Studies of Family Life: A Contribution to Social Science

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■<^fiRi.^^^

STUDIES OF FAMILY LIFE.

f

c,\TY Of

'•^SRA'i^

STUDIES OF FAMILY LIFE.

i

r

Studies

OF

Family Life

SI Contrifiutton to Social Science

BY

C. S. DEVAS

M.A. OXON.
AUTHOR OF 'GROUNDWORK OF ECONOMICS*

BURNS AND GATES

LONDON

GRANVILLE MANSIONS
ORCHARD STREET, W.

1886

NEW YORK

CATHOLIC PUBLICATION
SOCIETY CO.
BARCLAY STREET

D49

^.»l-2^

PREFACE.

■H-

This book is a series of studies of family life, a num-
ber of facts, that are to be found scattered elsewhere,
brought together and arranged. For it seems to me
that the various constitutions of Homes are as much
deserving of study as the various constitutions of
States ; and that in the one department of science,
as in the other, what in these times 4s most needed is
a plain statement of the facts. So it is real life I
have tried to set forth, not words or fancies. And
my aim has been to help in a right judgment being
formed upon family life, both past and present, that
we may not take good for evil, or say some particular
institution is quite needful, when, in truth, there is
excellent family life without it ; or declare some par-
ticular evil inevitable, when there are instances of its
absence ; or follow after .theories of change and pro-
gression inconsistent with facts. The examples of

STUDIES OF FAMILY LIFE.

It'

I

CONTENTS.

53art M.

THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY (§ 102-127).

PAGE

I. CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE ON THE FAMILY, § IO2-II8 142
II. CHRISTIAN PRACTICE, § 119-127 . . . . I7I

part Mi.

AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES (§ 128-182).

I. THE MOHAMMADANS, § I29-I46 . . . . 187

II. THE IRRELIGIOUS FRENCH PEASANTRY, § 147-156 213

III. THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS, § I57-I70 . 228

IV. THE ENGLISH LABOURERS, §171-182 . . . 250
CONCLUSION, § 183-186 270

INDEX 279

STUDIES OF FAMILY LIFE.

■♦♦■

Part £

FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES.
I. — The Chinese.

§ I. The Chinese family has a claim to be taken
first, because of the number of mankind it embraces
and the length of time it appears to have existed in
substantially its present form. The chief and the
usual features are as follows.^ In the whole empire,
with a population of at least 300,^000,000, there are
less than 3000 surnames (Sing = the Latin nomen).
All having the same surname are descended through
males from a common though very remote ancestor,
and no two persons having the same surname can
marry. Thus the intermarriage of agnates (blood re-

1 What follows is gathered chiefly from E. Jamieson, Translations
from the Lii-Li in the China Review, beginning vol. viii. p. i (July
1879) ; also from the monograph of a Chinese Joint-Family given in
Les ouvriers des deux mondes, tome iv., Paris 1863 ; from J. H. Gray,
China, 2 vols., London 1878; and from S. Wells Williams, The
Middle Kingdom, edit, of 1883.

A

2 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ i.

lations through males), however distantly connected, is
forbidden. On the other hand, cognates (blood rela-
tions through females), even as near as first cousins,
can intermarry, provided always that the bride and
bridegroom are of the same generation. Thus you
may marry your first cousin on your mother's side,
but not the daughter of this cousin ; for the daughter
is a step lower down on the genealogy than you are.
Further, there are certain restrictions to the inter-
marriage of those related by affinity (relations by
marriage) ; in particular, you may never marry the
widow, of any of your agnates. No doubt these rules
are in practice somewhat relaxed. For the rich often
take subordinate wives whose parentage is unknown ;
while the poor often, I believe, disregard with im-
punity the rules about the same name and the
different generation. Still the intermarriage of near
relatives is seriously checked ; and as the " surnames "
are so few, whole villages having sometimes only one
between them, there is not a local stagnation but an
active circulation of the national blood.

To die unmarried is considered one of the greatest
calamities ; consequently, there is scarce an instance
of celibacy among laymen, and early marriages are
the rule, and are entirely settled by the parents or
elder brethren of the parties. Before marriage there
is the greatest reserve between the sexes ; and in the
rural districts it is almost unheard of for a young girl
to go astray.

§ 2.] THE CHINESE. 3

§ 2. Property is not greatly affected by marriage ;
for it is a fundamental rule of inheritance that no
woman inherits, and thus there can be no heiress.
The chief expense occasioned by marriage falls on the
families both of the bride and of the bridegroom in
the shape of marriage festivities, with procession,
music, and feasting ; and they will sell land or borrow
money rather than forego the accustomed solemnities.
Less important are two other money matters. One
is the delivery by the bridegroom or his family of a
certain sum of money to the father of the bride. The
amount is from four to eight pounds (EngUsh) among
the peasantry, and may be twenty pounds or more
among the rich.^ There is no recognised English
word for such payments, those, namely, made from
the bridegroom's side to the parents or family of the
bride ; but we must have a word, for we shall meet
these payments in many societies, and the best I can
think of, and which I shall use as a technical term, is
bride-money.

The remaining money matter in a Chinese marriage
is the outfit of the bride, to whom clothes and articles
of the toilet, linen, and sometimes handmaids, are
given by her own father or family ; but such gifts are
only in the nature of bridal outfit or trousseau, and are

^ Among the poor the expense of marriage is lessened by parents
paying a certain sum and receiving a young girl, whom they bring up
as a daughter till she is marriageable, thus securing her services in the
household. Similarly, a girl affianced is sometimes sent to be part of
the household of the boy's parents.

4 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 3.

not of the amount or character to constitute a marriage
portion or dowry^ which should imply that a permanent
source of revenue is brought by the wife, or at least
a house or sum of money sufficient to deserve the
title of her portion of her father's inheritance.

The position of the Chinese wife in regard to pro-
perty is therefore subordinate, as she has neither
separate property nor marriage portion. But there is
a change at the death of the husband, and the widow
assumes a conspicuous place. For not merely is
widowhood a state that the Chinese delight to honour*,
but in the matter of property she has the great pre-
rogative of keeping all her sons around her in a family
community and forbidding any partition of the inheri-
tance. If she permits it she lives by turns with each
of her sons. This mode of providing for the widow
reminds us of the English and European common law
of the Middle Ages, that gave her for her life a large
share of her husband's property (dower, terce, doarium,
WittwengebUhr)f and is not at all like the plan of
marriage settlements or of separate property for
married women among ourselves.

S 3. If asked whether the Chinese do or do not
allow more than one wife, we cannot answer simply
yes or no. A man may only have one tsi, and this
means wife ; and to take a second tsi while married
to the first, is illegal, void, and impossible. But then,
besides this one undoubted wife, a man may have one

§ 3] 'THE CHINESE. 5

or more tsieh; and if these are not to be called wives,
it seems still more unfit to call them concubines.
There is a strict though not so elaborate ceremonial
in marrying them, and their children have an equal
right with those of the regular wife to the paternal
succession. But these are subordinate (always in
theory, if not in practice) to the tst, to whom they
may often stand somewhat as Hagar to Sarah ; the
husband chooses them himself, whereas the ist is
chosen for him by his parents ; he can take one of
lower social standing; and after death their memorial
tablets are not admitted into the ancestral hall. The
best mode of adapting our language to the facts, is to
call them sub-wives ^ and say a Chinese can have but
one wife but several sub-wives. As a fact such sub-
wives, rare among the peasantry and in the Northern
Provinces, are frequent among the richer classes in
the south, notably traders, who take a sub-wife with
them on their journeys and leave the wife to take care
of the home. And in a demoralised city like Canton
it is not surprising that the subordinate position of
sub-wives has not been maintained, and that much
domestic discord and misery has been the result. But
we must not judge of the whole from a small part ;
and still less must we think ordinary Chinese home-
life the least like that of the imperial household, where
the emperor, besides his empress, has wives and con-
cubines served, like the Persian royal household of old,
or the Turkish seraglio, by a multitude of eunuchs.

6 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 3.

But no one else, if I am not mistaken, possesses
eunuchs, except some of the imperial family and a few
nobles ; and such institutions are of the court and the
Manchus, and cannot be said to belong to the Chinese
people.^

The same, however, cannot be said of divorce, for
marriage can be dissolved by the mutual consent of
husband and wife; moreover, for certain specified
offences, which have to be proved before a family
council, the husband can put away his wife. She
usually returns to her family ; but in the case of a
sub-wife this resource is often unavailable, and for
her a divorce means often a life of beggary or prosti-
tution ; nay, the aggrieved husband seems to have the
power to sell her to a brothel-keeper; though this,
indeed, is sometimes merely sending her back to the
place whence he received her. And to have done
with these subjects, there seems an agreement of
competent observers on the difference between the
morality of the interior of China and the rural districts,
and on the other hand the large towns, especially the
sea ports, filled with brothels and licentiousness.

^ The emperor, besides his empress, can have eight sub-wives, called
queens, besides mere concubines. The empress and queens are
generally chosen from the daughters of Manchu officers. Remember,
though ^he succession to the empire is hereditary in the male line, there
is no crown prince, as the emperor nominates what son he likes ; also
the princes of the blood and the numerous members of the imperial
house form a nobility apart from the Chinese people, having many
empty honours, but no real wealth or power. (Wells Williams, I.e. pp.
407, 408 ; Gray, U, pp. 23-25.)

§ 4.] THE CHINESE. 7

§ 4. But even in the towns, though the position
of the wife has greatly suffered by the prevalence of
vice, the position of the mother, above all of the
widowed mother, remains very high. She receives
the greatest reverence from her sons; they must
divorce their wives if these are disobedient to her;
she is honoured by a rigorous mourning three years
after her death, and the tablets on which her name is
inscribed receive perpetual worship from her children.
Moreover, she shares with the father in the protection
given against the violence of undutiful children. If a
man beats his mother the offence is held almost too
frightful to be contemplated : it is a tremendous sacri-
lege, that involves not merely the death of the im-
mediate offender, but severe sometimes even capital
punishments of his kindred, and the infliction of penal-
ties on the neighbourhood (Gray, China, i, pp. 237, 238).
In England the law would be satisfied by a few weeks
imprisonment of the offender ; and I mark this contrast
to draw the moral, which is, not to make general
assertions on the social condition of nations, saying,
for example, that the position of women is higher in
England than in China, but to speak more in particular
and with more accuracy, and to say, for example, that
women in the character of mother and of widow receive
more honour and power in China than in England,
but in most other characters less.^ Again in the matter

* Not indeed in all, for the courteous treatment of women (and
children) in a Chinese crowd might be imitated with great advantage
among ourselves.

8 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 5.

I am coming to, the power, namely, of the father, any
one who knows the laws and customs of England will
see that, though the Chinese father has in many
respects far more power than the English father, in
some respects he has less.

Reverting to the position of women; although in the
Book of Odes (one of the great Chinese Classics) it
is said of them : " their part alike from good and ill
to keep ; " and though the great motive to study,
success at the examinations, which is the only way to
ofRce, cannot effect them, still it is held creditable for
a woman to have literary attainments ; the heroines
in novels are usually credited with them ; there are
seminaries and tutors for girls, many women authors
in Chinese literature, and many lives of women among
the biographies of celebrated people.

§ 5. The father's authority over his children is very
great among the Chinese ; short of life and death,
there is scarce any limit to it ; and he is not severely
dealt with if his child die under the punishment he
inflicts ; while the slaughter or exposure of infant
children is a common practice towards female infants,
not in all China, but in large portions of it, and is only
forbidden or reprobated in certain localities. Parents
c^n sell their children, and thus poor girls are some-
times sold to speculators, to be brought up as sub-
wives for the rich or even for prostitution. Another
transaction, though legally similar, is morally very

§ 5.] THE CHINESE. 9

different, namely, when a girl among the peasantry is
handed over to a neighbour who makes a payment to
her parents, and brings her up as a wife for his son.
Children, moreover, never outgrow parental authority ;
their marriage is regulated for them without it being
necessary to consult them, and, indeed, at an age
when they are too young to be trusted to make a
reasonable choice ; and a marriage without the con-
sent of the parents is void. A son remains a minor
during the life of his father, who must sign the con-
tract if the son is to acquire any property, and for
whose debts the son is a security. Nor will the
highest offices exempt the son from filial subordination,
and he must leave these offices to go through a three-
years' mourning upon the death of his parents. For
not merely during their old age must the parents
receive care and obedience, but after death an honour-
able funeral, and the observance of a long and serious
mourning, and repeated acts of worship ; for they
are now numbered among the ancestors whose shrine
is in every house, and whose worship, amid the
frivolities and formalities of Chinese religion, is
genuine and hearty.

The respect and obedience due to the father are
extended, as we have seen, in no slight measure to
the mother ; and are also due in some degree to all
ascendants, to elder relations, as uncles, and, a matter
of great practical importance, due to elder brothers
from younger. Old age, moreover (looked on as a

lo FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 6.

sign of peculiar favour from Heaven), is honoured to
a degree that is perhaps unexampled. A dress of
honour is allowed to those over seventy years old,
and not seldom a monumental arch is built at the
cost of the imperial treasury in honour of those over
eighty-one.

Mark also that the rules of filial obedience are
supplemented by voluntary affection ; and it is not
rare to see acts of filial devotion, a son, for example,
taking on himself the punishment due to a father's
crime, or cutting a piece from his own flesh to have
it mixed with the medicine for a sick parent.

§ 6. But let us not think that all the duties are on
the side of the children, all the rights on the side of
the parents. Though filial piety, enforced by unani-
mous public opinion and stringent laws, is the main-
spring of society, the father has a heavy responsi-
bility linked to his power, and is liable to dishonour
and punishment for the misconduct of his son. Nor
can he dispose of his property as he pleases. There
are limits to his power of alienation even during his
lifetime. Formerly the sale of the family patrimony
was only allowed on the plea of necessity ; and though
this plea survives at present only as a phrase, not as
a fact, there are still checks from rights of pre-emp-
tion among kindred, from prohibitions of the sale to
a creditor, and from mortgages being impossible. The
great method of borrowing among the Chinese is by

§7.] THE CHINESE. ii

pledge, that is, by handing over movables to the
lender as a security for repayment; and the most
conspicuous buildings in the towns are the solid and
gigantic pawn-shops. The only way to apply this
system to the land is for the would-be borrower to
sell his land out and out with all the responsibility (as
of tax-paying) attached to it, and to receive to him-
self only the right to have it reconveyed to him on
his repayment of the purchase money. So there are
none of the facilities that allow an English landowner
to live, as they say, in grand style, and at his death
leave nothing to his children but an encumbered
estate. And among the yeomen and peasantry the
difficulty of a man changing his tithing or hundred
in which he must be registered, and of getting, so to
speak, a new settlement elsewhere, is a check to any
reckless selling or squandering.

§ 7. The Chinese father, moreover, if he is re-
stricted during life, is still more so in his powers of
disposition after death. The family property is all
that the father has inherited, and all that he or his
sons have acquired ; for all earnings are brought into
a common fund. It is, indeed, possible for a son who
leaves the family that he may fill some official post or
may trade in some distant region, to be separately
established, so that he keeps his own earnings and
has no share in the family property when it is
divided. But this is less an exception to than a way

12 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 7.

of applying the general rule, that the sons have an
expectant interest in the family property of which
they cannot be deprived. The only mode of dis-
inheriting is the extreme measure of solemnly, before
the assembled kindred, expelling an incorrigible son
from the family. Wills indeed exist, but differ in
many ways from the will of modern English Law or
the testamentum of the classical Roman Law. They
are not secret documents whereby the testator can
dispose as he likes of the whole or of much of his
property, but are pubhc instructions, either verbal or
written, containing moral and practical advice, and
arranging the details of how the rules of inheritance
are to be applied so as to avoid disputes and hardship.
For example, the father can say which of the sons is.
to be the head manager of a joint business. And he
has certain powers of granting legacies, and of decid-
ing the sum that shall be set aside to defray the
expenses of domestic worship.

To die without male children, who will venerate
their father's tablets, is held a great calamity, and
early marriages, the permission of divorce on the
ground of sterility, and the permission of marrying
sub-wives, are means to avert it. In addition, a
childless man is allowed to take to himself a son by
adoption, which is a solemn and public ceremony, at
which the adopted person makes obeisance before the
ancestral tablets of his new family. But you may
not choose at pleasure an adopted son : he must be

§ 8.] THE CHINESE. 13

your kinsman through males (an agnate), and in the
same generation as your son would be if you had
one, and must be from among nearer rather than more
remote kindred. Thus your first choice is among the
sons of your brothers, your second among the sons
of ^^ki^'t^s^ of the brotn^^fe^^t^l'your father, and so
onwards. There are also certain exceptional cases,
and a man without sons may make an informal adop-
tion of his son-in-law, who becomes entitled to suc-
ceed to half his goods, the legal heir taking the other
half.

§ 8. In the relations among brethren in China, family
communities are a striking feature. The law, as we
have seen, will not allow a partition of the property
after the death of the father unless the widow gives
her consent. And in practice it is very common,
especially among the peasantry, for a family to remain
several generations in community, and adding, when
it is needful, fresh rooms at each marriage to the
dwelling-house. The technical term for such a com-
munity is joint-family ; they consist in China of per-
haps, on^an average, about sixteen persons, but some-
times reach the number of forty or more. When
they become too numerous, or some irreconcilable
discord arises, the long-deferred partition is carried
out. Meanwhile there are several reasons for their
continuance that do not exist in Europe. One is the
compulsory apprenticeship, so to speak, in the art of

14 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§9.

working in community, to which they are bound till
the death of both parents. Another is the community
of domestic worship, which is rather knit together
than loosened by the death of a parent. A third
reason is the sentiment and law and practice of de-
ference to age, and of obedience on the part of a
younger brother to an elder brother. And the prac-
tical Chinese are not slow to see the vast saving of
labour and wealth by working ^ in common and enjoy-
ing in common, as well as the advantage of this
most pleasant, simple, and effective method of mutual
insurance. ^

§ 9. Even where there is no longer a family com-
munity, relationship is not forgotten. For all who
bear the same surhame not merely are forbidden to
intermarry, but form a sort of clan like the Roman
gens. In parts of the empire it is customary for the
members to dine together on the iSth day of the
new year ; there is periodical solemn worship at the
tomb of the founder of the clan, the expenses being
defrayed out of property set apart for the purpose as
an endowment of the ancestral halls ; poor members
are sometimes allowed some help from this property ;
and there must be some mutual responsibility for
crime, sii;ice in the year 1865 the head of a clan was
put to death because one of the members had beaten
his own mother.

