these principles of law, all of which owe their foundation to church teaching regarding woman, enforced by the peculiar forms of marriage ceremony it has instituted.
The church everywhere strenuously opposes civil marriage. The Plenary Council of 1884, and the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States, each making church marriage a prominent part of their discussions. Different parts of Europe and of South America have recently been shaken by church action in regard to it. Prussia, Belgium, Italy, France, have fallen under the odium of the church in consequence of the civil laws declaring marriage valid without the aid of the church. The celebrated M. Godin founder of the cooperative Familistere, at Guise, was married in 1886 under civil form, to a lady member of the French
League for the Rights of Women, and thus announced the marriage to their friends:
M. Godin, manufacturer, founder of Familistere, and Madame Marie Godin, Dee Moret, his secretary and co-laborer in the work of the Familistere, and in the propagation of social reform, have the honor of announcing to you the purely civil marriage which they contracted at Guise, the 14th day of July, 1886, that they might manifest to all their union, and the common purpose of all the efforts of their lives.
Civil marriage, where the church is supreme, is followed by excommunication and odious insults. In 1885 a remarkable instance of this kind occurred in the city of Concepcion, Chili. A young couple were married, with consent of their parents, according to the civil law. Their social and political prominence made the occasion conspicuous, as it was the first wedding among the aristocracy in that country, dispensing with the aid of a priest. The church paper edited by a Jesuit priest thus commented:
The "Libertad" calls this "a happy union," but it should remember that "happy unions" of this sort have hitherto existed only in the animal kingdom.
The bride, groom, and all their families suffered excommunication from the church. But it is not alone the Catholic church which desires to retain its hold upon marriage. Less than two years since certain clergymen of the Anglican church agreed to officiate at marriages without a fee, for the purpose of retaining control of this relation; and so strong has been the influence of the church during the ages, that few people look upon a ceremony under the civil law with the same respect as one performed by a priest, even of a Protestant denomination. The control of marriage by the church while throwing wealth into its own coffers, has ever had a prejudicial effect upon
morals, as impediments to marriage of whatever character increase immorality. In the city of Concepcion referred to, of 200,000 inhabitants, there are two thousand children of unknown parentage. In 1884, statistics showed sixty-two per cent. of the children to be illegitimate. The parents of those little ones were mostly known, being persons too poor to pay the cost of a church marriage, twenty-five dollars, its price, being quite beyond the means of the humbler classes. The Liberal party, in establishing civil marriage as legitimate, authorized any magistrate to perform the ceremony, and furnish a certificate for twenty-five cents. This assault upon the ancient prerogative of the church depriving priests of the largest source of their revenue, at once made a religious-political issue of the question, the church taking strenuous action against all connected with framing the law, and its repeal became the prominent political issue, to aid which all the faithful were called. Using its old weapons, the church through the Archbishop issued an edict excommunicating the president of the republic, the members of his cabinet and the members of congress who voted for the statute; directing that a similar penalty should fall upon every communicant who obeyed it and neglected to recognize the church as the only authority competent to solemnize the marriage rite.
A correspondent of the "New York Sun," in Chili, wrote:
This brought matters to a crisis. On the one hand, the State declared all marriages not under the civil law illegal, and their issue illegitimate, refusing to recognize rites performed by the priests. On the other, those who obey the law are excommunicated from the church, and their cohabitation forbidden by
the highest ecclesiastical authority. Thus matrimony is practically forbidden, and those who choose to enter it have their choice between arrest and excommunication. A young member of Congress, a man of gifts and influence, who stands as one of the leaders of the Liberal party, and who voted and argued for civil marriage, is engaged to the daughter of a wealthy merchant with proud lineage and aristocratic connections. He is willing to accept the civil authority, which he helped to create, and she and her father are also willing, but her mother is a devout church woman and cannot regard marriage as sacred without the blessing of a priest. She favors the alliance, but insists that the Church shall be recognized. The bishop declines to permit the ceremony unless the young man shall go to the confessional and retract his political record, with a vow to hereafter remain steadfast to the church. This he refuses to do. The couple will go to Europe or the States and there have the ceremony performed.
This action of the Chilian republic in substituting a civil for a religious ceremony in marriage and declaring the latter to be illegal, is a most important step in civilization, of which freedom for woman is such an essential factor; and its results in that country must be felt in woman's every relation of life, promoting self-respect, self-reliance and security in place of the degradation, self-distrust and fear to which its church has so long condemned her.
1. He bought his bride of her parents according to the custom of antiquity, and she followed the coemption by purchasing with three pieces of copper a just introduction to his treasury and household duties. Gibbon.--Rome, 4; 395.