The stress laid upon being of the same generation

§ lo.] THE CHINESE. 15

is another bond of family union. Among your agnates,
if I understand rightly, all in the same generation as
yourself are your brothers or sisters, all in the same
generation as your father are your uncles or aunts,
all in the same generation as your children are your
nephews and nieces. You can only adopt, as we
have seen, an agnate of the generation next below
you ; and among your cognates you can only marry
one of your own generation. Nor is it unfrequent
for brothers to have, besides their personal names, a
common name confined to themselves, and distinct
from the surname which, of course, they share with
their father and their children.^

§ 10. The rules of inheritance are, I believe, the
same whether applied at the death of the parents or
at a subsequent partition. There is primogeniture,
but not in the English sense; and equal partition,
but not in the French sense. In a way we can say
the eldest brother holds the property in trust for
the rest; but in fact, the terms of Western Law
are inapplicable to the situation. The eldest son is
distinguished from his brothers in being their head

^ The surname is put first, the personal name last, and the "genera-
tion name ** is inserted between them. For example, a Chinaman
Cha-Kar-Ng had seven sons, whose full titles were Cha-Yow-Mun,
Cha- Yow-Shing, Cha-Yow-Yan, Cha-Yow-Siin, Cha-Yow-Tak^ Cha-
Yow-Him, and Cha- Yow- Yeung, Here Cha was the surname common
to father and sons, Kar was the father's "generation name," Yow the
generation name of the sons, and the other names were the personal, or,
as we should say, Christian names of the individuals.

i6 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ lo*

and ruler as long as they live in community ; further,
in having the custody of the ancestral tablets and
other religious insignia, and in taking a leading part
in family worship (performance of the sacra) ; and this
second pre-eminence descends on his death to his
eldest son, who thus, in matters of religion, is a more
important person than his uncles to the common
ancestor (namely, their father and his grandfather).
A third distinction of the eldest son is, that if there
are any unmarried sisters, they form part of his
household. Now in view of the second and third
distinctions, the eldest son sometimes or often receives
a rather larger share than his brothers. I think there
is no certain amount fixed by law, but the father has
the power of fixing it, and if he does not, I imagine
it is settled by a family council. With this exception,
the property (after setting apart a certain sum to pay
for marriage solemnities if there are still any unmarried
daughters) is divided equally among all the sons
without distinction, whether their mother was the wife
or a sub-wife. Daughters, as I have already said,
receive neither dowry nor inheritance. The sons of
deceased sons take, I think, not per capita but per
stirpes^ that is, they divide among them what would
have been the share of their father. Failing descend-
ants (an unlikely contingency), collaterals, as far as I
understand, take the property and follow the order
already explained when I spoke of adoption.

§ II.] THE CHINESE, 17

§ II. The result of the foregoing constitution of
the family, in particular of ancestor worship and the
rules of inheritance, has been to give a permanence
to each family and groups of families unexampled in
history. It is part of education to learn by heart the
list of surnames (or clan names) most in use. When
a woman is married she drops her personal name,
takes her husband's surname, and uses her former
surname as her personal (or, as we say. Christian)
name. In each village is kept the Family Book (Kia-
Pou), in which are registered all the births, deaths,
and marriages in each family, and from which the
names of undutiful or criminal members are erased
by order of the family council. It is a sacred docu-
ment; copies of it are taken by families that leave
the neighbourhood; and a book of this kind was
found by Father Ravary that had begun in the year
926 and was still being continued, though in the
tenth century of its existence (Ribbe, Vie domestique,
ii. pp. 84—87). By their joint families and spade-
husbandry the Chinese are able to live a large number
on a small plot ; and when at last the descendants of
the first settler become too numerous, they have a
strong inducement in their religion and law not to
break up the ancestral home, but to leave it in the
hands qf the eldest branch, and to send out swarms
of the younger branches to set up new homes else-
where.

1 8 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 12.

11. — The Jews under the Judges.

§ 12. For several centuries after their settlement
in Palestine the Jews in their family life show many
resemblances to the Chinese, but also many differences,
and a brief comparison will not be out of place to
learn once for all that because two nations are strik-
ingly alike in many domestic matters, we cannot infer
that they are alike in the rest, or that they will go
through the same changes.

Honour and obedience were due by the Mosaic
Law, like the Chinese, to the mother as well as to the
father, and capital punishment was inflicted for any
great violations of this duty. The Law bid respect
be shown to old age, and protected those suffering
from blindness and deafness, the characteristic in-
firmities of the old. Great honour was paid to
widows, and in this, as well as in the severe treat-
ment of the adulteress and her paramour, the Jews
were much like the Chinese. Moreover, as in China,
there was a partial and limited polygamy. But among
the Jews, while it existed, it was restrained in its
moral and physical effects by the laws of succession
and of ceremonial ; it was intended to disappear (as
in fact it did) when the Jews were no longer a con-
quering people with troops of female captives at their
disposal ; and the praises and picture of a good wife
that we find in the Book of Proverbs, and again in

§ 13.] THE JEWS UNDER THE JUDGES. 19

Ecclesiasticus, show that married women, though sub-
ordinate to their husbands, were in a position of
honour and authority. Divorce, indeed, was allowed
to the Jews by the Mosaic Law, but not unreservedly.
A seducer was obliged to marry the girl he had
wronged, and never could put her away ; if a captive
was divorced, she gained her freedom ; if you uttered
certain calumnies against your wife, you lost for ever
the power of divorcing her; and it was only one
opinion, and an abuse, that allowed divorce at the
good pleasure of the husband. Thus in many ways
the position of women was far higher among the Jews
than among the Chinese.

§ 13. The most striking contrast between the two
peoples is to be found in certain rules of intermarriage
and female succession. If there were sons, the posi-
tion of daughters was indeed much the same as in
China. They had no claim to any share of the
inheritance, and took away no portion as a dowry.
Their very outfit at their marriage was defrayed, not
by their father or brethren, but by a payment on the
part of the bridegroom. We need, by the way, a
technical term for such payments, and for want of a
better I will use the term marriage-money} But if

^ Marriage'mofuyii\itrt.ioxtj diflfers from bride-money in its destination,
being for the use of the bride, and not for the use of her father or family ;
and it differs from bridal-outfit (or trousseau) in its origin, being derived
from the bridegroom's side, not from the bride's. The Hebrew term
for this marriage-money was Mohar,

20 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 13.

there were no sons, then, instead of the Chinese
expedient of adoption, daughters were called on to
inherit, and at the same time were only allowed to
marry a member of their own tribe. The husband of
the eldest daughter (perhaps also the husbands of the
other daughters) had to give up his own family name,
and take that of his wife. He would therefore be a
younger son, I expect often a first cousin through
males ; and in this way the property could not leave
the tribe, nor could there be any merging of inherit-
ances.

If there were no daughters an effort was still made
to give the dead man an heir to his name by means
of the Levirate marriage. His young widow had a
claim to be married by his brother, at any rate, if they
were all living together as brethren in a joint family ;
and the eldest child of this union took the property
and bore the name, not of his own father, but of his
mother's former husband.^ Notice that the Jews
used these means, namely, the succession of women,
the intermarriage of agnates, and the remarriage of
widows, all so contrary to the practice of the Chinese,

^ The Levirate marriage cannot be said in the full sense to be com-
pulsory, for the man could escape the necessity by submitting to
certain humiliating ceremonies (Dfut, xxv. 7-10), and the return of the
young and childless widow to her father's house is spoken of as though
there was nothing strange about it in Levt't. xxii. 13. On the other
hand, we see] from the fourth chapter of the Book of Ruth that the
obligation, such as it was, was extended by custom (for the law says
nothing of it, Deut. xxv. 5-6) to other relatives, even those living
apart.

§ 14.] THE JEWS UNDER THE JUDGES. 21

to reach much the same end, that no man's line might
become extinct.

§ 14. The relations of Hebrew parents and children
were in many ways similar to those in China ; only
the father's power was less arbitrary, the bad son in
the last extremity was still to be taken before the
elders, and then at last stoned by the people ; more-
over, infanticide was forbidden, and ancestor- worship
held idolatrous. Then the powers over property
were less. Alienation was restricted by the rights of
pre-emption and redemption on the part of relatives,
and by the general restoration of all landed property
at the jubilee, that is, every forty-ninth year. The
individual holder had really no more than a life
interest ; it was in keeping with this that the utmost
possible time for which land could be alienated was
the interval between coming of age and the normal
end of life, that is, between 20 and 70 ; and fair deal-
ing was much more likely when the number of years
to be disposed of was fixed and certain (see Levit.
XXV. 15-17), than if they had had to do with uncer-
tain quantities, and to make, without our actuarial
tables, calculations of probabihties).^ Again, the
Hebrew had not even the limited testamentary powers
of the Chinese father, wills being a later innovation,
probably due to contact with the Romans. You
might hand over your disobedient son to be stoned

^ T^ Church Quarterly Review ^ vol. x, p. 411.

22 FORE^CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 15.

to death, but short of this you could not disinherit
him.

§ 15. Inheritance, as I have already said, was much
like that of China if there were male children to
succeed. Only the position of the elder son and his
right to a larger share was more clearly defined among
the Jews ; he could not be supplanted by any other
son, even if the father divided the inheritance in his
own lifetime ; but the eldest son took a double portion
of all goods, having to support his sisters as long as
they were unmarried.

Whether joint families were common cannot be
decided with absolute certainty, but I think there is
a strong presumption of their frequency and certainly
some traces of their existence. The " brethren dwell-
ing together " is made a condition {DeuL xxv. 5) for
the Levirate marriage, and is not spoken of as an
improbable contingency. Again, the history of Michas
given in the 17th and 1 8th chapters of Judges, seems
to indicate a joint family, with the mother of Michas
at its head, and a group of houses whose inmates
could furnish a body of fighting men. ' And we see
David summoned to return to the annual family
sacrifice at Bethlehem (i Reg. (Samuel) xx. 6, 29).
Probably also during the three centuries that followed
the conquest of Palestine many joint families expanded
into village communities, holding much of their land
and doing much of their work in common; indeed

§ i6.] THE ROMANS UNDER THE KINGS. 23

there is difficulty in distinguishing at one time the
village from the family. In course of time the traces
of village communism grow less ; but it does not
follow that it was not still the custom, not only for
married sons to remain with their parents, but for
brethren after their parents were dead to dwell, as
the Psalmist says (Ps. cxxxii.), in a sense that per-
haps applies to goods as well as to good-will, together
in unity. ^

III. — The Romans under the Kings.

§ 16. In speaking of the Roman Law, its rules and
principles, the first thing to be done is to say which
Roman Law we mean. For there are at least three
periods when the rules and principles of the law in the
Roman State were widely dissimilar : the Early Period,
before the Punic Wars; the Classical, from Caesar to
Caracalla; and the Christian, from Theodosius II. To
mix up these periods seems to me something like mix-
ing up the principles of the Code Civil with those of the
laws of France under St. Louis, and calling the mixture

* An interesting article on TAg System of Land Tenure in Ancient
Palestine is to be found in The Church Quarterly Review ^ July 1880,
vol. X. pp. 404-435. The author gives us an excellent sketch of the ancient
families and villages, the economical changes, abuses, and reformations
among the Jews. Some information is to be got from Mr. John Fenton's
Early Hebrew Life, London, 1880. But his work is spoilt by having
to adapt the Hebrews to Mr. Spencer's sociology. My chief guide is
F. E. Kuebel, Die soziale und volkswirthschaftliche Gesetzgebung der
Alien Testaments, Wiesbaden, 1870.

24 FORE'CHRISTIA N FA MI LIES, [§ 1 7.

French Law. At present let us look at the Roman
Law on the family in the earliest known portion of
the Early Period, viz. the regal times, and we shall
see, in most of the points in which it differs from our
own existing English Law, that it closely resembles
the existing Law of the Chinese.*

The Romans, when we first get a clear view of
them, were divided into clans (gentes), each clan being
supposed to be the descendants of a common ancestor,
and each member bearing a common surname (nomen).
The ties of mutual help and control and common
worship of the common ancestor much resembled the
ties that bind together the Chinese clan, the only
important difference being, I think, the absence among
the Romans of the rule against members of the same
clan intermarrying. Besides a personal name (prte-
nomen) the Romans had also, unlike the Chinese, a
second surname (cognomen) or family-name as opposed
to clan-name.

§ 17. The position of Roman women in regard to
property was almost exactly as it is in China. They
were subject {in potestate) first to their father, who
gave them as he judged best in marriage, and who,

^ In the following description of the Roman family at two different
times I have followed principally Wilhelm Arnold, Cultur und Recht
der Romer^ and can give besides a general reference to Sir Henry Maine,
Ancient Law, and his succeeding works ; Mommsen, History of Ronu ;
Bollinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum ; Paul Allard, Lcs Esclaves
Chritiem (Paris, 1876).

§ 17.] THE ROMANS UNDER THE KINGS. 25

far from giving a dowry, received a payment from
the bridegroom. This bride-money was one of the
regular parts of marriage/ and another part was
a religious ceremony. With the growth of 'wealth
and refinement among the richer classes, the payment
of bride-money, which among a simple peasantry is
of the nature of a compensation to the bride's house-
hold for the loss of her services, was gradually
discontinued. Hence the religious ceremony alone
remained among the patricians, and their marriage
was called con/arreatio, from the sacrificial cake used
at the ceremony. On the other hand, among the
plebeians the religious ceremony was let drop, less,
perhaps, out of indifference than out of dislike to the
patrician priests ; whereas they continued to pay the
bride-money, or at any rate to keep up the forms of
payment, from which forms their marriage was called
coemptio.

The consequence of a lawful union was that
the married woman became subject (in manu) to her
husband. On his death she passed, in matters of pro-
perty, under the control (in tuteld) of her sons, or the
male agnates of her husband. But though her posi-
tion as a widow was not equal to that of the Chinese
widow, and though we cannot say she had any power
of veto on the partition of the property, still there

^ The fact of bride-money being paid, does not prevent the bride-
groom also giving presents to the bride, or her father giving her a
trousseau, and both may have been usual at Rome a& N«e\\ ^ >^^
hride-moDey.

26 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 18.

is a strong presumption that she invariably lived in
the house and home that had been her husband's ; nor
was she likely to receive anything but honour from
children who had been so long trained to obedience.
Later on, when shares came to be reckoned and
partitions made, she became entitled to a share in
her husband's goods equal to that of each of his
children.

§ 18. During her married life the Roman wife of
the Regal Period had the advantage of being alone
in her husband's affections ; for neither was polygamy
allowed nor the Chinese compromise of sub-wives,
nor does it appear that their monogamy was accom-
panied by the melancholy supplement of slave girls,
mistresses, and prostitutes. I do not say these evils
were unknown, but I judge they were uncommon
in that simple and austere society.

Divorce was not so much forbidden as disapproved,
and in some cases punished. It is true, the husband,
if his own father were dead, could sell his wife ;
nevertheless, the religious rite of confarreatio required
another religious rite (diffarreatid) if it were to be dis-
solved ; the man who put away his wife without very
grave cause was liable to a fine imposed by the
censor ; and the story that the first divorce at Rome
was not till the year 230 b.c. could hardly have been
told, had divorce been a common practice in the
previous centuries.

i

§ 19.] THE ROMANS UNDER THE KINGS. rj

§ 19. The power of the father {fatria potestas) was
even greater than in China, and extended equally
over grown-up children. I need not repeat the de-
scription, but only add that the Roman father had
unlimited powers of chastising and slaying ; and
that, touching infanticide, the Roman religion only
prohibited the exposure of male children and the first-
born female, but not of the other female children.
And although the father in his lifetime might set up
a son apart with his own cattle (pecultum), these gifts,
and all subsequent earnings even of this separated
son, might be resumed by the father at pleasure.

It was a rule that no Roman could be the slave of
another Roman ; but a father could sell his son as a
slave to foreigners ; and by a process known as datio
in manctpium, he could bind his son to be the servant
of a fellow-citizen for five years, and repeat this
binding of his son twice again ; so that the son
for a period of fifteen years could be compelled to
remain a servant in a stranger's house. This no
doubt was the legal form adopted both for ap-
prenticing boys in the town and country, and also for
the service of the children of the poorer classes as
domestics in the houses of the richer and middle
classes.^

Moreover, after the death of the father the shadow
of his power still remained in the worship, which,

^ The son thus handed over was no slave, but protected against ill
treatment, and able to marry and have children of his own.

28 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 2a

now that he was numbered among the ancestors, was
his due.

§ 20. But then again, just as in China, while the
father seems, in the view of modern English Law, to
have such arbitrary power in one aspect, he seems
tied up in another. He could seize the earnings and
take the life of a son of fifty years old, but he
could not sell a field at his pleasure, or alter the
order of inheritance. At least it seems highly pro-
bable, if not certain, that at one time none of the
property known as res mancipi could be alienated by
the paterfamilias (and of course if he could not, no
other individual could). Such property comprised land
and buildings, rights of way, draught cattle, and bonds-
men ; in short, a stocked farm or homestead (^fundus
instructus of later times). And the subsequent cere-
monial required for its alienation, with the copper and
the scales before the five lay witnesses, the man of reli-
gion and the balance-holder, is symbolic of an ^act of
the assembled people ; and thus indicates a time when
a special law (like a private Act of Parliament) was
requisite for every sale of the farm and of the means
of cultivation. And I imagine that the Romans had
two additional motives beyond those of the Chinese,
making alienation of the homestead repugnant ; first,
distinct from the worship of ancestors {Dii Manes),
the worship of domestic deities (Lares and Penates),
who would be disturbed and displeased by a change ;

§ 21.] THE ROMANS UNDER THE KINGS. 29

secondly, the common practice of placing <he family
tomb, not on rocky hills or waste places like the
Chinese, but near the dwelling-place. As long as
these religious views were dominant, to buy or to sell
a patrimony would be impious ; and it seems probable
that before the XII. Tables there were laws to check
the transactions of the less scrupulous ; ^ at any rate,
it was held so foolish and wicked to squander the
family property, that a man who attempted it was put
under the charge (curateld) of his nearest agnate. Nor
is the severe law of debt intelligible : the seizure of the
person, and the pitiless unrestricted bondage, unless
we suppose some very serious difficulties in the way of
the debtor giving up his property, or making it in
any manner a security for his debts.

§ 21. The father also could only indirectly affect
the succession to his property — 1 should say rather
to the family property — after his death. If he had
no male children, he could only adopt an adult citizen
(not a child), and even then only by a special law
(in the comitia curtata), and after the priests had
declared that no injury would result to the religious
rites of the adopted man's family by his passing into
another. The process was called arrogatio. If the
father had male children, then in one sense they were
without rights before him, in another sense they were
co-owners of the property as well as he. He could

^ See Claudio Jannet, Les institutions sociales hSparte, 2nd ed, p. 77

30 FORE-CHRISTIA N FA MI LIES. [§21.

not put an end either to his own power, (if he sold
them, whenever they got free, they fell back instantly
into his power,) or to their rights. But it is probable
that, even during the Regal Period we are considering,
he could make some public and irrevocable provisions
about the details of the inheritance, the treatment of
servants, the method of partition if there was to be
one, and other matters like those dealt with in the
Chinese will. Only this power of quasi-testation, if
it existed, had to be exercised in the presence and
with the approval of the fellow-citizens, either girt
for battle (testamentum in procinctu) or summoned for
business (testamentum calatis comttiis).

On the death of the father the heritage passed to
those who by his death became their own masters : his
sons, namely, and the sons of any deceased son ; these
last took between them the share of their deceased
father, that is, they took, not per capita, but per stirpes.
In no case was there any distinction of the eldest son,
like that seen in China and among the Jews. Failing
sons, the nearest kinsman through males took the
inheritance ; failing these kinsmen, the members of
the clan {gentiles). It can be safely inferred also, that
whoever took would have to see also to the support
of the widow till her death, and of the unmarried
daughters till their marriage. For we cannot suppose
in a society where bride-money and not dowries pre-
vailed, that daughters took equal shares with sons;
this was a change that was not yet come.

§ 22.] THE ROMANS UNDER THE KINGS. 31

§ 22. Quite in contradiction to the later Roman
Law, this Law of the Regal Period seems to me to pre-
suppose the habitual dwelling together of brethren in
joint families, and to be unintelligible without it. How
could the idea of the unity and indivisibility of the
hcereditas arise if at e^ch death the heritage had been
habitually broken up into a number of separate and
co-ordinate households ? And the most natural expla-
nation of the great use of wills among the Romans
in later times, and their horror of dying intestate, is
that wills had previously been used as the great
means of preserving the families and properties of the
Roman yeomen from dissipation.^ Now I think it a
reasonable conjecture, that in proportion as partitions
increased and house-communities grew fewer, the power
of testation grew to be a substitute for brotherly union
as the means of keeping together the heritage. Pre-
viously, in the Regal' Period we are considering, as
we cannot admit anything but the prevalence of indi-
visible homesteads and enduring households, and as
three out of the four methods of securing or seeking
this stability were not to be seen, namely, the succes-
sion of one child to the bulk of the property, or the

^ This seems to me a much more likely explanation than that given
by Maine in ch. vii. of Ancient Law, namely, the dislike to the law of
intestate succession. And to speak of emancipation as a favour to a
favourite son, seems to mix up later times with earlier, when emanci-
pation was either the mode of disinheriting a bad son or of settling a
son apart from the joint family, so as to start a separate community for
himself.

32 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 23.

freedom of testation, or habitual sterility, it follows
that the fourth method was in use, namely, the joint
family or house-community. Of course there were
occasional partitions, and the legal process of parti-
tioning (actio familice herciscundce) was very old ; but
the very passage from Gaius in which this antiquity
is recorded seems to point to a time when to break
up the joint family {a contmunione discedere) was not
the rule but the exception {Digest X. 2, fr. i).

IV. — ^The Classical Roman Family.

§ 23. Now let us skip over 600 years, and examine
these same Romans under the early empire. And I
think there is sufficient resemblance in their family
life from the time of Cicero to that of Ulpian to allow
us to treat it as a whole, and give it the title of the
Classical Roman Family. There were changes during
that period, but not radical changes, altering the whole
character of the family, like those between the Kings
and Cicero, or again, like those between Ulpian and
the Christian period that was to follow. As far as is
needful I will mention the changes that occurred in
the law or habits of the family during the Classical
Period, and when no particular point of time is men-
tioned I m,ean the end of the reign of Tiberius.

Women were subject, almost as of old, to the power

\

§ 24.] THE CLASSICAL ROMAN FAMILY. 33

of their father ; but their state of tutelage no longer
continued after his death, when they became in a
great measure their own masters. The form of the
old guardianship of women by their male relatives on
the father's side continued indeed, till it was swept
away almost entirely in the reign of Claudius (a.d. 45).
But a serious control over women had ceased long
before this, and Cicero had marked how in his time it
was not the women who were subject to their guar-
dians (tutores), but the guardians to the women.

§ 24. A still greater contrast to the past was seen
in the relations of man and wife. The ancient
marriage in manu, by which the wife had passed into
the power of her husband, had finally disappeared ;
and now marriage was looked on, not as a solemn act
of religion, and a blending together of two human
lives, but as a civil contract, dissoluble at any moment
the two parties might agree to dissolve it, and during
its continuance only binding them in certain definite
matters, leaving them in other matters their mutual
independence. The wife was almost certain to bring
property with her at marriage, or to acquire some in
her married state ; for it was the custom for the
father of the bride to give, not a mere trousseau,
but a substantial dowry (dos), and indeed a law of
Augustus compelled opulent parents to provide dowries
for their marriageable daughters ; and women besides
had rights of succession to their father's or brother's

c

34 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 24.

property equal to that of men/ What the bride
brought in the shape of dowry belonged in name to
her husband. Formerly it belonged to him in reality ;
but now he could not alienate it if it were an immov-
able without the wife's consent, nor mortgage it even
with her consent. If she died before him, her father,
unless there had been an agreement to the contrary,
could claim back all the dowry he had given her, less
a fifth part for each of her children. If there was a
divorce, the husband had to restore the dowry to the
wife, with certain deductions if there was fault on her
side, or, if he was to blame, without the usual delays
and instalments. If she outlived him, and he had
failed to make for her a proper provision by will, she
could claim her dowry back for herself (by the edictum
de alterutrd). But the more special feature of the
time was not the law and practice of dowry, but the
habitual possession by married women of other pro-
perty distinct from the dowry and over which the
husband had no sort of authority. Such property
requires a special technical term to express it, and for
want of a better I will use the term separate goods.
At Rome they were c^Xl^d paraphema ; and so jealous
was the law in preserving the separate rights of
husband and wife, that a donation from one to the
other was unlawful : the giving had all to be done
before marriage. And notice that a bride, when her
father was dead, and she was of an age to manage
her own property, would herself settle a portion of

§ 25.] THE CLASSICAL ROMAN FAMILY. 35

this property as dowry (one form of dos adventitid),
and this alone could be touched by her future
htisband.

§ 25. This separation between man and wife in
matters of property was no mere matter of legal pre-
cision, but corresponded to the realities of married
life ; for marriage in many cases was a mere temporary
cohabitation and anything but a partnership for life.
(See Dollinger, Heidenthum and Judenthum^ pp. 700—
702). The smallest occasions were ground enough
during the later days of the Republic to justify divorce.
Thus Pompey divorced Antistia that he might marry
Sulla's stepdaughter iEmilia, who on her part had to be
divorced from her husband Glabrio, though she was
with child ; and when she died Pompey married Mucia,
whom he afterwards divorced, that he might marry
Caesar's daughter Julia. Women too, having now
their property separate, followed the example of the
men and put away their husbands. Nor was the
effort of Augustus to check divorce, principally by
imposing payments or forfeitures on the party whose
guilt was the cause of the separation, of much avail.
For Seneca, half a century later, is a witness to the
frequency of divorces in his own time and the absence
of public opinion against them. Nay, so rooted and
grounded was this habit that it continued among the
Pagans after Christianity had triumphed. St Jerome
{ad Ageruch, I. 908, apud Roscher, NationalOkonomie,

tt^^rr-t,-^ irvi -a; tirs;;iis:it Jr "iscmiia: x^ die licence

*»:~ -;:'-,i>— ir 7i-::w;.-.c i:rn--u»rBsr. Xcr was it any

off-

.-.i.;r-_-^ i'rii ^«5MTSllC. CiTtt-d give

--~ i.-ss c=i,-s^ Jr-at :3st special

- ■'- ■~--i-^-,w^ " -IT >;^a:^-i::uateis.
^ -"- -■'•;=.^-is^^irc3 jC "•tcouen and
■^~ -1--^- V ^=^'* — nnnvrciiiirr that
1 - ■ --.-.- ^i -'^-xTS rxr^E wi£ne urt-

■-■V. ^- '^- -■* =-^ — ^.i^; 3t rut «Tes

-- ^- '-~ " cv— -.--^vnt it- cchers

§ 26.] THE CLASSICAL ROMAN FAMILY. 37

I will only mark that the abundance of slaves and the
unbridled character of the slavery gave the upper and
middle classes the incitation and the opportunity to
indulge with the least possible cost and inconvenience
in every kind of licentiousness.

§ 26. There can be enduring low levels and endur-
ing high levels in morality and happiness ; but the ex-
tremity of corruption and woe must soon be followed
by a reaction. Not that evils, if bad enough, work
their own cure ; only there is a low level, below which
there is no long remaining. The lower classes of
England could not remain long in that extremity of
misery to which they had sunk in the fifth decade of
this century ; nor could the upper and middle classes
at Rome remain in that extremity of depravity to
which they had sunk at the end of the Republic. We
may distinguish two notable efforts to restore family
life to something of its former integrity. The first
was by Augustus, who, beginning with sumptuary and
penal laws to check the extravagance and vice of
women, at last made a bold stroke, and by the two
Acts known together as leges Julia et Papia^ inflicted
penalties on the single and childless and bestowed
rewards on the married and parents. The main pro-
visions were, first, that no unmarried person or who
persisted in remaining unmarried could enter on the
inheritance or receive the legacies of a stranger, that
is, of any one beyond the sixth degree of kinship

38 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 27.

(second cousin). Secondly, that no man who had not
at least one legitimate child living could receive as
heir or legatee of a stranger more than half what he
could else have received. Thirdly, that the property
thus forfeited should fall to any co-heirs or co-legatees
who had children, and failing these, to the public
treasury. Fourthly, that a freeborn woman who had
thrice born children should have various privileges,
as exemption from guardianship, and the right of
succession to part of the goods of her freedmen.
And there were other less important provisions, with
the same aim of restoring family life. That these
laws wholly failed I do not believe ; that they were
felt, is shown by the dispensations from them granted
by the emperors ; that they were held to do some
good is seen by their long continuance, in spite of
efforts to repeal them. But mitigation of extreme
evils is not a moral transformation ; Seneca and Pliny
the younger, Juvenal and Tacitus, show much the
same picture as Cicero and Horace ; and the captators
still successfully pursued their business and their
flattery, so that Seneca could say : In civitate nostra
plus gratice orbitas confert quant eripit (Consol. ad Marc,
c. 19), that is, "You gain more at Rome by being
childless than you lose."

§ 27. The other effort at reform was a sort of half-
religious, half-philosophical revival based on Stoic
philosophy, and greatly promoted by the extinction,

§ 27.] THE CLASSICAL ROMAN FAMILY. 39

through vice or the executioner, of many of the old
nobiUty, and by their places being taken by a more
frugal and sober-minded nobility coming from the pro-
vinces. And undoubtedly there was some change for
the better; there is a genuine dislike of corruption
and an admiration of domestic virtue in the better
writers of the age of Tacitus; if there was more
astrology and magic, there was also more religion ;
and there are more traces of healthy family life and
domestic affection. But this supreme effort at moral
reform either had but fleeting influence or did but
raise morality to the lowest possible of lasting levels ;
and in the age of Tacitus, as in the age of Cicero,
we see, not as exceptional abuses, but as a regular
part of the Romano-Hellenic civilisation and common
practices of private life, the five abominations of tran-
sitory marriages, wilful sterility, vices against nature,
the stage everywhere, and every stage a sink of pros-
titution, and lastly, the world of slaves without any
marriage recognised at law.'

^ It is necessary to give a word of warning against the false impres-
sion likely to be caused by such able writers as Friedlander {Sitten-
geschichte Roms) and Gaston Bossier (Za religion romaine). No doubt
it is pleasanter to read of the material beauty, the contrivances of art,
the political structure of that splendid empire, to be given instances of
wisdom and virtue, of religion and reformation, than to wade through
filth. No doubt also there has been much ignorant disdain of the in-
dustrial arts and political constitution under the Caesars. But the
diseased state of family life and the all-pervading moral corruption are
beyond serious dispute. And if the provincials had a stock of virtue
to start with, this grew less the more they were assimilated to the
urban Latins or Greeks. Each centre of Roman administration, with its
baths and theatre, was a school of new vice and a centre of corruption.

40 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 28.

§ 28. In the Classical Roman Family the power
of the father over his children remained to a great
extent the same as in the time of the kings. His
power of life and death was indeed restricted under
the Antonines ; but infanticide and exposure con-
tinued, and speculators collected the foundlings and
reared them for slavery or prostitution. All that a
son earned or received belonged wholly to his father ;
and though the father might allow him to have pro-
perty as though it were his own, this was an indul-
gence that he could recall at pleasure. There was
indeed a serious exception that began under Augus-
tus, for a son had complete control over what he
received when setting out upon military service, and
over what he acquired as a soldier {castrense peculium)]
he could even dispose of it by will. Moreover, a
father in two ways might render his sons independent.
One was by an irrevocable act of emancipation ; the
other by taking a concubine instead of a wife. The
law under Augustus recognised such unions, and
though the position of the woman was not honourable,
she had a position, and there was no wife allowed or
fellow concubine beside her. The children had a
recognised father, from whom they could claim sup-
port. But they had not the rights of succession that
fully lawful children could claim ; and they were not
in the power of the father in the manner of those other
children.

But though the head of the household, whether by

§ 29.] THE CLASSICAL ROMAN FAMILY. 41

law or custom, of necessity or by his own doing, had
habitually less power over his children than the father
of Regal Rome or Modem China, he had greater
power over property, and could extend that power
beyond the grave. The reckless prodigal was still
placed under guardianship; but the remaining pro-
hibitions of alienating property had fallen away, and
it was not till the time of Alexander Severus that
immoderate donations tnter vivos by a father, or im-
moderate dowries, could be rescinded and recovered
by his children after his death (by the querela inqffi-
ciosce donationis or inofficiosi dotis)^ and thus his power
while living abridged (F. Walter, Gesch. der rdm.
Rechts, n. 618).

§ 29. Further, he had much greater powers of
adoption than in that former time ; and if he had no
son could adopt even a stranger who would become
to him wholly as a son, and likewise a daughter if he
had no daughter; and though there were certain
restrictions, as of age, he still neither required a
special law or the consent of his clan as of old, nor
was bound like the Chinese father to choose from a
narrow list of relatives. Above all, he now had such
powers of making a will as enabled him substantially
to alter the order of succession. His powers, indeed,
were not wholly arbitrary, as in England, Ireland, and
some American States ; for besides being bound by

42 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 3a

certain formalities/ the testator was obliged to leave
to his children, to his parents, and to his brothers, at
least one-fourth of what they would have got had he
died intestate.^ But he was master of the remaining
three-fourths ; and the common use and perhaps
commoner abuse of testaments, and the great compli-
cation of their provisions, can be gathered both from
the literature which gives so conspicuous a plaqe to
the legacy hunter, and from the statute book which
shows so many laws dealing with trusts and legacies.
It was the custom to leave something to every friend
in high rank. Augustus, during the last twenty years
of his reign, received over ten million pounds sterling
in legacies from his " friends ; " and the chief penalty
he employed for celibacy and childlessness was pre-
cisely to cut off these testamentary gifts 'from friends
— a proof of their frequency.

§ 36. In the law of inheritance in Classical Rome
the most striking contrast to modern China and Regal
Rome was that women were almost on a level with

^ For exampje, having to say expressly that he disinherited certain
persons, and having so to arrange his liberalities that the person he
appointed " heir " (or persons as co-heirs) should get a fourth at least of
the property, and that those whom he favoured by trusts and legacies
should not get more than three-fourths.

^ That is, they could bring an action {querela inofficiosi testamenti) if
he did not leave them this amount. Other relatives could also try to
have the will set aside on this ground of undutifulness, but with little
hope of success during the Classical Period.

V

\

t

\

§ 31.] THE CLASSICAL ROMAN FAMILY, 43

men. If you died intestate, your property went in
equal shares to your children, whether male or female,
adopted or your own, and to the children of any de-
ceased son, as their father's representatives ; nor was
a son excluded by his emancipation nor a daughter by
her marriage. Such sons, indeed, or such daughters had
to throw into the common property, that was now to
be distributed, such goods of theirs as would have been
their father's had they not been emancipated {coUatio
bonorum), and whatever they had received, if daughters,
as dowry. Only those children were excluded who
had been given in adoption and become entitled to
succeed as the sons or daughters of others. The
next class to succeed were relations through males
(agnates) ; only here women were not put on a level
with men, as, of all the female agnates, only sisters could
claim. If there were no agnates, relations through
females (cognates) succeeded, such as the children of
your daughter or the brothers of your mother.

§ 31. Although women, therefore, were not assimi-
lated to men in the matter of property, the law was
such that a great deal of property might be expected
to be in their hands. And they could also profit by
the freedom of testation. It is true that long previ-
ously an attempt had been made to check the accumu-
lation of property in women's hands, namely, by the
Lex Voconia, b.c. 168, which forbade any one rated at
100,000 asses to make a woman his heir. But in the

44 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§32.

Classical Period, by the use of trusts and legacies, you
could, if the worst came to the worst, set aside a
quarter of your goods for the " heir " and a quarter for
those entitled to legitims, and give the remaining half
to women. There had also been an attempt to stop
women making wills. But the law was evaded by a
legal contrivance {coemptio fiduciaria testamenti faciendi
causa)f and even this contrivance was rendered un-
necessary by a law of Hadrian.

In the matter of joint families, although the power
of the father over his children prevented that rapid
dissolution so common in modern France or North
America, and made it easy and natural for the family
community to last till his death, there were no longer
the old reason and opportunity for his children keep-
ing together when he was dead. The worship and
recollection of ancestors was not indeed gone, but
was enfeebled, and its costly and numerous obser-
vances were now felt an intolerable burden and annoy-
ance ; ^ the law was hostile to ownership in common,
and provided special means of partition and division ;
above all, the right of women to receive an equal
portion of the inheritance and to demand that portion
separate, rendered impossible any long continuance of
the family community.

§ 32. I do not profess to give the causes of the

^ See Maine, Ancient Law, 3rd ed., pp. 192, 193, iv. pp. 64, 65 ;
Early Law and Custom, pp. 64, 65.

§ 32.] THE CLASSICAL ROMAN FAMILY, 45

great difference between the time of the kings and the
time of the emperors in Roman family life ; nor to
account for the fact that the Chinese still remain so
like the Romans of the first period, and have not
changed as these did. . I will only say that I am not
satisfied with any such free-and-easy mode of ex-
planation, as that the one people was progressive, the
other stationary, and therefore the one passed out of
the archaic family, the other remained in it. How
then are we to account for the elaborate civilisation
of the Chinese, so that they serve as a stock example
of an artificial and over-cultivated people ? (see W.
Roscher, NationalCfkonomie, passim). If their family
life remained "archaic" because they were unpro-
gressive, how did they change from the illiteracy, the
rudeness, the violence, and the spirit of warfare that
are supposed to be archaic, to become of all peoples
the greatest devotees of literature, the most polite
and ceremonious, the most orderly, and the least in-
clined to honour or favour the profession of arms ?
Nor do I think that we can account for the change
from the Regal to the Classical Roman family, because
we know in great part the steps by which that change
was accomplished. To know how it happened is not
to know why it happened. It is likely enough that
the rapid growth of commerce at Rome did much to
upset the former laws and customs that had been
adapted to a community of simple husbandmen ; but
this is saying but little : there is plenty of trading in

46 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 33.

China, and yet Chinese family law has not been up-
set ; and the interesting point is not why the Roman
family in general underwent a change, but why it
underwent the particular changes it did. Of course
we may all give our guesses ; only let us make quite
clear to our hearers what is guesswork and what is
not.

V. — The Homeric Greeks.

§ 33. From the reign of Caracalla, when all free-
bom inhabitants of the Empire were made Roman
citizens and followed the Roman Law, the Greeks
were assimilated to the Latins in their family law,
and, moreover, became once more at law all alike
among themselves, as they had not been .for some
thousand years. Let us, before saying more of the
later Greeks, go back those thousand years, and con-
sider that earlier family life to which we can give the
title of Homeric.^

The times were simple, that is, there was no great

* I follow constantly the small but most excellent treatise of
Claudio Jannct, Les institutions societies et le droit civil h SpartCf 2nd ed.,
Paris, 1S80 ; also W. £. Gladstone, Studies on Homer and tke Homeric
AgCi Oxford, 1858, 2ji.di Juventus Mundi, 1869; also the volumes on
PrivcUaltertkiimer and RechtscUterthiimer^ in the new edition (1882-4)
of Hermann's Lehrbuch der Griechischen Antiquitdten ; also for Athens,
Boeckh, Die StcuUshaushaliung der Athener^ 2nd ed. 1857 ; and for later
times, G. F. Hertzberg, Geschichte Griechenlands unter der Herrschaft
der Rom€rt 1866-75.

§ 33] ^^^ HOMERIC GREEKS. 47

accumulation of wealth in single hands, nor any
strongly marked distinctions of class, nor any very
complicated relations of ownership, of partnership, or
of service. Manual labour in the field, or even in
the workshop, was not held unbecoming for the
noblest born men ; while women of the highest rank
habitually sat spinning or weaving with their ser-
vants. All garments were made at home by the
women, who also did the washing, ground the corn,
fetched the water, and did in short all the household
work except the preparation of firewood and of animal
food, functions reserved by custom for men. In farm-
work ail the part of the women was to work at the
vintage, and perhaps tend sometimes the sheep. Thus
all the members of the family, whether in high or
humble station, as soon as they had ceased to be
children, joined in the labours of the house or the
farm, and contributed to the common revenue. Under
such circumstances, it was a matter of course, when a
maiden left her family at her maiViage, for some com-
pensation to be given to her father or brethren for the
loss sustained by her family, in other words, for bride-
money to be paid. Such payments were called ceBva.
And let me here protest against speaking of the hus-
band, where bride-money is given, as " buying " his
wife, and against using the term bride-price instead of
bride-money. It would be almost as misleading to
say, where dowries are common, that the father
" buys " a husband for his daughter. There is some

48 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 34.

likeness in both cases to a sale ; but what is the use
of science if it does not make clear and distinct what
in common discourse is confused and obscure.