2. By the law of the Twelve Tables woman possessed the right of repudiation in marriage. These tables were a compilation of still older laws or customs, a p. 296 species of common law incorporated into statutes by Lachis of Athens, daughter of one Majestes; and were so wise and of such benefit to the people of Attica that the Romans received them as natural laws in which there was more of patriotism and purity than in all the volumes of Popinanus. H. S. Maine.--Ancient Law.
p. 2963. After the Punic triumphs the matrons of Rome aspired to the common benefits of a free and opulent republic. * * * They declined the solemnities of the old nuptials; defeated the annual prescription by an absence of three days, and without losing their name or independence subscribed the liberal and definite terms of a marriage contract. Of their private fortunes they commuted the use and secured the property; the estate of a wife could neither be alienated or mortgaged by a prodigal husband. Religious and civil rites were no longer essential, and between persons of similar rank, the apparent community of life was allowed as sufficient evidence of their nuptials. * * * When the Roman m-ions became the equal and voluntary companions of their lords, their marriage like other partnerships might be dissolved. Gibbon.--Rome, 4; 347.
p. 2974. Uses or Usucapion, was a form of civil marriage securing the wife more freedom than the form which held her "under his thumb" as his daughter. It was as old or even older than the Twelve Tables, and although for many centuries not considered quite as respectable a form of marriage as that in which the wife became the husband's slave with divorce impossible, it eventually grew to be the customary form of Roman marriage. Maine.--Early History of Ancient p. Institutions. 517.
5. It was with the state of conjugal relations thus produced that the growing Christianity of the Roman world waged a war ever increasing in fierceness, yet it remained to the last the basis of the Roman legal conception of marriage.--Ibid.
p. 2986. When the Chremes of Terence reproaches his wife for not obeying his orders and exposing their infant, he speaks like a father and master, and silences the scruples of a foolish woman. Milman--Note to Gibbons Rome.
7. "Usus, had the very important consequence that the woman so married remained in the eye of the law in the family of her father, and was under his guardianship and not that of her husband. A complete revolution had thus passed over the constitution of the family. This must have been the period when a jurisconsult of the empire defined marriage as a life-long fellowship of all divine and human rights."
8. Reeves.--Hist. Eng. Law, p. 337.
p. 2999. Maine says: No society which preserves any tincture of Christian Institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by middle Roman laws.--Ancient Law.
10. Reeves says, while many great minds, as Lord Chief justice Hale, Lord p. 200 John Somers, Henry Spellman, Dr. Brady and Sir Martin Wright think feudalism came in with the conqueror, others, as Coke, Seldon, Bacon and Sir Roger Owen are of opinion that tenures were common among the Saxons. Blackstone, Dalrymple and Sullivan endeavor to compromise the dispute by admitting all imperfect system of feuds to have been instituted before the conquest.--History of English Law, Vol. I., p. 18-19.
p. 30011. A certain bishop, wishing a person to take charge of his castle during his absence, the latter asked how he should support himself. For answer the bishop pointed to a procession of tradesmen with their goods then crossing the valley at their feet.
p. 30112. Wives were bought in England from the fifth to the eleventh century. Herbert Spencer.--Descriptive Sociology of England.
13. There was another law even more odious than Marquette; the father's right to the price of mundium, in other words, the price of his daughter. Legouvè.--Hist. Morales des Femmes, p. 104.
p. 30214. Murder under the name of war, the ruin of women under the name of gallantry, were the chief occupations of the nobility Pike.--Hist. of Crime in England.
The chief qualification for success at courts was the power of making and appreciating mirth. The infidelities of women were commonly the narrator's theme, and an exhortation to avoid matrimony was the most common form of advice given by a man to his friend. War and intrigue were regarded as the prime amusements of life; the acquisition of wealth the only object worth serious consideration. A consequence of this creed was that the husband frequently set a price upon his wife's virtue, and made a profit out of his own dishonor. Fathers were ready to sell their daughters.--Ibid.
15. Both married and single found their worst foes in their nearest friends. The traffic in women was none the less real in Christian England than it is now in the slave marts of Stamboul or Constantinople.--Ibid.
One of the most recent illustrations of the general regard in which woman is held throughout Christendom, is the experience of the young California heiress, Florence Blythe, who although but fifteen years old, was in constant receipt of proposals of marriage both at home and from abroad. Her attorney, General p. 303 Hunt, said: "I do not think there is a woman living who has had the number of written proposals that Florence has received, but in all the letters woman is regarded as a chattel, a thing to be bought and sold. The constant receipt of letters of this character, and the equally constant attempt of adventurers to gain a personal interview with the child, at last became unendurable, and to escape such insulting persecution, Florence suddenly married a young man of her acquaintance living near her." These letters, among them, from sixty titled Europeans, lords, counts, dukes, barons, viscounts, marquises and even one prince, confirm the statement of August Bebel, that marriage sales of women are still as common as in the middle ages, and are expected in most Christian countries.
p. 30316. A husband upon his return from the Crusades, finding his wife had been untrue, imprisoned her in a room so small she could neither stand erect nor lie at full length; her only window looking out upon the dead body of her lover swinging in chains.