§ 34. The fact of bride-money being paid by the
bridegroom is not inconsistent with the bride being
provided with a trousseau by her father. This seems
to have been customary in Homeric Greece ; and if
the wife was put away without due cause, the husband,
besides losing the bride-money, probably had to send
her trousseau back with her. On the other hand, if
the wife was guilty of adultery, the bride-money could
be demanded back by the husband. The cases where
the father gave a dowry to his daughter, instead of
receiving an indemnity, were wholly exceptional,
perhaps confined to the royal or the wealthiest fami-
lies, and to where the son-in-law was taken by a kind
of informal adoption into the family of his father-in-
law. A widow, if young, would, I think, return to
her father's house and be married again ; but other-
wise would remain among her children, or with her
husband's relatives, protected, if not by law, at least
by fear of offending her relations, by public opinion,
and by religion, from ill-usage and neglect.^

How far a maiden could exercise her choice of a
husband seems doubtful ; , but although the parental
promise or betrothal (eyyvrjaig) was part of the cere-
mony, the consent of the parent necessary, the willing-

^ All three grounds are to be found in Odys, ii. 130-137.

\

§ 35] THE HOMERIC GREEKS. 49

ness of the maiden, perhaps in most cases, assumed
rather than asked,— still the Homeric poems show a
considerable freedom of choice left to the girl among
rival suitors ; nor could it well have been otherwise
where the young of both sexes met so freely, and
early attachments were so likely to be formed. The
choice, however, as far as it went, was not whether
she should have a husband, but only who he was to
be : neither a maiden nor marriageable widow could
remain unmarried. For marriage was a religious
duty, and a matter of course, lest the family should
die out, the sacred flame on the hearth be extinguished,
and the dead father have no sons to bear his name
and honour his tomb.

§ 35. Divorce seems almost incompatible with the
plot both of the Iliad and the Odyssey ; and the
many special names for relations by marriage show the
importance and permanency of the tie that marriage
created. Still we can hardly doubt that a man had
the right to put away his wife if she were barren or
unfaithful. Perhaps it was even a duty to a man's
ancestors to put away a barren wife. But this I
think belongs to a later period, when the worship of
ancestors and the desire for posterity had grown much
more definite and strong than appears in the Homeric
poems. There was neither polygamy, nor the Chinese
institution of sub-wives ; and though it was not uncom-
mon for a chief to take a slave or a captive as a con-

D

50 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 36.

cubine (TraWcuch), this union was not reputable, and
the children were bastards (yodoi), inferior in rank,
and with scanty rights of succession, compared with
the issue of the lawful wife. Besides this one laxity
there was a germ of deep corruption in the evil
mythology ; but this was as yet little more than a
germ ; and the Homeric poems give us a picture of
morals as different almost as could be from later
times : no prostitution, no unnatural vices, the body
decently clad, decent women taking their part in
society, the wife the companion of the husband,
women the intellectual equals of men, and commonly
the prop of virtue, and withal gentle and affectionate.
No doubt in one sense we can say, if we are fond of
words, that the Homeric women laboured under harsh
proprietary disabilities, were minors all their lives,
with nothing of their own, and under perpetual guar-
dianship. But the daughter or wife might answer
that in another sense all the goods of her father or
her husband were hers, and that each matron was a
perpetual guardian of the house. And this use of
words would be less misleading than that other.

S 36. Some difference is to be seen between
Homeric Greece and Regal Rome in the power of
the father, though the great contrast was not till later.
Probably the father might expose his children at their
birth, but whether he had, as at Rome, the right of
life and death over them, when they had passed

§ 36.] THE HOMERIC GREEKS. 51

infancy, is dubious; and when they had grown up
they probably had •some separate property, more as a
matter of course than the Latin peculium, and had more
voice in the management of the family property than
at Rome. In both societies, indeed, the father was not
the absolute owner, but only the guardian and adminis-
trator of the family property ; he could not alienate
it during his life or at his death ; nor could it be
charged with rents or seized for debt. Such transfers
would have been not only illegal, but impious; an
outrage to the gods of the house, and to the spirits of
the ancestors, whose shrine was always in the build-
ing, and whose tombs were often on the land. But
the Greek father, unlike the Roman, was liable, even
at this time, if his hands grew weak, to have to give
up his authority to his sons.^ Only let us not think
this means that the Greek sons were less dutiful than
the Roman. We see reverence for age and affection
for parents ; and this was translated into the written
law of later times, which punished children who
neglected their parents in old age, or sickness, or
litigation, or trials. Moreover, among all the Greek
peoples the father had some right of solemn casting-
forth and malediction of an undutiful child (airoKripv^i^^
airoppiia-i^), Testaments, as I have already indicated,
were unknown, though we need not suppose that a

^ In later Attic law an adult son had the right to bring an action of
dotage {irapavola) against his father in order to have the administration
of the family property taken from him ; in which case the father would
fall under the guardianship of his sons.

52 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§37.

dying father never expressed any wishes about the
distribution of movables, and that these wishes were
not respected, or his deathbed donations not ratified
by his children. But the family property as a whole
belonged to the family, and was not the father's to
give or to bequeath. Adoption was not unknown,
but was kept within narrow bounds ; for we may infer
from subsequent laws that only a man with no sons
could adopt, and then only with the consent of the
nearest agnates, and probably only among these could
he make hi^ choice.

A tie, something of the nature of that created by
adoption, was that of guestship (^evld), which bound
together not only the original host and guest, but
their children and grandchildren, giving them mutual
claims to protection, hospitality, and gifts.

8 37. On the death of the father all his legitimate
sons took equal shares of the inheritance; and the
sons and their male descendants excluded the daughters,
though of course any unmarried daughters would live
in the paternal house till their marriage. The eldest
son had probably a certain authority over the rest in
the management of the common property,, in the
manner of making partitions, and especially in con-
ducting the religious rites of the family; moreover,
any political headship went to the eldest. Failing
sons or their male descendants, daughters succeeded ;
and this was a great difference to the law of Rome

§ 37.] THE HOMERIC GREEKS, 53

and China. But not so great as it seems. For such
daughters were not allowed to marry outside the
family ; and thus they were not the means of intro-
ducing a stranger to the sacred hearth, but the means
of preserving it in the family. One of the results of
this plan of preserving the family was that marriages
between near relatives, as of nephews with aunts, was
frequent, and became a characteristic of Greek society
quite independent of its original aim ; nor was rooted
out till Christian manners prevailed.

Homeric family law seems, like the Regal Roman,
to presuppose the prevalence of joint families. All
the members (called ojULOKairvoi or o/uLoa-iTrvoi) were
under the rule and direction of the eldest brother
(supposing him capable) of the eldest line, who bore
the appropriate title of hearth-preserver (ecmo'Trd/jLoov),
Such communities, as Jannet marks (Sparie, p. 88),
" were probably the pivot of family organisation, and
partition among children only exceptional. But in
time it was just the reverse, and then the principle of
compulsory partition was quite out of harmony with a
number of other institutions, that aimed at keeping the
inheritance in the family. Hence the incoherence noticed
by Cicero in Greek law compared with the Roman,
that was founded on the testamentary appointment of
an heir." But in the old times there was no inco-
herence ; and besides being bound up with those who
shared with you the same hearth and the same food,
you were a member of a clan (yevoii) comprising all

54 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 38.

who, by descent, adoption, or service, were bound
together as the worshippers of a common divinized '
ancestor.^

§ 38. The union between kinsmen and between
clansmen was further strengthened by much (though
not all) of the administration of justice being left in
their hands ; to defend, to avenge, even to punish
kinsmen was a right and a duty ; and the later law
of Greece is full of the traces of this early institution.
Nor let us, on the ground of our piety or culture, call
this institution - by the bad names of anarchy and
blood thirstiness. It can be abused like all other
institutions, the criminal law of civilised states among
them ; but is not to be judged by its abuse. The
ferocity of the Highland clans, with kindred put first
and God second, as seen in the picture so wonder-
fully drawn in Rob Roy, is not to be transferred to
Homeric Greece. For there the avenging of kindred's
blood was not against, but a part of their religion, a
holy duty, and one that the gods would not suffer

1 We see in Homer traces, but only traces, of the subsequent aggre-
gation of clans into larger groups called ^pdrpai, and of these into still
larger groups called ^vXaL The matter is obscure, and I am inclined
to think these groups of clans were more local and political, and less
bound up with religion and relationship. How to translate the words
is a problem. If we use tridg to mean the same as cian, then certainly
the common rendering of ^vk-^ as tribe is incorrect. But I see no
reason for not keeping the words clan and tribe quite distinct ; and
then perhaps the best rendering of the three Greek terms would be
clan, tithing, tribe, corresponding to the Latin £fns, curia, triims.

§ 38.] THE HOMERIC GREEKS. 55

to be neglected. Nor was anarchy the result. The
homicide fled as much before his own sense of guilt,
and before public opinion, as before the wrath of the
avenging kindred ; if these were feeble and few,
he still fled ; and we do not see a trace of a homicide
who was of a powerful family using their strength to
defend himself from flight.^

Again, let us not make another mistake about these
judicial and police functions of the family in certain
times. They are excellent in their way, but in their
ixature are transitory ; because man is made for political
as well as for domestic society, and these functions
belong to political rulers. But because the State rightly
assumes, as it grows into being, some of the previous
functions of the family, let us not argue as though it
might rightly assume all. And because some of the
powers and offices of the family are transitory, let us
not jump to the conclusion that everything is in a state
of flux, and that the family itself is transitory, or may
be, for all we know. For neither the Historical
School of Jurisprudence and Economics, nor any school
in any science, can grant us a dispensation from
logic.

^ I have borrowed much of the foregoing from the lucid explanations
of K. O. Mueller in his classical edition of iEschylus' EumenideSf pp.
I26-I3a

5 6 FORE-CHRISTIA N FA MI LIES. [§ 39.

VI. — Classical Athens.

§ 39. The stream of Greek history, economical as
well as political, did not continue, like the Roman, to
flow in one channel, but divided into many streams,
some unlike others; and it was not till the third
century after Christ that they were all once more
united. Nor was the difference among the different
Greek peoples, such as Athenians, Spartans, Thes-
salians. Arcadians, merely this, that some were
quicker, others slower, to begin the series of changes
that transformed the Homeric Greeks into the Greeks
of the Roman Empire. It is no such simple matter
of chronology ; for there was no one common course
of evolution, but a different series of changes for many
of the different States.

Domestic life at Athens in the century from
Pericles to Demosthenes can be traced with some
clearness, and in its leading features appears settled, not
changing. There had indeed been a metamorphosis
since Homeric times, but that was now over; and
all the changes that were to come in the pagan Greek
famil}^, even the introduction of the Roman law, were
as nothing compared with that great change that had
gone before, and of which the stages, unlike those of
the Roman family, are mostly unknown.

§ 40. The least change, though even here it was

§40.] CLASSICAL ATHENS. 57

very great, was in matters of property. Instead of
the parents receiving Eedna at the marriage of their
daughter, it was now the rule for them to give with
her a dowry {(pepinj or irpol^. This dowry was a
great security against arbitrary divorce; for then the
husband would have to restore it. Dowries made up
much of the movable property at Athens ; even
among the comparatively poor a sum equivalent to
;£'ioo with us was not unusual, and among the richer
;£'iooO. Thus the law of inheritance, which remained
much as it had been, excluding daughters if there
were any sons, was of much less use than formerly
to keep the property in the family, since so much
could be drained away at the marriage of each
daughter. In one case, indeed, the payment of a
dowry could be avoided ; for a half-brother had the
right to marry his father's daughter by another wife,
and thus save what would else have gone in the shape
of dowry from the family property.^

The worship of ancestors, and the dwelling together
of brethren in joint families, the two pillars of the
family of old, were much decayed ; though the worship
was still usual, even a legal obligation for heirs ; and
though communities of brothers were not uncommon.^

^ See Maine, Early Law and Custom^ p. 105, who notices that the
law did not allow the half-brother to marry a uterine sister, and that
there was no reason why it should. For such sister, not being his
father's child, would have no claim on the family for dower or for
anything.

* See E. Caillemer, Rtudes sur les antiquiiis juridiques d^Athhtcs :
Succession Ugitime, Paris, 1879, pp. 34-36.

58 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§41.

The absence of clan names or even of surnames was
both a sign and a cause of the decay of union among
kindred. The father's personal name, indeed, was
borne in common by all his sons ; but this only linked
two generations, no more, together. And an Athenian's
third name had nothing to do with his family, but
was that of his political district, a sign of how greatly
public life had waxed and private life had waned.

§ 41. The old rule that daughters, who, being
without brothers, inherited property, were to marry
relatives, lest the property pass away from the family,
had grown at Athens into a branch of the written
law. An heiress was called €7rU\r]po9, and her near-
est collateral agnate, who was called the ay')(L(rrev^9
had the jight to marry her. They could be as nearly
related as uncle and niece. Their son, when of age,
was put in possession of the property of his mother ;
he became her guardian ; and the property was con-
sidered to have descended to him directly from his
maternal grandfather, whose name he bore, just as
though he had been his son. If there was a second
son born to this marriage he succeeded his. own father
(the agchisteus) in the ordinary way. Any further
sons were assigned, I believe, some of them their
father's family, some to their maternal grandfather's.
If there were several sisters co-heiresses, the right of
marrying them extended to as many relatives as there
were sisters. But what if any of the parties were

§41.] CLASSICAL ATHENS, 59

already married ? The male relative could divorce
his own wife in order to marry the heiress, and he
often did so (Maine, /. c. p. 104); or he could keep his
own wife and pass on the heiress to the next of kin.
If she herself was married, then all depended on
whether her father before his death had taken the
precaution to adopt her husband. He had the right
to do this, and then after his death the relatives could
neither dissolve the marriage nor take the property.^
Failing such adoption they could do both ; and there
is a case recorded, which perhaps represents a com-
mon practice, where the relatives of an heiress forced
her husband to renounce all claim to her inheritance
by the threat of dissolving his marriage. But if the
girl was poor, that is, if she was assessed in the
fourth and poorest class of Athenians, the tables were
turned on the relatives, and the agchisteus was com-
pelled either to marry her, or to give her in marriage
with a dowry of 500 drachmas (equivalent to some
£$0 with us). This duty indeed, if there were several
poor sisters, was satisfied by endowing one, whereas
the right of marrying rich sisters could be claimed,
as we have seen, by a corresponding number of
relatives. And when the sum of 500 drachmas was
first fixed, it could purchase probably four or five
times more goods than in the time of Demosthenes.^

1 This right of adoption was the so-called "liberty of testation*'
granted by Solon.

* I have followed in the main Caillemer, /. c, pp. 36-60. The Attic
law with repulsive logic made cohabitation of the heiress and agchisteus

6o FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 42.

§ 42. The former restrictions to alienation were
gone, and a man during his lifetime could dispose of
his property almost at his pleasure, though to sell the
property containing the family tomb was still held
very discreditable. Moreover, he had certain rights
of testation. For long he had had the right of adopt-
ing his son-in-law if he lacked sons ; but besides this
he now had a right, not indeed to appoint any one an
heir in place of his sons, but to make legacies. In
several other Greek States this right was little checked,
but at Athens there was some check (perhaps like the
poriio kgitima or the quarta falcidia of Roman Law)
the nature of which is unfortunately not known. One
great point that distinguishes Athenian and the other

compulsory. Moreover, the latter, according to Plutarch, if impotent
(he was likely enough to be an aged uncle), might call on his next of
kin to raise up for him children from the heiress. Caillemer thinks
there was no such law as this last at Athens ; and that Plutarch is only
a witness of a vague recollection among the Greeks of this ancient
Aryan custom. But I see no evidence for his supposition. He refers
to the laws of Manu, where truly enough there is an analogous institu-
tion carefully regulated by law. Nor is it impossible that a knowledge
of these Hindu provisions may have led Plutarch or his informers into
the belief that similar provisions were in force at one time at Athens.
But the laws of Manu do not tell us what were common Aryan customs.
We might as well try and deduce the common Teutonic customs from
the laws of modern Ireland. It would have been better (though not
even then conclusive) if Caillemer had given us a reference to a similar
custom in the Vedic or Homeric poems. Only there was none to give.
In truth, the constant hunting after "survivals " of "original" institutions
seems to me a great hindrance to finding these institutions. Where
there is an intense desire for offspring and simultaneously a religion
that is tainted with superstition and immod^ty, many strange and
repulsive customs may be locally generated, that are anything but
common and primitive.

§ 43] CLA SSICA L A THENS. 6 1

Greek wills from those of Rome, is that they were
(as far as we can judge) used to break up the family
property and not to preserve it from dissolution.^
The law on the treatment of "heiresses" I have
already explained. And the old incapacity of women
to deal with property had now crystallised into the
institution of perpetual tutelage. Every woman had
to have a guardian (jcvpioi) all her life; while yet
unmarried her father or next of kin ; while married,
her husband ; while a widow, once more her next of
kin, even her own son when he came of age. On
her own authority she could make no legal contract
for aught that exceeded the value of a bushel of
barley. But this was not un-Homeric, but only
carrying out the ancient principle that the place for
women's industry and rule was not the market-place
but the home. And contracts were matters for the
market-place.

§ 43. The theory was that the husband and his men-
servants were to provide the house and the materials
for food and clothing ; while the wife and her maid-
servants were to see to the preservation of the goods
within the house, keeping all clean and tidy, cooking
and serving the food, spinning, weaving, and making
the clothes. Thus in the (Economicus of Xenophon

^ Sir H. Maine, Ancient Law^ pp. 196, 197 (3rd ed.) seems hardly to
have appreciated the importance of wills in classical Greece, especi-
ally outside Attica ; and to have overlooked Sparta, and the notable
passage in Plato's Laws^ Book xi., c. vi., p. 922, B-E.

\

rv

6:: FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 43.

¥re &id a picture of such a hoosebcdd, an excellent
Greek matron, and cocnpletc community of goods
between husband and wife. The picture indeed shows
a view of wcmea much lower than that of Homer/
and moreovar pottrays wishes rather than facts. Still
we ought to take it ^ a true picture of at least a
few homes ta ArdcaL Marriage too was stfll held a
religious as well as a civil act and duty ; and both
would be vicZared by a plurality of wiveSw

Anocner resentbZance to Homeric times was the
honour stfll paSi to parents; and this, as I have
already remarked {saipr^ | 36), was enfcwnced by the
law against uncudf^ children- Xor perhaps must
we take the uncudf jI conduct of the son in the Vespa
of Ari;>c^cc:anes to mean mjore than an occasional
abuse of the ancient duty of sons> when their fathers
were weak and aged^ to zsX as their guardians. But
as a natural corollary of the greater power of the
Ei:her curing his lifecime or at h^ death to dispose of
property,, his sens could acquire and hc^d property
apart firoaat him : and prectseiy the soa in that play

It !S !xeec^'-u >^ wm^enic>et t^is aasi not be ^ed sstnj by Mr.
*^^ ** ,-5, >iivf* :ja>: ** :ais^ ;AJc«t c^ntcatos :ae iiceal « cscwKsbc life ** (p.
^^C** ^ ^^acc :«^ -JTSii^^Iiuica ^ :^ 3jww««ta^^ Bzb^iadLxit Ptubtrum^

**it custom n..^ ^ -»-*j^ !iui.>hmu ai X^occiMo^ 3cck s ao d>:«tbt jld ex
« pjn tmtb, th ^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ 3^ ^tmc^^ienc pupil ; tae oxtrtise taaght is
^ iSjans to mc ^j^^^,^^. >?£ :ii^ awa iaa iis wtifc ia ai a aeg s of pn^serty
^^ teacsre is an nfc-,.j^ ^^^ ^t>?vL 5uc :s^ cmr ^itsl :»^ be oa: ail tbe learn-
^ f the rt is tainted ^^^ ^j^ b^ vwi :x» ^aie^ sK :ie bjrji^i^rooaii, and that
hoiisekeep?^c customs _^^g^;^c3« "ife ^upil* :ac ^a^ttad aliogedier the
"^ wisdom ^ "<1 P"""^

^'^« is to be
cr?

§44.] CLASSICAL ATHENS. 63

of Aristophanes is a man who had made a fortune,
while his father remained poor.

§ 44. There were some likenesses therefore to the
Homeric family as well as differences, and all was not
evil. But most was evil ; and in this is the greatest
of the contrasts to the old heroic age. The seclusion
of women (that is, of decent women), and the absence
of choice in the matter of marriage on the part of the
woman, were matters by comparison unimportant, and
compatible, as we have seen in China, with a solid
constitution of the family. But they have divorce as
their corollary, and divorce was as common at Athens
as in China. Not merely could marriage be dissolved
by mutual consent ; but the husband, it seems pro-
bable, had arbitrary or almost arbitrary powers of
putting away his wife, and had some powers of giving
her in marriage to another or directing her marriage
after his death. And besides this un-Homeric seclu-
sion and divorce, there was no longer the old honour
given to the wife as the partner and companion of her
husband. The character of women was despised, their
education neglected, the husband's life mainly spent
away from home, his interests in the assembly and the
theatre, the law-courts or gymnasia; his house only
a shelter for the evening and the night, his wife useful
to him for keeping his house and bearing him legiti-
mate children, but nothing more, no lifelong companion
and partner in all his joys and all his sorrows.

64 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 45.

§ 45. There were indeed some women who were
well trained, and who were the social and intellectual
companions of men : but they were the bad women.
For all shame and decency had gone ; the women of
influence who made their mark in history were prosti-
tutes ; the great Athenian orator alludes as an obvious
matter to the respective uses of the prostitute, the
concubine, and the wife. Moreover, the place was
another Sodom, and unnatural vice was regarded with
the same shamelessness as prostitution. And slavery
made all licentiousness easy, and every home infected.^
Nor was there the usual set-ofF to the vice of the
towns and of the rich in the sober domestic life of a
peasantry. For, at least after the Peloponnesian war,
the bulk of the rural population of Attica was made
up of slaves, whose marriages were dependent on the
good will of their masters ; and even such peasantry
as remained was liable to corruption from the mani-
fold obscenities of the pagan worship and mythology.

This was fair Athens, the intellectual centre of all
the Aryan races of the West, to whom her literature
and her philosophy became a common and a cherished
possession ; and also a foul source, whence the waters
of corruption covered Europe from one end to another.

-^ In Grote's History of Greece (4th ed. 1872), by an almost incred-
ible omission, two of the leading features of Athenian history, the all-
pervading immorality, and the growth of slavery pari passu with the
growth of (what the Greeks called) democracy, are in general ignored ;
while in certain shameful passages, meeting perforce with the foulness
of some of his heroes, the English author appears as an apologist for
the abominations of the Greeks.

§ 46.] SPARTA AND THE LATER GREEKS, 65

VII. — Sparta and the later Greek Family.

§ 46. In the middle of the fourth century before

Christ, the Spartan Republic shows many contrasts to

contemporary Athens, but is separated by an equal

gulf from Homeric Greece. The state of the family

is all that at present concerns us, and in this the

Lacedaemonians had one great advantage over the

Athenians. For the bulk of their people were not

slaves, but rural serfs ; and probably shared in some

measure the rustic virtues and healthy domestic life

which many years later were still to be found among

the inland inhabitants of the Peloponnesos. But the

Spartans proper, the ruling caste of fully qualified

citizens, appear in their domestic life, if possible, still

more repulsive than the licentious slave-owners of

Athens. Both were lost to the sense of personal

modesty, and both were given over to unnatural vice.

But the Spartans, unlike the Athenians, recognised

adultery as a legal institution, and wives were lent

and borrowed — not to speak of much adultery over

and above what was legal and recognised. Another

Spartan institution was polyandry, several brothers

having sometimes only one wife between them, and

her children being common to them all. Another

difference to Athens was the free life of women, not

living, either girls or married women, shut up apart

from men. Only this was not the likeness of Homeric

E

66 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§47-

freedom, but the caricature. For now the externals
of Greek life had become such, that a girl could only
remain modest by remaining in seclusion ; and in
Sparta the conditions of property were wholly different
from Homeric Greece, when women enjoyed indeed
the property of their father, their brothers, or their
husband, but had none separate of their own. More
than half the property in Lacedaemon was in the hands
of women ; they had the advantage over men in
matters of business, because they were not occupied
with the Lycurgan discipline, nor called away for war-
fare ; the many wars cut off heirs and left heiresses ;
the former legal or customary restrictions to dowries
and legacies were all or mostly gone ; and the State
having taken from women the partnership with their
husbands and the training of their children, they took,
as it were, their revenge by forming a society apart,
acquiring and enjoying property by themselves, and
indirectly ruling their rulers.

§ 47. However strange and repulsive some of the
practices of private life among the Greeks appear to
us when they were at the height of their power and
their fame, these their practices are intelligible if we
understand the views common among them on Politics
and Economics. How indeed they came to have these
views I will not attempt to speculate. At any rate
they had them, and we may call their State the rule
of rationalism with a vengeance. The more subtle

§ 47] SPARTA AND THE LATER GREEKS. 67

bonds, that link mankind and defy analysis, were
reasoned away, and the old traditional governments,
customary law, and unwritten constitutions, not merely
gave place to positive laws and constitutions, but
became wholly unintelligible even to the greatest
thinkers. Between arbitrary tyranny on the one side,
and anarchy on the other, they could only imagine
a definite, positive, cut and dry constitution ; and
ancient Greece having no such constitution was looked
on as an age of barbarism and oppression, much as
the " philosophers " of the eighteenth century looked
on the Middle Ages.^ This constitution could assume
many forms, and Aristotle has described them with
the hand of a master. But they have in common the
absolute and personal rule of a hereditary dominant
class, and the support of this class by serfs or slaves.
The more numerous this class the more necessary
ah abundance of slaves to allow their masters to be
free to govern. Hence the Aristotelian maxim that
slavery was a requisite of liberty.

^ See Jannet, Sparse, pp. 26, 68, 135, who says of Aristotle : "This
incomparable thinker had in the highest degree the talent of analysis ;
no one was better acquainted than he was with the constitutions of his
own time ; but he lacked the historical sense, and ... he did not
understand the ancient state of society, where the main influences were
religious beliefs and household traditions." Notice that the celebrated
Introduction to Thucydides shows that this wonderful master of con-
temporary narrative was quite in the dark about the past, treating
Homeric Greece with ignorant scorn. A curious parallel is to be seen
in that other celebrated Introduction, namely, to Macaulay*s History
of England.

68 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§48.

§ 48. But there was a difficulty in the working of
these constitutions, namely, how to keep the numbers
of the ruling class at the right level. In " aris-
tocracies " this was first felt ; but in " democracies "
the same thing had to be provided against ; for more
than a certain number could not find a living in the
city, and yet to leave it was to leave what made life
worth living.^ The ideal was a stationary population ;
each house of each citizen to remain, without either
dying out or increasing. And . to secure this, arguing
with perfect logic from their perfectly wrong first
principles, they stuck at nothing. There were laws
to forbid early marriages and to forbid entire celibacy ;
but this was a trifle. The old practices of the days
when ancestor worship was a great force, were
changed into polyandry and wife-lending; abortion
and unnatural vices were approved by opinion and
sometimes even by law ; and the exposure of infants,
though not generally approved, was common, and as
far as we know only forbidden by the laws of one
State, Thebes. " In their infatuation," says Jannet
(Sparte, p. 11 5), " they imagined the family, and
property, and all the needs and the feelings of our

^ To go and live and work in the country, far from the seat of govern-
ment, was incompatible with the classical Greek view of the life of a
free citizen. This view was also a hindrance to colonisation ; for it
was not easy to reproduce the city life of the metropolis in a new
settlement. And in fact most of the more recent colonies, about which
anything is known, were founded, not by emigrants from a fully peopled
state, but by refugees, the victims of foreign conquest or civil war. Cf.
Jannet, Sparte, pp. 1 1 5-1 1 8.

§49-] SPARTA AND THE LATER GREEKS, 69

nature, to be elements they could combine at their
pleasure, to put in practice their notion of a common-
wealth, which, without the faintest regard for tradition,
they had simply spun out of their heads."

§ 49. Such philosophy among so gifted a race led
them whither we might have thought. There are two
Greek words that it would be well for all of us, if we
only knew this much of Greek, to know. The one is
stasis; the other oliganthropta. The first is to be taken
as one kind of civil discord, a struggle, not between
different races or different provinces, not between the
country ^nd the town, not between royal claimants
or for the sake of religion or principle, but an unprin-
cipled struggle for power and riches, the commonest
form in Greece being the discord between rich and
poor. Some of the earlier instances of stasis can be
read in Thucydides, the anxious search for remedies
in Aristotle, the last excesses in Polybius, till the
foreigner came and made all still. The other word,
oliganthropiaj is to be taken, not simply as paucity of
men or under-population, not the paucity of a new
colony or a land where pestilence or warfare has been
raging, but the paucity that is due to a diseased home
life. In a notable passage Polybius (xxxviii. 4) bears
witness to the lack of men throughout Greece, the
poverty and desolation, with no continuous wars or
pestilence to account for the evil. But the cause he
tells us was perfectly plain. Luxurious, avaricious.

70 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 50.

and indolent, the Greeks were unwilling to marry, or
if they married to rear their children, or at most only
one or two children that these might be reared in
luxury, and left in affluence.

§ 50. The Roman conquest put an end to stasis,
but not to oliganthropfa, which lasted in a great part
of European Greece for at least four centuries. And
the Greeks as a whole, as far as we can judge, lived
all through that time at one of the lowest possible
permanent levels of morality. Of course there was a
certain stock of virtue, some good family life among
them — they could not have lasted without it ; and in
fact we have pictures of a simple and virtuous rural
population living in Arcadia and Macedonia. The
city of Rhodes had for centuries a reputation for
virtue which must have been at least in part deserved.
There is evidence of well-constituted families among
the chief Athenian burgesses in the second century of
our era. The effort at moral reform which I have
already spoken of (§ 27) in connection with Stoic
philosophy was as much Greek as Roman ; and it is
likely enough there were other attempts to rise out
of the mire. Still these attempts had little success.
The gradual assimilation with the Romans perhaps
made the position of women in the house somewhat
better, though the change was rather toward Spartan
license than Homeric liberty. But then also the
Romans infected Greece with their horrid spectacles

§51.] • THE HINDUS, 71

of blood — the gladiatorial combats and the executions
of the amphitheatre. And Greek literature leaves us
in no doubt of the general depravity; the frequency
of divorce, of quarrels among brethren, of hunting
after legacies ; parents thought to be too long-lived ;
unnatural vice appalling in its prevalence ; and all evil
passions fostered by the presence of helpless and
often vicious slaves, and by the foul representations
of the theatre. But let us turn away from these
pagan Greeks and their private life, to which a modern
historian does but justice when he calls it a dismal
swamp of blood and filth.^

Vni. — The Hindus*

§ 51. The family life of the modem Hindus is so
distinct from any other, and applies to so many
millions of men, that it must not be passed over. Yet
I fear much that I may mix up different times and
places in the general statements that are to follow, and
that I may have misinterpreted my guides, or they have
misinterpreted the facts. To give at least some little
more precision to what I say, I mean it to apply, unless
otherwise stated, to the region of which Benares is the
centre, and to the early part of the present century.^

^ G. F, Hertzberg, Die Geschiehte Griechenlands unter der Herr-
schaft der Romer^ ii. p. 28a
* M. A. Sherring, Hindu Tribes and Castes as Represented in Benares^

72 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§51.

The first and most striking feature is the division
of all the people into a number of hereditary castes,
and the prohibition of marriage between them. Thus,
instead of forming one people, they form many ; and
in this are just the reverse of the Chinese, whose rule,
that you marry one of another surname, helps to keep
the race united and alike (supra, §1). And not only
are the castes of India, numbering over a hundred, all
kept distinct, but most of them are subdivided into
several sub-castes, between whom likewise there can
be no marriage ; none, for example, between the
thirty-five subdivisions of Brahmans, the seven of the
carpenters, or the seven of the leather-dealers. The
division into castes, be it observed, is not the same as
the division into trades, though connected with it.
The great trade of husbandry, and common labouring
work, and many handicrafts, may be done by all
castes (or almost all). But some few trades it would
be pollution for any one to follow except the special
caste assigned to it ; — for example, ' washing clothes
(done only by a Dhobt), milking cows (done only by
an Ahir), leather-working (done only by a Chamar),

1872 ; Macnaghten, Principles of Hindu and Mohammedan Law, edit,
by H. H. Wilson, London i860 ; Sir H. Maine, Early Law and Custom,
as well as his three earlier volumes ; J. D. Mayne, Hindu Law and
Usage, Madras 1878 ; Monier Williams, Modem India and the Indians,
2d ed. 1878, are my main authorities. See also an interesting summary
of a recent Indian tale in Macmillan*s Magazine, July 1880, pp. 21 1-219 ;
E. Gibelin, £tudes sur le droit civU des Hindous, Pondichery 1846 ;
Sir J. B. Phear, The Aryan Village in India and Ceylon, London 1880.
The occasional illustrations from Vedic times are drawn from H.
Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, Berlin 1879.

§ 52.] THE HINDUS. 73

And in fact many trades, though they may be done by
others, and need not be the only occupation of a par-
ticular caste, are its proper and normal occupation, as
potters, carpenters, weavers, and spinners. Two castes,
the Khatri and the Kayasth, are particularly given to
trading, banking, and legal business ; while the Brah-
mans do almost anything.^

§ 52. While there is an outside limit to your choice
of a wife in the rule that she must belong to the same
caste or sub-caste as yourself, there is an inside limit
in the rule against marrying near relatives. Your
wife must not be descended from your paternal or
maternal ancestors within the sixth degree, or known
by her family name to be of the same primitive stock
as eit;her your father or mother.

I have spoken of choice; but this in the vast

^ Many further details on castes, sub-castes, and the restrictions
to intermarriage, can be found in Mr. Sherring*s work. For example,
the Brahmans are divided into thirty-five tribes, that may not intermarry ;
but then they are further divided into ^^gotras" these being groups each
supposed to be descended from a common ancestor ; and perhaps best
rendered as clans. Here the rule is the reverse, and your wife, though
she must be of your own tribe, must not be of your own gotra. Among
the Rajpoots the universal rule of course prevails that you may not
marry out of your caste, and so a Rajpoot can only marry a Rajpoot.
But the general rule that you also may not marry out of your sub-caste
(or " tribe ") is here reversed, and though you must marry a Rajpoot,
she must be of another tribe. Yet some tribes of Rajpoots conform to
the general rule and not to this particular one. Thus the Jat tribe only
marry among themselves, and moreover have non-intermarrying sub-
divisions. Again, among the trading and banking castes, their sub-
castes sometimes do and sometimes do not intermarry. So there is
plenty to learn and remember.

74 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 52.

majority of cases is not exercised by the parties to
the marriage, but by their parents, who sometimes,
as in China, make use of a professional matchmaker
and consultations of the horoscope to find a suitable
alliance. That the matter should be settled, not by
the parties, but for them, is natural, since it is usual
to marry very young. Indeed, children as young as
five are frequently betrothed, and this betrothal is an
irrevocable act. Marriage often follows when the
bridegroom is only sixteen (he comes of age when he
has completed his sixteenth year) and when the bride
is only twelve. The chief motive for early marriage
is to secure male descendants; for the worship of
ancestors prevails ; the dead body must be solemnly
burnt, and rites must be periodically repeated, and
offerings made to the spirits of the father, the grand-
father, and the great-grandfather.^ So marriage is a
religious duty, and is not merely early but universal ; ^
while the vigour of ancestor worship may be judged
of by the common saying that " a man may be par-
doned for neglecting all his social duties, but he is for
ever cursed if he fails to perform the funeral obsequies
of his parents, and to present them with the offerings
due to them" (apud Maine, Early Law and Custom,
pp. 56, 57). And these religious duties bring with

^ According to the census returns of 1881 for the North-West
Provinces, one half the males between fifteen and twenty were married,
whereas in England only one hundredth.

' According to the afore-cited census, not one woman in a hundred
remains unmarried.

§ 53.] T^HB, HINDUS. 75

them heavy expense, chiefly in the shape of giving
feasts and presents to Brahmans.^

§ 53. The effect of marriage on property is twofold.
First there is the expenditure on the marriage festival,
which is the great festival of life, and if kept with
splendour is remembered with pride and joy ever
afterwards. This is more than can be said for much
of the expenditure of those Europeans who in their
narrow prejudice censure severely the " extravagance "
of the Hindus on these ceremonies. Still there is a
real and recognised excess at least among two castes,
namely, the Kayasths, who will spend three times
their income on a marriage festival, and borrow the
means of doing it at 24 per cent, interest, and the
higher sub-castes of Rajpoots, among whom the great
expense of marrying their daughters is one reason
(the difficulty of finding a well-born son-in-law is
the other) for the prevalence among them of female
infanticide.

^ This does not apply to all India ; for among the Hindus of the
Punjab (who are supposed to be genuine Aryans, not merely the
speakers of an Aryan language), ancestor worship exists indeed, but
as an obscure superstition without the elaboration given to it by the
priesthood further south and east (Maine, /. c, p. 76). In these last-
named regions the classes of dead who can profit by the worship of the
living are in order the ten following : (i.) Father, grandfather, great-
grandfather ; (2.) mother, mother's father and grandfather ; (3.) step-
mother ; (4. ) father's mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother ;
(5.) father's brothers ; (6.) mother's brothers ; (7.) father's sisters ; (8.)
mother's sisters ; (9.) sisters and brothers ; (10.) fathers-in-law. Some-
times the family spiritual teacher {guru) is added as an eleventh person
(Monier Williams, /. c, p. 73),

76 , FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 54.

The second effect of marriage on property is to
create a fund that in a manner belongs separately to
the wife. It is called Stridhan, and inasmuch as it
can come both from the woman's father (or family)
and also from the husband, it answers sometimes to
dowry (supra, ^ 2), sometimes to marriage- money
(supra, § 13), sometimes to both. But inasmuch as
the husband has so little control over it — he can
only touch it in extreme distress, as in the case of a
famine, or if a creditor keeps him in prison — and the
wife has so much control over it,^ and on her death
it follows peculiar orders of succession quitfs different
from the general rules of inheritance, we must say it
has also something of the nature of woman's separate
goods (supra, § 24).

§ 54. The order of succession to this Stridhan
is afflicted with various complications, but under
certain circumstances it is as follows : first, the
woman's daughters ; then her sons ; thirdly, her

^ The subject is very intricate and confusing, as may be seen from
the last chapter of Mayne's Hindu Law and Usage. The wife, if I
understand rightly, may do as she likes with what she has received as
dowry from her own relations and as marriage money in the shape of
movables from her husband. But marriage money in the shape of
immovables she may not alienate, though it is Stridhan and goes to
her heirs, not to her husband's. Thirdly, she may have Stridhan
springing from her earnings or gifts of third parties (not her relatives
or her husband) ; and 6ver this the husband has absolute power during
his Ufe, but no one else^can touch it, he alone can restrain her use or
alienation of it during hi^ life, and after his death she is its absolute
owner. But if he survived her, it is his, and passes to his heirs, not
hers. \

§ 54.] T^HE HINDUS. 77

daughter's sons ; fourthly, her son's sons ; fifthly, any
other of her descendants, and then her husband,
brother, mother, father. Notice that when property
has once devolved in this way it ceases to be Stridhan^
and in future follows the ordinary rules of succes-
sion even when it goes to women (on which see
infra, § 64).