17. The Shoshone Indian who hires his wife out as a harlot, inflicts capital Punishment on her if she goes with another without his knowledge. Bancroft--Native Races, I; 436.
18. Therefore a single woman for whom no bid was offered, an "old maid" was looked upon with contempt as a being of no value in the eyes of men.
19. Hist, of Crime in England, Vol. I, p. 90.
p. 30420. By the laws of the king of Wessex, who lived at the end of the VIII. century, the purchase of wives is deliberately sanctioned; in the preface it is stated that the compilation was drawn up with the assistance of the Bishop of Winchester and a large assemblage of God's servants.--Ibid.
21. Nothing, says Pike, was considered but the market value of the woman, and the adulterer was compelled to expend the equivalent of her original price on the purchase of a new bride, whom he formally delivered to the injured husband. Nor were these laws merely secular, they were enacted and enforced by all the dread power of the church.--Ibid.
22. In the 14th century either the female character was utterly dissolute, or the tyranny of husbands utterly reckless, when we find that it was no uncommon circumstance that women were strangled by masked assassins, or walking by the river side were plunged into it. This drowning of women gave rise to a popular proverb: "It is nothing, only a woman being drowned." And this condition p. 305 constituted the domestic life of England from the 12th century to the first civil war, when the taste of men for bloodshed found wider scope, and from the murder of women they advanced to the practice of cutting one another's throats. Disraeli.--Amenities of Literature, Vol. I., p. 95.
p. 30523. "And they were so covetous that for a little silver they sellen 'ein daughters, 'ein sisters and 'ein own wives, to putten 'ein to lechery."
24. The Church from the earliest period furnished its full portion to the codes of our simple forefathers, that of the first Christian king being that for the property of God and the Church (if stolen) twelve-fold compensation was to be made. Thorpe.--Ancient Laws and Institutions of England.
p. 3072s. Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. XVI., Edinburg, 1872.
26. Until the maiden was wedded she was kept strictly under control, and the kind of discipline which was enforced is well illustrated by a letter written late in the reign of Henry V1. The writer was the widow of a landholder, and she Was corresponding with the brother of the young lady whose case she describes and whom she is anxious o serve by finding a husband. This young lady was under the care of her mother, and the following was her condition: She might not speak with any man. not even her mother's servants; and she had since Easter the most part been beaten once in the week, or twice, and sometimes thrice in a day, and her hand was broken in two or three places. Pike.--History of Crime in England.
p. 30827. Britton.--Introduction. p. 39. Glanville.--De Legibius Anglica, p. 158.
p. 31128. Doubtless in all ages marriages were by far oftener determined by pecuniary considerations than by love or affection, but proofs are wanting to show that marriage was formerly made an object of speculation and exchange in the open market with anything like the same effrontery as to-day. In our time among the propertied classes--the poor have no need of it--marriage barter is frequently carried on with a shamelessness which makes the phrases about the sacredness of marriage, that some people never tire of repeating, the emptiest mockery. August Bebel.--Woman in the Past, Present and Future.
29. To make women the special objects of this torture, to teach them hardness of heart in the office of executioners, was refinement of atrocity. * * * It was for slaves and women that the greatest atrocities were reserved.--Hist. of Crime in England.
30. Women in England had burned women to death in the 10th century; they had been set on the stool of filth to be mocked as brewers of bad ale in the 11th; on the stool of filth they had been jeered as common scolds from time immemorial; they were legally beaten by their husbands down to a comparatively recent period. In the 14th century they were such as circumstances had made them; strong of muscle but hard of heart, more fit to be mothers of brigands than to rear gentle daughters or honest sons.--Ibid.
31. The elder Disraeli says: "Warton, too, has observed that the style of friendship between males in the reign of Elizabeth would not be tolerated at the present day." Disraeli himself declares that "a male friend, whose life and fortunes were consecrated to another male, who looks upon him with adoration and talks of him with excessive tenderness, appears to us nothing less than a chimerical and monstrous lover."--Amenities of Literature, Vol. II., p. 105.
32. Poisoning or otherwise murdering husbands was a crime visited with peculiar severity in almost all codes. Lea.--Superstition and Force.
p. 31433. Blackstone says it was to be no thicker than a man's thumb, thus an instrument of ever varying size. According to palmistry the thumb of a self-willed or obstinate man, a cruel man, or of a murderer, is very large at the upper portion or ball.