There is another kind of Stridhan belonging to
unmarried women, but they are so few that I think
this matter unimportant ; whereas the other kind is
common because it is the rule to give a dowry, and,
indeed (Maine, /. c, p. 1 10), if the father is dead the
unmarried daughters have a claim on their brothers
to give them a portion on their marriage (generally a
definite fraction of what the brothers would receive,
if there was a division of the property).

Excepting her control of her Stridhan, a woman,
unless to get the necessaries of life, or unless in-
trusted (as among traders) with the management of
her husband's affairs, is unable to make a contract,
and remains in perpetual tutelage, always under the
authority of father, agnates, husband, or of her own
sons. But we should greatly err if we thought,
because the Hindu mother often becomes at law the
ward of her sons, that she has less control over them
and honour from them than in England, where such
a legal relation would be thought unjust and absurd :
for she has more. It is held wicked for them to
live apart from her ; and she rules their household

78 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 55.

and their wives almost as though they were all
Chinese.

§ 55. The position of the widow with sons is
therefore a good one ; but if she has no sons, above
all, if she be young and childless, she has before her
only a life of humiliation and woe. Among some
castes, indeed, that are not held high in the scale of
dignity, widows may marry again ; among some it is
even the custom for the younger brother to marry the
widow of his elder brother (like the Jewish levirate);
but the general rule forbids their re- marriage. And
this prohibition means something quite different from
what it would mean with us. For if the future
husband dies after betrothal, the betrothed girl is held
to be a widow ; and as betrothal is frequently con-
cluded when the future husband is but a child of five
or six, a girl may be a widow for life at the age of
two. Scarce a house-community therefore exists
without a child widow ; ^ and every village has many
widows, who are household drudges debarred from
amusements, meanly clad, allowed but one meal a day,
looked on as an evil omen, often leading bad lives ;
and often they would be glad to be burnt, only the
English have forbidden it, on the funeral pile of their
husbands. True that she has her Stridhan and

1 In the Madras Presidency, according to the census of 188 1, out of
a population of thirty-one millions (or less than that of the United Kino^-
dom), the widows under twenty years old numbered 81,043.

§ 56.] THE HINDUS. 79

a right to be maintained by her. husband's kindred ;
true that in the exceptional case where she has not
been living in a joint family she has a certain restricted
use during her life of the property of her husband, in
fact, a sort of dower, and that in the province of Ben-
gal she has this right even though she has been living
in a joint family. But what benefit is wealth to her
when all her neighbours and relatives deem her proper
portion to be a life of humiliation ? And precisely in
Bengal, where she is most privileged in matters of pro-
perty, the practice of suttee, that is, of her burning
herself at her husband's funeral pyre, was most com-
mon in the early part of this century. It was almost
universal among the childless widows (scarce ever among
those who had children) of the wealthier classes ; and
perhaps was a lesser evil than the life it cut short.^

§ 56. Polygamy in the strict sense was formerly
not permitted by Hindu law, which treated a second
wife as a sort of concubine, whose children were not

^ Sir H. Maine {Early Instiiutions, pp. 335, 336) explains the anxiety
of the widow's family that she should immolate herself, by the coarsest
motive, the desire to get the property she would else have enjoyed for
^her life. But this seems a want of historical impartiality. For though
such a desire may have helped in establishing the rule that a widow
ought to immolate herself; when once it was established, we may justly
suppose such motives as family honour, the spiritual good of the widow,
and even the sparing her a life of sorrow, may have been the main
reasons for her family encouraging her to perform this great act of
religion. At the present moment, in Bengal, Sir H. Maine observes
how, marriages among the upper classes being very commonly infertile,
much of the soil is in the hands of childless widows as tenants for life.

So FORE-CHRlkTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 56.

recognised as legitimate. The first or proper wife
alone could perform the domestic religious rites ; she
was the recognised superior of the other wife or
wives ; she did not share with them her rights of
succession to property, but took all that a wife can
succeed to. Now indeed (whether the change was
previous or subsequent to British influence I do not
know), polygamy is allowed ; all the widows have
joint rights and a claim to survivorship ; and their
children are all alike legitimate. This does not mean
that the practice is unknown, or rare, of keeping con-
cubines, whose children are illegitimate and have no
claim to succession, but only to aliments.

Although polygamy is now allowed, yet, if we
except some few castes, among the rest, I believe, it
is little practised. In this the modern Hindus are
not unlike their ancestors in Vedic times, when poly-
gamy was almost restricted to kings and nobles.
And they are not unlike in the matter of divorce, only
a little laxer. In that old time an indissoluble bond
was created by the solemn religious ceremony of
marriage. And divorce is still quite against the spirit
of the Hindu religion, which makes the wife half of
her husband^s body, not to be parted (such is the
ideal) even in death, still less before. Marriage is in
principle irrevocable; and though the wife may be
put away for some specified reasons (attempt on the
life of her husband, wilful miscarriage, sacrilege,
sterility, and adultery), she must always be maintained

§ 57-] 'I^HB HINDUS. 8i

by the former husband, and if guilty of no crime she
has claims on him that may amount to a third of his
property.^

§ 57. The. rarity of divorce and of polygamy is, as
we have seen, no new thing among the Hindus;
whereas the seclusion of their women is wholly unlike
the position assigned them in the time of the Vedic
hymns. Then they seem much like the women of
the Homeric age: maidens and youths meeting in
society, particularly at religious festivals, and marriages
determined, not indeed without the consent of father
or family, but still in the main by the free choice of
the young people themselves. So in that distant past
we see regular courtships, maidens resorting even to
charms to keep fast or win back their lover, youths
in torture of mind lest their lady-love reject them,
lovers' meetings, quarrels, and reconciliations ; whereas
now there is no such thing as courtship, marriages,
as I have said, being very early, and wholly settled
by the father or kindred, not by the youth or girl
themselves. Moreover, the old freedom of social inter-
course is gone, and women are more or less secluded :
more among the rich and in the towns, less among
the poor and in the country, but even here living in
a separate part of the house from the men, and

^ If I understand rightly, she has a right to a sum equal to the
expenses of the husband's second marriage, deducting any Stridhan
she may have, and provided that the sum in question is not more than
a third of her husband's property,

¥

82 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 58.

whither no stranger is ever admitted, taking their
meals not with but after the men, and not allowed
— at least under certain circumstances, and while of a
certain age — to see or speak with certain of their
kindred or neighbours.

The common practice of living in joint families, and
the consequent size of the homesteads, renders the
seclusion of women and the secrecy of family life
more easy to be effected, and the houses of the
peasantry are arranged for the purpose; nay, this
secrecy (as Sir H. Maine has been told. Village Com--
munitieSf p. 114) is maintained in very humble house-
holds, and under difficulties which at first sight would
seem unsurmountable. So in this aspect Hindu
society is more like Attic than Homeric Greece. And
there is yet another point of melancholy resemblance
between the classical Greeks and the modern Hindus,
that their religion is contaminated with obscene my-
thology and representations, and that although almost
all public singers and dancers in India, if they are
women, are prostitutes, their presence is required by
superstition or by imperious custom at family festivals.

§ 58. The relation of parents and children among
the Hindus has drawn praise from European observers.
Filial piety is strong, and is extended to the mother
as well as to the father ; while the children are treated
with a kindness that is perhaps unequalled elsewhere,
are decked with ornaments, and are the joy of their

§ 59-] THE HINDUS. 83

parents. The general difficulty indeed of house-
communities, namely, the relations of the daughters-
in-law with their mother-in-law, is not unfelt, and the
subordination of the daughters-in-law is not so com-
plete as in China. Still they are subordinate — it is
natural, considering they are usually mere children
when they leave tbeir parents' home — and the young
wife seldom speaks to her husband in the presence of
his mother. Moreover, as in China and Regal Rome,
the father is the ruler and judge over his children,
and the law scarcely interferes between them or enters
within the forbidden limits of the home. And the
father is not only obeyed by his children without •
question during his life and honoured by their worship
after death, but. they have no property of their own,
however old they are, as long as he lives, except what
he gives them, or what they receive if he retires from
active life to become an ascetic, and distributes the
inherit4nce among them.

§ 59. But then there is the converse of. this: the
father is no absolute master of the family goods, but
rather their steward and sharer. His sons from their
birth have vested rights in all inherited property, their
consent is required before he can transfer it, and only
what he acquires himself is at his disposal. And even
in the disposition of this last he is restricted by reli-
gion though not by law during his life, and he has no
powers of disposing of it after death, much less of

84 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 60.

anything else. For wills as a means of altering the
course of inheritance, and not as a mere means of
making pious bequests, can be said, I think, to be
unknown, that is, speaking of Hindu law as the English
found it, not as they have altered it with their wills,
their seizure for debt, and their irrevocable sales for
non-payment of taxes. Moreover, although it is doubt-
ful whether an aged parent can be forced into religious
retirement by his sons, such retirement is strongly
counselled by religion ; and if he does retire he can
only partition in a certain way, giving equal shares to
all the sons and keeping two shares for himself. It
may be observed that the Hindu paterfamilias in many
cases requires the consent of his fellow-villagers as
well as of his sons before he can alienate his land,
being no absolute owner, but rather a partner in the
village community, with various duties as well as
rights ; and he cannot arbitrarily assign his place in
that local constitution to any one he likes, but must
get the consent of his fellow-members.

§ 60. Adoption is an important branch of modern
Hindu law, being the great expedient by which a man,
who has no sons or son's sons, procures for himself a
successor to perform his obsequies. It is even lawful
for the widow to adopt in the name of her husband if
he has neglected to do so (though in Bengal she must
have before he dies his authorisation to adopt, and in
the south of India she must get the consent of his

§ 6i.] THE HINDUS. 85

near relatives). The great rule is, that you may
resort to this artificial affiliation only when it is neces-
sary, that is, when you have no male descendants
through males. In the choice of an adoptive child
you are not so restricted as in China (supra, § 7), but
he must be of the same tribe (or sub-caste) as your-
self, and must not be an only son or eldest son, lest
you injure another family by removing him to yours.
There are other restrictions varying with caste and
locality, and the general injunction of religion that you
choose from among your nearer agnates. When the
adoption is completed the child becomes for m9St
intents and purposes your son, and thus as long as he
lives you can adopt no one else : for now you have a
son.

§ 61. There is a likeness between the modem
Hindus and those of Vedic times in adoption being
the one substitute for legitimate sonship ; only then
it was thought a poor substitute, now a good one.
In the long interval between these two periods, while
the desire for male offspring has remained constant,
the view of substitutes has varied. I have already
remarked how natural it is, under the yoke of super-
stition, for evil customs to arise (supra, S 47, note) ;
and they have arisen among the Hindus, though never
all of them wholly approved, and the disapproval ulti-
mately mastering the approval, and restoring Hindu
family life in this matter to the level of the Vedas.

86 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 62.

The children, though illegitimate or adulterine, of a
woman who occupied the place of wife or concubine
in a man's house, could be reckoned as his own
children ; and he could have a child raised up to him,
either during his life or after his death, from his own
wife by a kinsman, a practice called the Ntyoga}
Another and less unworthy contrivance was the power
of a father who had no prospect of legitimate sons, to
" appoint " one of his daughters to bear a son, who
should not be treated as her husband's son, but as
his own ; and it seems that the husband's consent
was not required, and that he was thus liable to have
one of his own children converted by a fiction into the
son of his father-in-law.

§ 62. The prevalence of joint families is one marked
feature in the relations among brethren in India ; nor
can the law of inheritance be understood without it.
We havj seen that during the life of the father (unless
he retires into religious life) his children have no pro-
perty apart from him. But on his death there is no
necessary break-up of the home and goods ; on the
contrary, the brethren habitually dwell together, and
use the home and goods in common. And this com-
munity may go on for many generations, and the joint

^ This is a very different institution from the Jewish Levirate {supra^
§ 13) ; for there the sanctity of the marriage tie was not violated, the
widow becoming the true and one wife of her brother-in-law ; but here,
even when the woman was a widow, there was no necessity for the
kinsman marrying her.

§ 62.] THE HINDUS, ^7

family comprise several hundred persons. Naturally
this large number cannot be reached among poorer
villagers, where the original holding. was small; in
which case, as soon as the joint family grows too
large to get a sustenance from the land, the younger
members " give up or sell their shares to the others and
find occupation elsewhere as best they can" (Phear,
p. 78). And now everywhere the English law is an
agent fostering the dissolution of joint families. But
I am considering native law and custom, according to
which, although any man among the members who is
entitled to a share has a right to have it separate,
religion or custom generally hinders this 'right being
used, unless there is necessity for a partition. Com-
munity of worship, mark, is one great bond of union :
common ancestors, a common family deity, and common
idols. And although the different members have in
one sense different shares (the six sons of a dead
brother, for example, would on a partition have only
one-sixth of what their uncles would have), as long
as they keep together, they enjoy in common, without
regard to theoretical claims, and all their earnings are
brought into the common fund. There is an excep-
tion indeed, but it only makes the rule the clearer.
" Whenever a member of a joint family has acquired
property through special scientific knowledge or the
practice of a liberal art, he does not bring it into
the common fund, unless his accomplishments were
attained through a training given to him by his family

88 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 63.

or at their expense " (Maine, Early Institutions , p. 1 10).
But the case thus provided for is plainly exceptional.

§ 63. The community of enjo3rment indeed does not
mean that there is no separation among the different
families united in the joint family. On the contrary,
the arrangement of the joint homestead is adapted to
give each family a separate lodging. Among the poor
the house is a group of one-storeyed huts, which can be
multiplied as required. Among the rich the house is
two-storeyed, and built round a quadrangle in a manner
that makes it possible to add a second, third, or fourth
quadrangle if required. And in the one case the
quadrangle, in the other the space enclosed by the
huts, forms a convenient place for common work or
play, while there is a common portion of the dwelling
allotted to all the women.^

Like all other societies, the joint family must be
governed ; and while each father (or more correctly
each male ascendant) within it has a special authority
over his own descendants, the whole body is subject
to a single head, who is elected indeed, but is generally
the eldest male of the eldest line, if not unfit by age
or imbecility; and if the eldest son is passed over,
generally a brother of the deceased head is elected.
This head is the manager of all common concerns, and
generally in richer and more numerous joint families

^ See, for Bengal, a lively description of the dwelling-places in Sir J.
B. Phear's Aryan Village, pp. 7-12, 16-18, 81-87.

§ 64.] THE HINDUS. 89

all is left to his discretion, such as purchases with
the joint savings, and borrowing for any extraordinary
joint outlay. He gives the members small sums of
money, as they want it, for ordinary personal expenses,
and they require of him no audit. In the earlier stages
of a joint family, though the legal head for external
business must, I imagine, always be a man, all intei>
nal matters are often under the rule of an old grand-
mother, who keeps order with wonderful tact.^

§ 64. The rules of inheritance which hold good,
mutatis mutandis, when a joint family is dissolved and
the property partitioned, are in chief as follows. ^ All
the legitimate sons are entitled to equal shares of the
whole property, and the share of a deceased son can
be claimed by his sons. Thus the sons take, as the
phrase is, per capita, the grandsons, per stirpes. But
this first article of Hindu law of succession requires
three annotations. It does not apply to the property of
women called Stridhan (supra, §§ 53, 54), which follows,
as we have seen, a peculiar order of its own. Secondly,
the widowed mother and any widows of dead brothers
must be supported by the brethren, as well as unmar-
ried sisters, upon whom, moreover, a proper sum must
be spent on the occasion of their marriage in the
shape of dowry and nuptial solemnities.^

^ According to Monier Williams, in a lecture to which I have lost
the reference.

* The proper sum is a matter, if I understand rightly, of custom or
at most equity rather than strict law, and is supposed to be one-fourth of

90 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 65.

Lastly, the eldest son, besides the privilege of head-
ship as long as the family remains in community, has
by some local customs the right to a double share on
a partition, often also to what is held incapable of
being partitioned, as the family house. Sometimes
indeed it is the youngest of the sons who has a right
to this extra share.

§ 65. The failure of legitimate male descendants
in the male line is much less likely to occur than with
us, because of the universality of marriage and the
power of adoption. But if there is no such real or
artificial descendant, then in most of India, if the
deceased has lived in a joint family, his nearest
associated male agnates succeed. This succession
indeed is only an hypothesis ; there need be no
change in the joint family beyond the loss of the dead
member ; only if there was a division the share of
this dead member would be distributed as aforesaid,
if the deceased has not been living in a house-
c^iynmunity with his brethren (and in Bengal in any
) his widow first, and then his daughters, have
the bse of the property for their lives, and then it
revef'ts to the male agnates.^

a brother's share, but with the two elastic conditions that the estate be
not so smaJJ^ that such a burden would be too heavy to be put on it, or
so large that the fourth aforesaid would be an exorbitant sum to spend
on a marriage*

1 "The rule exists universally (except perhaps in Bombay) that
where any female takes as heir to a male, she takes a restricted estate,

§ 65.] THE HINDUS. 91

It IS not necessary to go into the details of col-
lateral succession. The general rule is that kinsmen
through males exclude those through females to the
fourteenth degree. But in Bengal cognates are
admitted much more freely than elsewhere, and some-
times are preferred to agnates. And there is another
general rule, though also with exceptions, that those
who are most entitled and bound to worship the
deceased, and from whom he will receive most
spiritual benefit, are preferred. The ancient claim of
the spiritual teacher or the pupil to succeed on failure
of kindred is still retained, at least by the letter of
the law.

More important than these minutiae and curiosities
of religion and of law, is the great fact of union and
mutual help among kindred, and this not only within
the limits of the joint family, but outside. The Hindus
are not ashamed of their poor relations. " Nothing
is commoner than for one man, not necessarily a
rich man, to maintain, so far as food is concerned,
several branches of his family year by year " (special
correspondent in The Times, nth August 1874). All
indeed is not well with their family life ; but at least
that life is vigorous.

and on her death, the property passes not to her heirs, but to the
person who would be the heir of the last full owner." — J. D. Mayne,
Hindu Law and Usage, § 523.

92 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 66.

IX. — The Burmese.

§ 66. The Burmese are a people deserving of study,
as they may be held, I believe, to be the best repre-
sentatives of Buddhism. The following summary of
their family life may be taken as applicable to British
Burma before our conquest, and to independent
Burma now.^

Among the Buddhist monks, a numerous class, and
the less numerous female recluses, celibacy is strictly
observed, and any breach of this fundamental rule
would compel them to become laymen. Among the
rest of the community marriage is universal, but, in
striking contrast to China and Hindustan, is no solemn
act of religion, nor is arranged for the young people
by their elders. On the contrary, it is a purely civil
matter, without any ceremony being needful ; it is
looked on from the Buddhist point of view rather as
a concession to human frailty, and is settled by the
young people for themselves. The girls marry be-
tween seventeen and nineteen, and courtship is con-
ducted freely and not improperly. The parents seldom
interfere except to advise ; and the Buddhist law for-
bids their opposing the wishes of their children. And

^ The authorities followed are : the excellent work of C. J. F. S.
Forbes, British Burma^ 1878; Howard Malcom, Travels in South*
East Asia, Boston, 1839, vol. i, ; and, with much reservation, Albert
Fytche, Burma, 1878, and Sangermano's Burmese Empire , translated
by W. Tandy, Rome 1833.

§ 6;.] THE BURMESE. 93

in another aspect there is great freedom of choice, for
there are no restrictions of caste or other rules to
seriously limit your choice of a wife ; nor are there
strong social barriers as in Western Europe ; so that
(putting aside the outcast race of pagoda serfs) such a
thing as a m^alliance is scarcely possible. It is a free
and easy land ; one man is as good as another ; and
though all bow down low to the officials and the
monks, anybody may be made an official or become a
monk, and there are no hereditary positions, except
the pagoda serfs and some other outcasts at the bottom
of society and the king at the top.^ Marriages so
easily formed are, as might be expected, as easily
dissolved ; but first let us speak of the effect of marriage
on property.