34. Petit treason may happen in three ways: By a servant killing his master; a wife her husband, or an ecclesiastical person (either secular or regular) his superior, to whom he owes faith and obedience. The punishment of petit treason in a man is to be drawn and hanged, and in a woman to be drawn and burnt.--Commentaries, Vol. IV., p. 203-4.
p. 31535. But in treason of every kind the punishment of women is the same and different from men. For as the decency due to the sex forbids the exposing and publicly mangling their bodies. their sentence is to be drawn (dragged) to the gallows and there be burnt alive.--Ibid, IV., p. 92.
36. The daily press, in its min-ate record of events, all unwittingly furnishes many a little item, whose primal reason only the student of history can read. The Syracuse, N. Y., "Daily Standard," of February 22, 1884, published from its exchanges the following incident:
"An eccentric old man in New Hampshire surprised his neighbors and friends the other day by shouldering his gun and starting for the woods on the morning of his wife's funeral. On being urged to come back, he refused, saying: "She warn't no blood relation of mine."
p. 31637. But now by the statute 30, George 3 c., 48, women convicted in all cases of treason shall receive judgment to be drawn to the place of execution, and there to be hanged by the neck till dead. Before this humane statute women ware sentenced to be burnt alive for every species of treason.--Commentaries, p. 97.
p. 31738. See decision New York Court of Appeals, January, 1892.
39. ST. PETERSBURG, September 22--In April last Mrs. Aina Sainio, wife of a professor in the State College at Travasteheuse, Finland, was found guilty of poisoning her husband, and in accordance with the mediæval law, which is still in force there, she was sentenced to be beheaded, and her body to be affixed to a beacon and burned. It was charged that Mrs. Sainio had been unfaithful to her husband, carrying on a liaison with one of the students at the college. She strenuously denied this, and said her motive in killing her husband was to get the insurance of $2,500 on his life as she was deeply in debt. The case was carried to the Court of Appeals and to-day a decision was handed down affirming the judgment p. 318 of the trial court and adding to the punishment. It transpired during the trial that Mrs. Sainio had forged her husband's name to checks for small sum, some time before his death, and for this offense the Court of Appeals ordered that her right hand be cut off. Then she will be decapitated, her body fastened to a stake covered with inflammable material and set on fire.
p. 31940. Reported In the "London Telegraph.
41. Telegraphic Report from Providence, R. I., September 24. 1892.
p. 32142. Mrs. Judge Seney's trouble.--A deserted wife suing the woman who enticed her husband away from her.
TIFFIN, O., February 14-Judge Dodge gave his decision yesterday in the novel case of the former Mrs. George E, Seney against the present Mrs. George E. Seney. judge Seney is one of the well known lawyers of Ohio, and author of p. 322 a "Civil Code" that bears his name. He married his first wife, Mrs. Anna Seney, in 1858, and for fourteen years they lived happily together. At about that time Mrs. Seney and Miss. Walker became very intimate friends, and continued to be so until, as is alleged, Mrs. Seney ascertained that Miss Walker was undermining the affections of her husband. A separation between Mr. and Mrs. Seney soon followed, and subsequently the judge married Miss Walker. Mrs. Seney, therefore, instituted a suit against her successor, claiming damages in the amount of $10,000 for the seduction of her husband.--"New York Sun."
p. 33143. James Howard, thirty-five years old. was taken from jail at Texarkana, Ark., on Wednesday night by a mob and lynched. He was under arrest for horrible cruelty to his fourteen-year-old wife. The woman says that he frequently tied her feet together while she was in a state of nudity, and hanging her up by the feet beat her unmercifully and threatened to kill her if she told anyone of his cruelties. On the first of November, Howard took a common branding iron, used to brand live stock, and heating it red hot branded a large letter "H" on his wife's person in two places while she was tied to a bed.
44. "Pall Mall Gazette," 683.
45. "Westminster Review," September. 1887.
p. 33246. Cato, the Roman (pagan), censor three centuries before the Christian era, said: "They who beat their wives or children lay sacrilegious hands on the most sacred things in the world. For myself, I prefer the character of a good husband to that of a great senator."
p. 33447. The bill failed of passing upon the ground that the lash belonged to the dark ages, degrading a man by its infliction.
48. An English lady, Mrs. Margaret Bright Lucus, in writing a description of this implement said: "This country has even now but little to boast in her laws regarding woman, and your country is burdened with similar evil laws; the Franchise is most important."
49. The Museum at Reading, England, contains among its curiosities a bridle formerly used to stop the mouths of scolding women in that town.
p. 33550. Sometimes called Timbrel, or Gum Stole.
51. "It would seem that almost every English town of any importance had its ducking-stool for scolds. In 1741 old Rugby paid 2s 4d for a chair for the ducking stool. The parish of Southam, in Warwickshire, got a beautiful stool built in 1713 at an expense of £2. 12s 4d. Ancient Coventry had two stools."