§ 6y. Dowries are rare or unknown, and if I under-
stand rightly there is little in the nature of a trousseau
(or bridal outfit provided by the bride's family). On
the contrary, the bridegroom is expected to provide
almost everything according to his means. So the
payment of marriage-money is the first conspicuous
point in the effect 6f marriage on property. The
second is a species of bride-money, that is, the bride-
groom after the marriage must live three years, three
months, and three days in his father-in-law's house,

^ Perhaps we should add, a few revenue officers de jure or at least
de facto hereditary. Coffin-makers, executioners, and lepers are out-
casts. The executioners are reprieved felons.

94 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 67.

working as a son of the family ; then he may take his
wife away and set up house for himself. He may
indeed, if his bride is willing, set up house at once.
But then he must pay his father-in-law sixty ticals
(perhaps corresponding to some ;^ 12 in England); simi-
larly, if he leave before the three years, he must first
come to an agreement to pay some compensation. The
third point is the prevalence of wife's separate goods.
A woman, whether maid, wife, or widow, can acquire
and hold property in her own right, and not only can,
but is likely to, and for two reasons. First, because
daughters have considerable rights of succession to
property; secondly, because women engage in busi-
ness almost as freely as men. There is no seclusion,
no veiling of women; most of the retail business is
done by them; they often carry on a petty sale of
eatables in the cottage verandah as a private specula-
tion; and they are often in legal partnership with
their husband. For Burma is indeed the land of the
emancipation of women. A man seldom does any-
thing important without first consulting his wife : the
wife manages the more important mercantile concerns
of her husband, and if he is an official, shares his rank
in a certain sense ; for example, she will receive and
give receipts for taxes, and have a criminal arrested
and sent to court quite as a matter of course if her
husband is absent. The separate goods of the wife
cannot be taken by the husband, except under rare
and peculiar circumstances, and on her death pass to

§ 68.] THE BURMESE. 95

her own children or heirs, not to her husband's. And
remember, no deeds of settlement are required to create
these separate goods, and they comprise lands as well
as movables. Moreover, and this is a fourth point,
the widow is entitled to an immense dower, something
like a half if there are children, and all if there are
none (tn/ra, §§ 72, 73). It is not surprising, considering
all these institutions, that a widow, at least if not old,
is soon married again.

§ 68. There is yet a fifth point to be noticed about
marriage and property, namely, the effect of divorce.
I think nowhere has divorce been so easy, nowhere
perhaps so common. Husband and wife can separate
at any time by mutual consent, dividing their property
equally, and the father taking the sons, the mother
the daughters. And either party can dissolve the
marriage though the other party objects, by surrender-
ing his or her property, or by the less onerous plan
of becoming a Buddhist monk or nun, by which any
marriage is instantly dissolved, and then, after a
decent interval of some months, returning to secular
life. The wife also can claim a divorce if the husband
cannot maintain her, or ill-treats her ; in which case she
takes away all her own property, and part of what she
has acquired jointly with him. The husband also has
the right to put away a barren or unfaithful wife without
(I believe) any payment from his own property.

Polygamy is allowed, but is rare and less respected

96 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 69.

than monogamy. The first wife, moreover, is the
chief, and lives in the family home, while the other
wives are never under the same roof as she. All the
families of a polygamous father are kept distinct, the
children inheriting their own mother's property, and
whatever is acquired by the joint industry of their
parents; for a man often carries on a separate busi-
ness in partnership with each wife.

§ 69. The independent position of women has been
compared to that of the Roman women under the
Empire (on whom see supra, §§ 24, 25). But the dif-
ferences of the two societies are probably much greater
than the likenesses. In particular the Burmese are
good mothers, at least, in the physical sense of being
prolific and suckling their children for two or three
years; they are rarely unfaithful; and mark that
prostitution only exists in the large towns with a
mixed population, and that external modesty is well
kept, and that in a crowd there is none of that coarse
familiarity toward women that we see in England, but
they are treated with courtesy. The richer women
no doubt are said to be ignorant and indolent, and
this may be due to the absence of higher education
for women, who are entirely excluded from the
monastic schools which form the great institution for
education. But Burma is not the land for rich people,
or for being educated better than your neighbour ; and
at any rate there is no question about the activity

§ 70.] THE BURMESE. 97

and intelligence of all the women except the few
who are rich. There is at least one loom in every
house ; and besides spinning and weaving and doing
the trading already spoken of, their chief employ-
ments are the preparation of rice indoors and the
light agricultural work of transplanting the young rice
plants.

§ 70. The young are taught to reverence the old,
and children their parents. A particular form of
address is used by a young person when he speaks
to one in middle life, and another form is used by both
when they speak to an old man. Children are almost
as dutiful and obedient as in China, and are greatly
controlled by their parents even in middle life. Mar-
riage indeed is left to the young, and the father has, I
believe, no power of making a regular will ; no death-
bed donations to friends or connections are allowed,
and any donations made previously, but not yet paid,
can be claimed by the heirs. But parents may dis-
inherit and expel a disobedient son ; they have, I
think, some power of naming a son to be the chief
heir ; and they may resume at pleasure any gifts they
have made to their children.^ Also during his life- .

^ There is one exception indeed. It is usual for all respectable lads
to be clad with the monastic habit, and remain in the Buddhist monas-
tery, it may be only a few days, or it may be, in order to complete their
education, two or three years. A great festival is made of the ceremony
of clothing ; and on this occasion it is usual for parents who have some
means, to settle some property, as cattle or gold, on the lad, and such
gift is irrevocable. Forbes, British Burma, pp. 165-167.

G

98 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 7a

time a man has great power of alienating his property
and binding his children for his debts. Two motives,
one spiritual, the other temporal, are much in the way
of a man accumulating wealth for his children, and on
the contrary encourage him to spend it in his lifetime.
One is due to the Buddhist doctrine of merits. The
layman towards the close of his life, more rarely in
his prime, seeks to accumulate merits by abundant
donations to monks, by building monasteries, pagodas,
rest-houses, bridges, and other works of religious or
public utility, by almsgiving, and, as they say, by
hearing, thinking on, and obeying the law. This is a
very different matter from the retirement of the aged
Hindu parent and the distribution of his goods among
his sons (supra, § 59). For in Burma a man will give
the best part of the savings of a lifetime to build
a monastery (kyoung), a petty shopkeeper will often
spend £700 or ;^8oo, or more, on such a purpose,
and gain* the honourable title of Kyoung-taga (sup-
porter of a monastery) ; and such conduct causes
no dissatisfaction among his heirs : even though his
family be reduced to poverty, they acknowledge he
has done right. So merits are accumulated, not
wealth. And there is the temporal motive that a
man whp had amassed much wealth, and tried to
make it a means of lasting enjoyment and power,
as we do i\n England, would quickly find himself the
mark of opp^ression and extortion, himself in danger,
his goods fasrpned on by the government ; so hostile

§71.] THE B URMESE. 99

are the institutions of the country to any hereditary
eminence !

§ 71. The father has not only power to alienate
his property without regard to his family, but in
order to free himself from debt or to obtain food may
even pledge his children,^ binding them as servants
till the sum is paid for which they are pledged. This
power is sometimes spoken of as the right of selling the
children as slaves. But this is taking a great liberty
with the usual meaning of the words sale and slavery ;
and only serves to mislead us. The children (and
the same rules apply mutatis mutandis to adults who
pledge themselves) are protected in their service. If
beaten violently the bond debt is reduced by one-third,
and thus three fits of temper may deprive the creditor
of all he lent. If the bond-servant die from ill-treat-
ment, the creditor, besides losing his money, has to
pay the parents a fine. If a bondswoman bear her
master a child she becomes free, and if she choose to
remain, her former master must support her as a
wife. Generally a parent redeems his children as
soon as he can ; and there is this great security, that

^ Some of my authorities say that he may also pledge, or, in their
phraseology, sell his wife ; but this seems in contradiction with the
right of the wife to demand divorce if he cannot support her. Perhaps
the real explanation is that the wife, in order to support her husband
and children, goes of her own free will into service, not necessarily
quitting her home. The legal form for such service is that she is
pledged by the husband or by herself for a certain sum to the* master
or mistress, and must stay in service till the sum is paid off.

■^

loo FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 72.

the master must give them up, as soon as the sum
for which they are bound is handed to him. Thus
I understand it is easy for a parent who is dissatisfied
with the treatment of his children, or an adult with
his own treatment, to get a fresh master. In fact,
bond-servants are not treated with more severity than
hired servants ; they differ little from their masters,
if these belong to the middle class, in food, dress,
and lodging ; their children are free ; and they them-
selves often live in their own houses like any one
else, only liable to be called on for labour ; and this
in practice may be only at certain seasons of the
year.^

S 72. As far as I can gather from somewhat con-
tradictory statements on Burmese law, the main
features of inheritance are as follows. The debts of
the deceased must be paid, but not gambling debts,
for these can only be recovered from the loser, not
from his family or heirs. Naturally, among the
debts are those for which children have been given
in bondage ; these children can claim the amount for
which they were pledged, in addition to their share
of the inheritance ; and thus the death of the father
sets them free if he leave assets sufficient. The
funeral expenses also must be paid ; and this is not

1 These Burmese bond-servants seem to bear a striking resemblance
to those Roman children or adults who were in the state of dependence
known as being in tnancipio. See supra^ § 19.

§ 73] I^HE BURMESE, loi

a light matter, for large alms to the Buddhist monks
are expected, and there are instances of families being
reduced to poverty by too magnificent a funeral.
Then, if there are no children, the general rule is
that the wife takes all the deceased husband's pro-
perty and the husband all the deceased wife's. If
there are children the surviving parent takes most,
but something goes to the children. Complications
occur through the frequency of divorce and second
marriages ; the general solution is that property
acquired during the first marriage goes to the children
of that marriage, and acquisitions during the second
marriage to the children of the second marriage.

In the division of property among the children,
first, notice that all the jewellery and other per-
sonal ornaments given to them before the parent's
decease are retained as their own ; and that such
ornaments form a much larger proportion of assets
in Burma than in England; secondly, that the capi-
tal given by a father to a son to trade with must
be restored and merged with the rest of the inherit-
ance, but that any profit he has made from it is
his own ; thirdly, that authority and a greater share
of goods fall generally to the eldest son and eldest
daughter.

§ 73. I cannot say what is the exact extent of
power and preference of the eldest children, or whether
the eldest daughter has power if there is an eldest

102 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 73.

son, and, if so, what are the relations of these two
authorities. Mark, however, that families of only one
sex are artificially increased by the practice, when
there is a divorce, of the mother taking all the girls,
and the father all the boys. Then too, a large pro-
portion of the younger sons, I think, become celibate
and mendicant monks, leaving only an eldest son
and his sisters. And this much, I think, can be said
about the details of partition, that female bond-ser-
vants generally go exclusively to females (widow or
daughters), and that if a man die leaving a widow
and children, the eldest son, or one selected son, suc-
ceeds to his father's military accoutrements, apparel,
bed, and jewels, and to one of his fields ; the rest
of the property is divided into four parts, of which
the widow takes three and the other children one
between them.

Although two or three families are often found
dwelling under the same roof, in consequence of the
husband spending the first years of his married life
in his father-in-law's house (supra, ^ 6y), joint families
in the proper sense are, I think, uncommon or un-
known. The bonds of relationship indeed are recog-
nised, and the duty of mutual help ; there are some
families even who can trace back their pedigrees for
some generations. But in general we can say, I
think, that family feelings, traditions, and distinctions
are slight. This is seen in their names. They have
not an idea of surnames, only personal (as we say,

§ 74.] T^HE BURMESE. 103

Christian) names. A man, for example, may be called
Elephant, Umbrella, White, Forest, Little Pig, Turtle,
or Buffalo, and a woman : House, Frog's Egg, Dog,
Pretty (naturally without the ridiculous sound the
translated name has to our ears) ; and to this personal
name you prefix a title of respect, equality, condescen-
sion, or friendship. And honorary titles are in use,
such as, Supporter of a Monastery, Builder of a Well.
But all this merely affects and designates the indivi-
dual, irrespective of his family.

§ 74. This general equality of birth is in harmony
with the general equality of fortunes. One man may
have a larger house than another, a dress made of
silk instead of cotton, more gold ornaments for his
wife and daughters, more cattle or stock-in-trade than
another ; but he differs from him only in degree, not
in kind ; no gulf separates rich and poor ; and besides
the risks of having unusual wealth (already spoken
of) and the frequent scattering of fortunes by dona-
tions for purposes of religion, the land laws prevent
any large private estates and make easy the creation
of small ones. You may only hold what you pay
taxes on ; and even if it is legal, it is worth no
one's while to hold large tracts of land cultivated with
little intensity, like the pasture-holders of Australia,
America, and the United Kingdom. Nor is there in
Burma the indirect holding of land by the contrivance
of mortgage (or hypothec). You can pledge your

I04 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 74.

land or house, but the creditor takes instant posses-
sion, has the use and enjoyment of the property in-
stead of interest, and at the end of three years, unless
you redeem the pledge, becomes absolute owner.
While wasteful and encumbered estates are thus kept
in check, the formation of small estates is fostered by
the law that allows any one to occupy land not already
occupied, and to have it as his own if he enclose and
cultivate it. About ten acres is, I believe, a common,
perhaps the general, size of estates. All the un-
appropriated land belongs in a certain sense to the
crown ; but I think it would be more correct to say
it belonged to the nation; and the king himself is
often a buyer of land.

It is curious to mark how many social features are
seen in Burma that many writers and politicians re-
commend for Europe. The " emancipation "of women,
the facility of divorce, the absence of hereditary digni-
ties and wealth, " free trade " in land, cremation (which
is the general mode in which they treat their dead),
the State and its officers being so much, private
families so little. And the curiosity of their language,
that has different words for the same action — for
example, sleeping, if the person (the sleeper) be the
king, a monk, or an ordinary mortal — is perhaps not
without analogies in the political language of Europe
and America. But the salt that preserves that society
is not part of the programme of our reformers. Amid
the equality and mediocrity of the Burmese, the monas-

§ 75] EGYPTIANS OF THE DEMOTIC PERIOD. 105

teries are a secure home of literature and art; amid
their ease and freedom, the people have still kept the
sense of reverence ; it is not there that insolent and
shallow youth derides the wisdom of age, or that
children turn against their parents.^

X. — The Egyptians of the Demotic Period.

§ 75. Among the Egyptians, when they fell under
Greek rule, family laws and customs were widely
different from anything I have already described.^
There was indeed a kind of ancestor worship, but it
differed in two essential particulars from that of China,
Greece, and Rome ; first, in the preservation of the
mummied corpse, and secondly, in the memorial rites
being performed, not by the children of the dead, but
by priests. In ancient days it was the eldest son
who poured forth libations and prayers at his father's
tomb ; but now the whole matter had become a matter

^ I am well aware that thirty years of English rule have much
loosened in British Burma the bonds of religion and dutifulness. See
Forbes, /. c. pp. 45-46, 60, 87, 325. Whether the liberty, equality, and
fraternity of Burmese men and women will continue under the changed
moral conditions is a matter worth the watching.

^ I copy often almost word for word the summary given in TAe
Times, Dec. 24, 1881, and Jan. 9, 1882, of Eugene R^villout*s discoveries
given in the Etudes &gyptologiques, Paris 1 880, under the title Chresto-
mathie demotique ; and I add from the same author's Cours de droit
igyptien, Paris 1884.

io6 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 76.

of contract, and the profitable employment of an here-
ditary priesthood, who not only contracted in the most
businesslike way with the relatives for the various
services of the dead, but also among themselves. The
priests sold, mortgaged, and bequeathed the tombs and
mummies intrusted to them, with the lucrative endow-
ments or claims attached to this trust.

Another peculiarity of the Egyptian law was that,
while on the one hand there was no such thing as
bastardy, and all children whose father was known
were held his legitimate children, on the other hand
no one was allowed to supply the lack of own children
by adopting those of others ; and this great means of
securing an heir and a worshipper by fictitious rela-
tionship was cut off.

§ y6. But the greatest contrast to the manners of
the Greeks, and what most excited their astonishment,
was the position of Egyptian women. Whether as
spinster, wife, or widow, a woman could buy and sell,
and make all sorts of contracts, without requiring to
ask any one's permission or get any one to act for her.
She was completely sut juris ^ her own mistress ; in
particular, she was completely independent of her
husband. And more than this, he was habitually
dependent upon her. For marriage was the result of
a contract, the terms of which were the matter of
previous debate ; and in this debate the woman habi-
tually got the better of the man. Even the slave-

§ 76.] EGYPTIANS OF THE DEMOTIC PERIOD. ic;

concubines, to whom law or custom gave much security
and protection, seem to have been able sometimes to
enter into a sort of marriage contract with their master,
and bind him to take no other wife or concubine.
Among equals the marriage contract was generally
such that we can reduce it to the following eight
clauses : (i.) The "acceptance" of the woman as his
wife by the man ; (2.) the nuptial gift he gives her ;
(3.) the promise of an annual allowance for dress, at
least during the first year ; (4.) the declaration that the
eldest son of both shall inherit the guardianship of all
the husband's property ; (5.) the promise of the man to
hereafter " establish " the woman as his wife ; (6.) the
covenant for payment of damages if he take another
wife ; (7.) a list of the woman's trousseau ; (8.) a
guarantee in the form of a mortgage on all his pro-
perty. The husband indeed did not pledge himself
irrevocably, for after " accepting " the wife he might
still at the end of a year separate from her, and she
from him, honourably. They had a year's trial of
each other ; and then, if the marriage continued, the
husband " established " the wife, and by this second
ceremony was bound to her for life, nay, in such a
manner that any infidelity or polygamous second mar-
riage made him lose all he possessed. Thus, although
polygamy was legal, the rule of contract ended by
making it impossible where the first marriage had
been fruitful. Moreover, the husband took the name
of his wife instead of giving his name to her ; and the

io8 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 77.

children were called, not after their father but after
their mother.

§ yy. The degree of marital dependence varied
according to the contract and the circumstances. In
the extreme, and yet the most common case, he gave
up everything except the pitiable claim to be supported
by his wife during his life, and to receive embalmment
and memorial rites after his death. The wife pos-
sessed everything, and could make contracts as she
liked ; nor was she even bound to have a common
domicile with her husband. And it was she who dis-
tributed the goods among the children, even during
the husband's lifetime. Whether she could squander
all the property without any regard to the children, I
doubt ; but, at any rate, she had much greater liberty
than her husband, even supposing he had kept all his
rights, and had not made them over to his wife or
children. In fact, paternal power appears to have
sunk almost as low as marital power. As soon as
children reached the age of about thirteen or fourteen,
they attained their full majority, and could buy, sell,
and transact any other business in the lifetime of their
father entirely without his intervention.^ Moreover,
the father had to get the consent of his children before

^ No doubt parents, mothers especially, often joined their names to
the contracts of their children who had reached majority ; but this was
not so much an approbation as a guarantee against possible litigation ;
and there was no need of any " emancipation " before a son could hold
property of his own.

It

I

§ 7^'] EGYPTIANS OF THE DEMOTIC PERIOD, 109

'he alienated his property, and was rather the adminis- .
trator than the owner. And generally he gave up
the little power he possessed by making over all or
most of his property to his wife, as I have already
noticed, or to his children, and remained a mere pen-
sioner, or at least a usufructuary or life-tenant, with
very limited powers.