The most noteworthy of all the instruments designed for the correction of Eve's offending daughters was the ducking-stool, known as the tumbrel and the trebuchet. A post, across which was a transverse beam turning on a swivel and with a chair at one end, was set up on the edge of a pond. Into the chair the woman was chained, turned toward the water--a muddy or filthy pond was usually chosen for this purpose when available--and ducked half a dozen times; or, it the water inflamed her instead of acting as a damper, she was let down times innumerable, until she was exhausted and well nigh drowned.
From the frequency with which we find it mentioned in old local and county histories, in church wardens' and chamberlains' accounts. and by the poets, we shall probably not be wrong in concluding that at one time this institution was kept up all over the country.--London Graphic."
p. 33652. John Dillon,--Colonial Legislation of America.
p. 33753. Ibid.
p. 33854. JERSEY CITY, N. J., July 23, I887--Mrs. Mary Brody, convicted a few days ago of being a common scold, was to-day sentenced to pay a fine of $25 and costs.
Only the other day a woman in this city, under some ancient unrepealed law of this state, was arrested and brought before a magistrate on the charge of being a common scold. A too free use of the tongue was reckoned a public offense in all the American colonies, and in England the lawful punishment of common scolds was continued until a recent day. It was for these that the "ducking-stool" was invented, which usually consists of a heavy chair fastened to the end of a large piece of timber, which was hung by the middle to a post on the river side. The offender was tied into the chair, and then soused into the water until it was judged that her shrewishness had departed from her. Sometimes she was dipped so thoroughly that her breath departed for good, as happened to a certain elderly lady at Ratcliffe Highway. The ducking-stool was constantly hanging in its place, and on the back of it were engraved devils laying hold of scolds, etc.--"St. Louis Republican."
p. 34053. If it is a crime to buy and sell wives, let the men who do such things be punished; if there is no crime in the transaction, why should the wife who is sold be punished. Unfortunately this is not a solitary instance of law made or administered to punish women in order to teach men--English Women's Suffrage Journal.
Before Mr. Justice Denman, at the Liverpool Assizes, Betsy Wardle was charged with marrying George Chisnal at Eccleston, bigamously, her former husband being alive. It was stated by the woman that, as her first husband had sold her for a quart of beer, she thought she was at liberty to, marry again.
George Chisnal, the second husband, apparently just out of his teens was called.
His Lordship-"How did you come to marry this woman?"
Witness (in the Lancashire vernacular)--"Hoo did a what?" [Laughter.]
Question repeated--"A bowt her." [Laughter.]
His Lordship-"You are not fool enough to suppose you can buy another man's wife? Oi?" [Laughter.]
His Lordship-"How much did you give for her?" Six pence. [Great laughter.]
His Lordship asked him how long he had lived with the prisoner.
Witness--"Going on for three years."
His Lordship--"Do you want to take her back again?"
"Awl keep her if you loike." [Laughter.]
His Lordship (addressing the prisoner)--It is absolutely necessary that I should pass some punishment upon you in order that people may understand that men have no more right to sell their wives than they have to sell other people's wives, or to sell other people's horses or cows, or anything of the kind. You cannot make that a legal transaction. So many of you seem to be ignorant of that, that it is necessary, to give you some punishment in order that you may understand it. It is not necessary it should be long, but you must be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for one week.--"News of the World," 1883.
A peculiar case came up in the mayor's office at Vincennes, Ind., in 1887, A man named Bohn sold his wife to another man named Burch for $300, and held Burch's note therefor. The sale was a reality, but the note was never paid, hence the difficulty.
"We know a man in the Black Hills--a man who is well-to-do and respected--the foundation of whose fortune was $4,000, the sum for which he sold his wife to a neighbor. The sale was purely a matter of business all around, and the parties to it were highly satisfied." 1880.-"The Times," Bismarck, N.D.
p. 34156. In "The Doncaster Gazette" of March 25, 1803, a sale is thus described: "A fellow sold his wife, as a cow, in Sheffield market place a few days ago. The lady was put into the hands of a butcher, who held her by a halter fastened around her waist. 'What do you ask for your cow?' said a bystander. 'A guinea' replied the husband. 'Done,' cried the other, and immediately led away his bargain. We understand that the purchaser and his 'cow' live very happily together." Ashton.--The Progress of Women.
57. "Morning Herald," March 11, 1802.--On the 11th of last month a person sold at the market cross, in Chapel en la Frith, a wife, a child, and as much furniture as would set up a beggar, for eleven shillings.
"Morning Herald," April 16, 1802--A butcher sold his wife by auction at the last market day at Hereford. The lot brought £1 4s. and a bowl of punch.
"Annual Register," February 14, 1806.--A man named John Garsthorpe exposed his wife for sale in the market at Hall about 1 o'clock, but owing to the crowd which such an extraordinary occurrence had brought together, he was obliged to defer the sale, and take her away, about 4 o'clock. However, he again brought her out, and she wag sold for 20 guineas, and delivered with a halter, to a person named Houseman, who had lodged with them for four or five years.
"Morning Post," October 10, 1808.--One of those disgraceful scenes which have of late become too common took place on Friday se'nnight at Knaresborough. Owing to some jealousy, or other family difference, a man brought his wife, equipped in the usual style, and sold her at the market cross for 6d and a quid of tobacco.--Ibid.
58. Our laws are based on the all-sufficiency of man's rights; society. exists for men only; for women, merely in so far as they are represented by some man, are in the mundt, or keeping of some man. Herbert Spencer.-Descriptive Sociology, England.
p. 34359. A committee appointed by the National Woman Suffrage Association, at that time in convention assembled in Washington, waited upon President Cleveland with the memorial.
p. 34560. Mediaeval Christian husbands imprisoned erring wives in cages so small they could neither stand upright nor lie down at full length. Mediaeval Christian priests boiled living infants in osier baskets in presence of helpless heretical mothers. In mediæval times the public scourging of women was one of the amusements of the carnival; even as late as the eighteenth century English gentlemen, according to Herbert Spencer, made up parties of pleasure to see women whipped at Bridewell.
p. 34661. Seduction was connived at that the guardian might secure the estate of the ward.--Ibid.
p. 34762. The Salic law had not preference to one sex over the other--purely economical law which gave houses and lands to males who should dwell there, and consequently to whom it would be of most service.--Spirit of the Laws.
p. 34863. in order to give color to the usurpation (for it was nothing better), the lawyers cited an obscure article from the code of the barbarous Salians, which, as they pretended had always been the acknowledged law of the French monarchy. * * * since that time the Salic law, as it is called, has been regarded as an essential constitutional principle in France.--Student's History of France, p. 19.
p. 34964. Montesquieu.--Spirit of the Laws.
p. 35065. Women in England were for more than a thousand years legislated for as slaves. Crimes committed by men which could be atoned for by a fine, were by women punished with burning alive. The period is not very distant when she was distinctly legislated for as a servant. and but on a level with chattel slaves.--Hist. Crime in England.
p. 35166. American Law, 1829.
67. Through the influence of Governor McNutt, instituted many reforms.
p. 35368. There was no distinction between offenses against the church on one hand, and offenses against the state or individual on the other. Cases of theft and sorcery, like those of witchcraft, could be tried in the church. From the position of the clergy as law-givers, it follows not only that the secular laws had the sanction of religion, but that religious observance were enforced by the secular arm.
69. From 499 to 1066. Herbert Spencer.--Descriptive Sociology.
70. To women were still applied those punishments, which had been instituted by the men whose practice it was to buy their wives and sell their daughters. Pike.--Hist. Crime in Eng.
71. Bracton.--De Legibus Angliæ I, 479
p. 35472. "The reformation altered, but did not better the condition of woman. Socially it rescued her from the priest to make her the chattel of the husband, p. 355 and doctrinally it expunged her altogether. Martin Luther declared that the two sacred books, which especially point to woman as the agent of man's final redemption--the books of Esther and Revelations--that in "so far as I esteem them, it would be no loss if they were thrown into the river."
p. 35573. "The forefathers of Benjamin Franklin used a Bible kept fastened under the seat of a four-legged stool, the leaves held in place by pack-threads. When the family assembled to hear it read, one of the number was posted as sentinel some distance from the house to give warning of any stranger's approach, in which case the stool was hurriedly replaced upon its legs, and some one seated upon it for more effectual concealment of the book."
74. Herbert Spencer.--Descriptive Sociology, England.
p. 35675. The English Women's Suffrage Journal, November, 1886, reported: "Mrs. ------ rose to move a resolution. After reading a memorial, she said: 'Now, when I was asked to add a few words of support to the memorial I have just read, my first feeling was that I was very far from the right person to do so, inasmuch as being a married woman--and therefore disqualified--and rightly disqualified," etc.
p. 35776. The coverture of a woman disables her from making contracts to the prejudice of herself or her husband without his allowance or confirmation.
77. I have arrived at conclusions which I keep to myself as yet, and only utter as Greek phogagta sunetotsi principle of which is, that there will never be a good world for women till the last monk, and therewith the last remnant of the monastic idea of, and legislation for, woman, i. e. the Canon Law is civilized off the face of the earth. Meanwhile all the most pure and high-minded women in England and Europe have been brought up under the shadows of the Canon Law, and have accepted it with their usual divine self-sacrifice, as their destiny by law of God, and nature, and consider their own womanhood outraged when it, their tyrant., is meddled with. Canon Charles Kingsley,--Letter to John Stuart Mill, June 17th, 1849, in Life and Letters.
p. 35878. Dowers were first introduced into England by the Danish king, Cnut or Canute, and into Denmark by Swein, father of Canute, who bestowed it upon Danish ladies in grateful acknowledgment of their having parted with their jewels to ransom him from the Vandals. For account of Dowers, see History of Dowers; Grote.--History of Greece 2, 112-13; Alexander.--History of Women; Lord Kames' Sketch of the history of Man; Histoire des Morales des Femmes. In Denmark, King Sweinn Forkbeard was the first to give woman a share in her parents' property. Saxo Grammaticus says, The king was taken prisoner by the Vinds who demanded so large a sum of money for his ransom, the men of Denmark would not pay it, so their king remained a prisoner. The women of Denmark sold their ornaments and ransomed him. From gratitude the king decreed that afterwards daughters should inherit one-third of their father's property. Journal of Jurisprudence. One especial right belonged to wives among the Northmen; this was the custody of her husband's keys, and if he refused them the wife could compel p. 359 him bylaw to give her their possession. These were the keys of the store-room, chest, and cupboard.
p. 35979. The law of dower was less favorable to the wife in the 13th century than It became later.
p. 36080. See Reeves, p. p. 156-6.
p. 36181. Sheldon Amos.--Science of Law.
p. 36282. History of Women, 1779.
83. Higgins says the word widow comes from Vidya, to know.
p. 36384. Ancient Laws of Ireland; Sanchus Mor. p. p. 347-51.
p. 36485. At a time when the English law of husband and wife, which now for three centuries, has been substituted for the Irish law in this country, has been condemned by a committee of the House of Commons, as unjust towards the-wife, and when the most advanced of modem thinkers are trying to devise some plan by which wives may be placed in a position more nearly approaching to equality with the husband, it is interesting to discover in the much despised laws of the ancient Irish, the recognition of the principle on which efforts are being made to base our legislation on this subject. Preface to Sanchus Mor. Vol. 2
86. Vol. 3, p. 35--Ibid.
p. 36587. Rambles and studies in Old South Wales.--Wirt Sikes.
88. The three peculiars of a woman are her cowyll, her gowyn, and her sarand; the reason these three are called three peculiars, is because they are the three properties of a woman and cannot be taken from her for any cause; her cowyll is what she receives for her maidenhood; her sarand is for every beating given her by her husband, except for three things; and those three for which she may be beaten are, for giving anything she ought not to give; for being detected with another man in a covert; and for wishing drivel on her husband's beard; and if for being found with another man he chastises her, he is not to have any satisfaction beside that, for there ought not to be both satisfaction and vengeance for the same crime; her gowyn is, if she detect her husband with another woman, let him pay her six score pence for the first offense, for the second, one pound; if she detect him a third time she can separate from him without leaving anything that belongs to her. Acurin Owen, Professor of Welsh Law.
p. 36689. The law enacts that she ought not to suffer loss on account of the Man, since she received no benefit from him, and therefore he is to rear the child. Ancient Laws and Institutions of Wales.
90. The Welsh laws of Howell the Good were enacted by four laics and two clerks who were summoned lest the laws should ordain anything contrary to scripture. Ibid.
91. A woman cannot be admitted as surety or as a witness concerning man. Ibid.
p. 36892. Civil Code. Art 340.
p. 36993. The Woman Question in Europe.--T. Stanton. This law of France differs greatly from the old Welsh pre-christian law, which threw the support of an illegitimate child upon the father. Notwithstanding the responsibility thus thrown upon her, a French proverb declares that "the most reasonable woman never attains the sense of a boy of fourteen."
p. 37094. It was no mere accident that the French language only possessed one word, l'homme, for man, and human being. French law only recognizes man as a human being.--August Bebel.
95. Legouvè.--History of Morals of Women.
96. The baby was born in the next house, and of course I was interested, how can one not be interested when one of these little angels becomes imprisoned in the earth form and begins a career that makes one tremble to think of? Meeting the father a few hours later I ask the customary question.
"Another no account girl to be supported," he said gloomily, and passed on--Woman's World. A father of experience spoke differently: "My gals never forget me. They married and went away to their own homes: and though they were none of them well-to-do, yet not one of them ever saw the time she p. 371 wouldn't steal a dollar from her husband to give to father or mother; but it isn't so with the boys. They never knew they owed me anything; they never put their hands in their pockets for me: they never laid awake o' nights thinking how to scrimp household expenses to get me or mother a present like the gals did. And yet when I was araisin' 'em I thought one boy was worth a dozen gals."
p. 37197. See Scandinavian Jurisprudence.
p. 37298. A story is told by an American traveller, of a party met upon the cars, the mother a delicate little personage, the father stout and strong. Upon leaving the train he walked off incommoded by a single traveling impedimenta, while the wife was almost hidden under the pack she was carrying. With indignation the American asked, "why do you not let the man take some of these things?" What, and he the father of a family?' was the surprised answer.
p. 37399. It is unnecessary to let the whole many-colored map of German common law pass in review: a few specimens will suffice. According to German common law woman is everywhere in the position of a minor with regard to man; her husband is her lord and master, to whom she owes obedience in marriage. If she be disobedient, Prussian law allows a husband of "low estate" to inflict moderate bodily chastisement. As no provision is made for the number or severity of the blows, the amount of such chastisement is left to the sovereign discretion of the man. In the communal law of Hamburg the regulation runs as follows: "The moderate chastisement of a wife by her husband is just and permissible." Similar enactments exist in many parts of Germany. The Prussian common law further decrees that the husband can determine the length of time during which a woman must suckle her child. All decisions with regard to the children rest with the father. When he dies the wife is everywhere under the obligation of accepting a guardian for the children; she is decided to be under age, and incapable of conducting the education of children alone, even when their means, of support are derived entirely from her property or her labor. Her fortune is managed by her husband, and in cases of bankruptcy is regarded in most states as his and disposed of accordingly, unless a special contract has been made p. 374 before marriage. When landed property is entailed on the eldest child, a daughter has no rights, as long as husband or brothers are alive; she cannot succeed unless she has no brothers or has lost them by death. She cannot exercise the political rights which are as a rule connected With landed property, unless in some exceptional cases, as for instance in Saxony, where communal regulations in the country allow her to vote, but deny her the right of being elected. But even this right is transferred to her husband if she marry. In most states she is not free to conclude agreements without the consent of her husband, unless she be engaged in business on her own account, which recent legislation permits her to do. She is excluded from every kind of public activity. The Prussian law concerning societies, forbids school-boys and apprentices under eighteen, and women to take part in political associations and public meetings. Until within the last few years women were forbidden by various German codes to attend the public law courts as listeners. If a woman becomes pregnant of an illegitimate child she has no claim on support if she accepted any present from the father at the time of their intimacy. If a woman is divorced from her husband, she continues to bear his name in eternal memory of him, unless she happens to marry again.--August Bebel.--Woman in the Past, Present and Future.
p. 375100. Who, indeed, would not have been received by the queen.
p. 376101. A German girl continues to be a maid-of-all-work until circumstances elevate her to a higher position. She becomes a mother, and this opens a fresh career to her as an amme or wet nurse. Her lines thenceforward fall in pleasant places. An amme is a person of consideration. No disgrace or loss of character is attached to the irregularity of conduct which often is the origin of her promotion to a higher sphere. Her wages are quadrupled; her fare by comparison is sumptuous; she can never be scolded; she is called upon to fulfill but one duty. The occupation is so much more remunerative than ordinary service, that one can scarcely be surprised if plenty of women are found ready and willing to follow the trade. With them the child is only a means to an end. Marriage among the lower orders in Germany is cumbered about with so many restrictions and conditions, that it has come to be looked upon as almost an impossibility.
102. When Miss. Aarta Hansteen, a Norwegian lady announced her purpose p. 377 of lecturing on woman's natural equality with man; she met little or no support, the church strenuously opposing on ground of woman's original curse.
p. 377103. Translated into English under title of "Nora," by Miss. Frances Lord.
104. So profound was its effect that visiting invitations were coupled with the request not to speak of the work.
105. Marian Brown Shipley, an American lady, long a resident of Sweden and thoroughly conversant with its literature and tone of thought, said of it, "A more glorious thing has not been done in Sweden for centuries, Strindberg has defied church and state, striking both to their foundations with his merciless satire, and rallied the Swedish people at a single stroke."
106. Bjornsen said, "The confiscating of August Strindberg's book Giftas, is the greatest literary scandal in the North in my time. It is worse than when one wished to put me in, the house of correction on account of the King; or thrust out Ibsen from the society of honorable people for gjengungerd (Ghosts)."
p. 378107. March 30, 1882.
p. 380108. Russian Revolt.
109. A Russian writer of the 17th century said: "As Eve did wrong, so the whole race or women become sinful and the cause of evil."
p. 381110. She was spoken of as a "Vanity itself," "A storm in the home," "A flood that swells everything," "A serpent nourished in the bosom," "A spear penetrating the heart," "A constantly flying arrow."
p. 383111. Rural Life in Russia.--The Nineteenth Century.
p. 384112. See Chap. 4. p. 161.
p. 385113. I myself am the happy possessor of a little rude wooden bas-relief, framed and glazed, of two saints, whose names I have ungratefully forgotten, to whom if you pray as you go out to commit a crime, however heinous, you take your pardon with you.--Rural Life in Russia.
p. 387114. See Chap. 4. p. 182.
p. 389115. Reported by Mrs. Livermore.
p. 390116. Leavenworth Standard, Dec. 21, 1886.
p. 392117. under common law a woman is classified with lunatics, idiots, infants and minors.