§ 78. If the property had been transferred to the
children, the eldest son became the administrator of
the family, representing it before the tribunals and
all third parties, and distributing their shares in due
time to his brothers and sisters. And the same
arrangement was in use when property passed to the
children by the death of the parents. The eldest son,
or rather the eldest child, for a daughter seems to
have had (as among the Basques) just the same privi-
leges as a son, was master of all the property, but
was bound to make a fair distribution, I think, in equal
shares to brothers and sisters or to the children
representing them. But there are instances of the
eldest son making an uneven distribution, or keeping
the goods for himself instead of distributing them ;
and I think the eldest child, whether daughter or son,
might secure the lion's share by getting gifts from the
parents (especially from the mother) and by getting
written renunciations from the younger brothers and
sisters. Remember, in explanation of this somewhat
equivocal position of the firstborn, that the old system

no FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§79.

of hereditary trades continued in full force among the
poorer classes, the father's business being invariably
continued by his sons, and that a business can scarcely
subsist without a recognised head.

§ 79. The law of inheritance put women and men
as regards property on an equality ; the law or custom
of marriage put men, as we have seen, below women,
I should add that the woman rarely made any sacrifice
of property corresponding to that of the man. What
she possessed or acquired remained as her separate
goods ; and although dowries were not unknown, they
were rare ; for the man who accepted money with his
bride was held disgraced. Thus it came about that
the wealth of the middle and upper classes was vested
absolutely, or nearly so, in the hands of the married
women. Nor were they merely passive holders, but
actively engaged in business as buyers and sellers,
mortgagees and money-lenders, and even as contractors
with the State. It is an exaggeration indeed of
Herodotus and Sophocles to say the women did all
the trading and marketing, while the men sat at home
at the loom ; and probably among the poorer classes,
at least among those working on the land, the stronger
arms of the husband gave him a higher position before
his wife than was enjoyed by his superiors. Still
the Greek writers were not inventing but only
exaggerating the facts.

How and why these Egyptian family customs arose,

§ So.] EGYPTIANS OF THE DEMOTIC PERIOD, in

with the depression of the paterfamilias, the dominion
of women, and the simoniacal priesthood, is not cer-
tain ; what we do know is that once it was otherwise.

§ 80. In truth this women's rule was a growth
since the days when the Great Pyramids were built.
For we have evidence that in those ancient times the
father was the head of the house, the real master of
the property, the ruler and chastiser of his children,
able to choose for them a husband or a wife, without
any need of their consent. The papyrus of the reign
of Assa-Tatkdra, perhaps the oldest document in the
world, contains exhortations to filial piety, that we
might have thought written for the Chinese. " The
son who listens to his father's words shall have length
of days for his reward. . . . The obedience of a
son to his father is a joyful thing ... he is dear
to his father, and his good report is in the mouth of
the living who walk on the earth. One who is rebel-
lious sees knowledge in ignorance and virtues in
vices." ^ Moreover, the father was director of family
worship ; and the ancient lords of the Nile valley, like
the chieftains of Semitic tribes, like Abraham and
Melchisedech, were at once princes and priests. Nor
was the husband in habitual and legal subjection to
the wife. True, the position of women, from the
earliest times that we can see, was a position of

^ Cited by C. de Ribbe, La vie domesHque^ 3d ed. 1878, vol. ii.
pp. 91, 92 ; cf. p. 66 seq.

112 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 80.

honour. She is drawn sitting on a seat as lofty as
her husband's, or on the same seat.^ She is styled
the mistress of the house. She had rights of succes-
sion to the throne. But to be a loved and honoured
companion, and to rule the house within, is a position
for a wife quite distinct from that of later Egypt,
where she was the legal superior of her husband,
and was the external ruler and representative of the
house before strangers. The Egyptian queens ren-
dered a tacit homage to the greater fitness of men
to rule by putting on an artificial beard. And the
following passage from the old book already cited
shows plainly that the husband and not the wife is
the head of the house. "If you are wise, let your
house be well provided ; love your wife and do not
wrangle with her, but give her victuals to eat and
ornaments to deck herself withal. Let her have per-
fumes and make her happy as long as you live ; she is
a possession that should be worthy of its owner. Be
not rough and rude." ^ Such counsels in later times
would have been strangely superfluous and ridiculoiis.

^ She appears " surrounded by the crowd of servants of all ranks,
among whom the humble concubines of the master are sometimes
mentioned. These latter make no pretensions to rival their mistress,
and humbly rest contented with their inferior position " (E. R^villout,
Z)rotf ^gypfiertf Tp, 2ig),

2 This second citation I take from F. Lenormant, Histoire ancienne
de rOrient, 9th ed., 1882, t. ii. p. 89. The treatise is by an aged
member of royal family, and is eminently unsacerdotal ; indeed, setting
forth a sort of morale indipendante^ or school-board ethics, like what
is now in vogue on both sides of the English Channel.

§ 8i.] THE MONGOL NOMADS. 113

XL — ^The Mongol Nomads,

§ 8l, From remote antiquity the vast upland plains
of Central Asia have been inhabited by nomad tribes,
living not in houses but in tents or waggons, and
supported not by agriculture, nor again by hunting or
fishing, but by the produce of their flocks and herds.
The following account of their family life applies
primarily to the Mongols as they were observed by
the Russian traveller Timkowski towards the begin-
ning, and by the Abbd Hue towards the middle of
this century; but much of it is equally applicable to
the other nomadic races of the continent.^ The
essentials of nomad life, remember, are that the dwell-
ings are movable and often moved, that all immov-
ables, the pastures and wells, are owned not by private
individuals or families, but by the community (tribe
or clan), and that the main occupation and support is
afforded by live stock.

^ See G. Timkowski, Travels through Mongolia^ English ed., 1827,
and Hazlitt's translation of Hue's Travels in Tartary ; also Le Play,
Vorganisation du travail^ § 64, Vorganisation de la famille, § 4,
Les ouvriers europ&ns, t. iU eh. i. (on the Bashkirs). The Kirghese
are well described by a correspondent in The- Times^ 19th August 1884.
Some information is to be got from N. Prejevalsky, Mongolia^ translated
by Morgan, London 1876, especially from the annotations of CoL Yule.
But the Russian author himself, excellent in his observation of things^
and gifted with physical science and the geographical sense, in both of
which the Abbe Hue was sadly deficient, is yet wholly incompetent
to observe persons^ neither knowing the native languages, nor raised
above the level of those half-cultured travellers who rail and wonder,
instead of examining and appreciating.

H

114 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§82.

The Mongols marry very young, and the whole
matter is settled by their parents, the young people
perhaps never having met before. So there is no
regular courting as among the modem English and
Burmese and ancient Hindus. But in taking a second
wife, either in place of the first or in addition to her,
the man can choose for himself. Still, even then, if
I am not mistaken, he addresses himself not to the
girl but to her parents or guardians, and generally the
suit is first preferred through strangers. First cousins
may marry, and two sisters successively, but there is
a prohibition of intermarriage between persons bom
under certain particular signs of the zodiac.

§ 82. The payment of bride-money to the bride's
parents is the chief manner in which property is
affected by marriage. How natural the payment of
such bride-money is, where society is simple and
wealth and poverty little distinguished, and how un-
scientific it is to call the transaction a sale of the girl,
has already been explained (supra, § 33). The pro-
perty to be transferred to the bride's family as com-
pensation for losing her, is made up of such objects
as horses, oxen, sheep, pounds of butter, or the
imported luxuries of spirits and wheat flour. But the
burden that might weigh heavily on the bridegroom's
family is lightened by the generosity of the wedding
guests. All the relatives and neighbours come and
bring presents of eatables and animals; folds are

§ 83.] THE MONGOL NOMADS, 115

constructed all ready to receive the animals, and at
the weddings of the richer Mongols are filled with
great herds of oxen, horses, and sheep. The father
of the bridegroom may thus be fully indemnified for
the bride-money. But, in spite of Hue, I doubt
whether this often happens, and I suspect that the
presents received from the wedding guests habitually
cover only a small portion of the expenditure. The
amount of the bride-money can be judged of from the
statement of Timkowski that among the common
people it seldom reaches 400 head of animals,^ and
that payment is often spread over some time, even as
much as six or seven years. So bride-money is no
light matter.

§ 83. On the other hand, the parents of the bride
have to give her a trousseau that is almost large
enough to be called a dowry. They must provide her
a new tent furnished with all that is needful, and every
article of dress, and a saddled horse ; jnoreover, some
live stock, which among the rich may number as many
as 100 head.^

Besides what the bride brings with her, the bride-
groom receives from his own father a separate tent
and some cattle, and is given the title of geri^ or
housekeeper. But if I am not mistaken he continues

1 Among the Kirghese the bride-money is called ^a/tm, and consists
of from 40^0 120 sheep, or from 9 to 47 head of larger cattle.

' Among the Bashkirs, the bride brings some animals, furniture, and
garments, and among the Kirghese some animals and a tent.

1 1 6 FORB'CHRISTIA N FA MI LIES. [§ 84.

to live in the same district as his father, and even, 1
think, in the same inclosure, and also continues in his
obedience and subordination to him, while his young
wife shows great reverence to her father-in-law, and
observes towards him a rigid etiquette in the inte-
rests of morality. For as marriages are so early, the
father-in-law may, as often as not, be under forty
years of age.

Naturally the deficiency of pasturage may compel
families to separate even in the lifetime of the father;
but this we may take to be exceptional.

§ 84. Polygamy is allowed, but the first wife is
always the mistress of the household and the most
honoured ; the other wives owe her obedience and
respect, and themselves are entitled "little spouses."
Since so many of the Mongol men become celibate
Buddhist monks, perhaps as many as one-third of
the adult male population, there is a disproportion
of the sexes, and it has been suggested that poly-
gamy acts as a check on licentiousness, as otherwise
a number of young women would be unable to find
husbands.

Divorce is frequent, requires nothing on the part
of the husband but the exercise of his will, and by
no means brings any trouble to him on the part of
the wife's family, to whom he sends her back with a
saddled horse and one best garment. For although,
with this deduction, he keeps all her trousseau, still

§ 84-1 THE MONGOL NOMADS. ii;

even pecuniarily he is the loser : women there are
not a burden to be supported, but props and pillars of
the house ; and the husband who puts away his wife
will have spent — and this is a great practical check to
divorce — all the bride-money in vain. If the wife
leave her husband, her parents are supposed to send
her back three times. After a fourth desertion, the
husband is entitled on divorcing her to a certain
compensation, the exact nature of which I cannot
ascertain ; but I think that he only gets back a small
fraction of the bride-money.

But though a Mongol woman can neither choose
her husband, nor secure her being his only or his
permanent wife, and though she is, as the Roman
law would say, in perpetual tutelage, still she is by
no means a secluded household drudge. She has an
active and . masculine demeanour, comes and goes at
her pleasure, rides out on horseback, and visits her
female friends from tent to tent. True she is the
great worker of the household, but rather as an active
mistress than as a driven servant. The men live on
horseback, and do little else but drive the flocks and
herds to pasture. When ofiF their horses they pass
the time mostly in sleeping, smoking, and drinking
tea. It is the women who do the dairy work, draw
water, collect fuel (invariably dried dung), prepare the
meals, do the tanning of skins, the fulling of cloth, the
making of clothes, including hats and leather boots,
and embroider excellently into the bargain.

1 1 8 FORE'CHRISTIA N FA MILIES. [§ 85.

§ 85. The moral code of the Mongol nomads may
be somewhat lax, admitting polygamy and easy
divorce, but it seems by no means ill observed. Their
dress is modest ; they sleep in their clothes. Every
tent is divided into two compartments, one for the
women, the other for the men ; and grave offences
against morals, at any rate among the laity, are rare.^
The adulterer has to pay forty-five head of cattle, and
the guilty woman is delivered up to her husband, who
may put her to death ; if he spare her, then the cattle
are paid to the chieftain instead of to him. Their
honesty and simplicity expose them to perpetual
cheating at the hands of the unscrupulous traders
of China ; they are frank and hospitable, and full
of politeness, resembling in this the Beduin Arabs.
Their education is not unsuited to their mode of life :
book-learning, science, and art are indeed scarce to
be found except in the monasteries ; but all who are
to be laymen are taught to ride perfectly, wrestle,
shoot, and moreover to have much empirical knowledge
of the structure and diseases of animals, besides a
wonderful skill in managing them. And from what
I have said of the employments of women, it is plain
that there is much that girls have to learn. More-
over, there is an unwritten literature sung by the
numerous and popular wandering minstrels, who hand

^ The morals of the celibate lamas may be bad, but some better
testimony against them is required than the prejudiced and hearsay
assertions of Prejevalsky. »

§ 86.] THE MONGOL NOMADS. 119

down the national traditions and glories, are always
welcomed and honoured, often stay several days in
one tent, and are given provisions (such as cheese and
tea) when they go. For they seldom possess more
than their musical instruments and their garments.

§ 86. Furthek", the Mongols are deeply religious,
pay the greatest honour to the Buddhist monks
(lamas), spend immense sums on religious purposes,
shrink from no hardships in making pilgrimages, have
a small altar and an image of Buddha in every tent,
and are zealous in prayer. I do not say that the
credulity of these simple shepherds is not cruelly taken
advantage of, and that the lamas of Tibet do not work
upon their simplicity in matters of religion, much
the same lucrative manner as the Chinese traders do
in matters of trade. But this does not lessen the
merit of their honesty and their piety.

In their treatment of the dead the Mongols vary,
but I think there is no ancestor worship, properly
speaking, except where they have been transformed
into Chinese. Among the true nomadic tribes the
entire funeral ceremony is to carry the dead to the
top of hills or the bottom of ravines, there to be
devoured by birds and beasts of prey. But there is
a wide-spread belief in the benefit of burial in certain
spots, especially the precincts of a certain monastery ;
and many Mongols carry thither at great cost the
bones of their parents (after burning the bodies) to

120 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 87.

perform this act of filial piety. The conversion of the
Mongols to Buddhism towards the end of the sixteenth
century put an end, I think, to the ancient practice of
slaughtering camels and horses, and burying them
with the dead man, and in the case of chieftains, even
slaughtering slave children, who were to be their
escort in the next world. ^

§ 87. The power of the father over his children is
great, their obedience is exemplary ; according to his
will they remain laymen or become monks (lamas)
from their earliest age. By a custom indeed which
perhaps cannot be overruled, the eldest son remains
a layman. But every father thinks it a duty to bring
up one of his sons to be a monk. A childless
Mongol may adopt the legitimate children of others.
All the goods of the family (unless perhaps some
articles of personal adornment) are held in common
under the rule of the father, who is said to be passion-
ately fond of his children. He assigns to each their
office, receives the bride-money on giving his daughters
in marriage, pays the bride-money on the marriage of
his sons, arranges the services and pays the dues that
are the right of his chieftain. Some of these contri-
butions are regular, some depend upon particular occa-
sions, such as the marriage, burial, or distant journey
of the chieftain. And the rich, as in most other

^ SeeH. H. Howorth, History of the Mongols,^ London 1876, pp/422-
423, 426. Hue speaks of the practice as though it still continued.

)

§ 88.] THE MONGOL NOHtADS. 121

societies, have comparatively less to pay and to
do.^ But though there are inequalities of wealth, the.
inequality is only in movables; more camels and
horses, more sheep and goats, more yaks and oxen,
more provisions, garments, ornaments, and better tents
than your neighbour, but not more land, for that is
all common. Nor is power or wealth divorced from
responsibility ; for in years of scarcity the chieftains,
the lamas, and the rich have to provide for the poorer
tribesmen. And there is equality in their employ-
ment!^, their recreation, and their mode of life. The
highest and lowest will smoke and drink tea together,
as Hue remarks, and their children "romp and
wrestle together without distinction; the stronger
throws the weaker; that is all" (i. p. 171).

§ 88, Finally, there is equality from the sense of a
common origin. " The meanest and most ignorant of
the Tartars," says Gibbon, "preserve with conscious
pride the inestimable treasure of their genealogy, and,
whatever distinctions of rank may have been intro-
duced by the unequal distribution of pastoral wealth,

^ The chieftain has the right annually to take one sheep from the
owner of five or more oxen, one sheep from the owner of twenty sheep,
two from the owner of forty sheep, but never more than two sheep.
This is somewhat on the poll-tax principle. Further, on the occasion
of journeys and marriages, he may claim from every ten tents, one ox
and a cart drawn by an ox or camel ; from three cows or four, a pail
of milk ; from five cows or more, a pitcher of spirits distilled from
milk ; from a hundred sheep and more, a piece of felt (Timkowski
Travels in Mongolia^ ii. p. 339).

122 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 88.

they mutually respect themselves and each other as
.the descendants of the first founder of the tribe. The
custom, which still prevails, of adopting the bravest
and most faithful of the captives, may countenance the
very probable suspicion that this extensive consan-
guinity is, in a great measure, legal and fictitious. But
the useful prejudice, which has obtained the sanction
of time and opinion, produces the effects of truth ; the
haughty barbarians yield a cheerful and voluntary
obedience to the head of their blood, and their chief,
or mursa, as the representative of their great father,
exercises the authority of a judge in peace, and of a
leader in war,"^

Thus the rule of the father within the tent, and of
the chieftain without, and the great respect paid by all
to their elders, especially to old men, secure peace
and justice in a society where every man is mounted
and armed. No distinction is made between civil and
criminal law, and there is no need of it. The family
of the injured party prosecute an offender and receive
reparation. Among the Kirghese, and probably it is
much the same among the Mongols, trials are oral and
public, judges are chosen by the litigants, frequent
appeal is made to conscience, great stress is laid on

^ Decline and FcUl^ chap, xxvi., where, before narrating the inroads
of the Huns, he describes in his masterly way the manners of the pas-
toral nations. Timkowski confirms the attachment and fidelity of the
Mongols to their chiefs and their care in keeping genealogical registers ;
they never lose sight of yasou, ue., the degree of kinship ( Travels in
Mongolia, ii. pp. 303, 329).

§ 89.] THE MONGOL NOMADS. 123

oaths, while the punishments assigned resemble a scale
of fines ranging from a coat of stuff or fur for a trifling
offence, to a fine of 50 camels, or 100 horses, or
ICXX) rams, for the murder of a man.

§ 89. On the death of the father the brothers may
or may not keep together. If they do, we can scarcely
call them a joint family, for the term should be taken
to imply joint homestead and land, and they have
neither. And the nature of their property makes par-
tition as easy as possible without the least depreciation,
unlike a farm or a commercial business. And partition
need not imply separation ; they may continue to live
in the same encampment though not in the same
inclosure, and their flocks may feed together on the
same pastures. The absence of female property and
of female succession, still further simplifies the dis-
tribution of property ; and among the Mongols there
is another simplification, that often all the sons but
the eldest have become monks. It may be added
that the political authority of the chieftains descends
to their eldest son only ; and the younger sons (as far
as they do not become monks) form a poor nobility.

The honour given to age and to parents secures a
position for the aged widow ; and the worst that can
befall the children of an unfortunate or foolish father
is to become servants, where there is little to dis-
tinguish master and servant, in the houses of their
kindred.

124 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§90-

XII. — Doctrine of Primitive Savagery.

§ 90. Having reached the end of my illustrations
of Fore-Christian families, I may be asked why I have
passed over the family life of savages, or, as some
would say, the state of savagery antecedent to the
family. I answer that I am not concerned with
theoretical states and with fancies, but with facts, of
which this book is a collection ; and that out of the
numberless array of facts concerning family life, I
have had, like .every one else who deals with this
subject, to make a selection, and have selected what
appeared instructive for forming a clear and sound
judgment about right and wrong in this department
of Ethics. But even if we could fix on a precise and
reasonable meaning for the word savage, we should
not be able to speak of the "savage family" any
more than now we can speak of the civilised
family.^ For in neither case would there be any

^ Of course the word savage might be taken to mean absence of
family (or any decent family) life ; but this would not be a reason-
able meaning ; for then various half-naked tribes with a minimum of
external appliances, and whom it would be held absurd in common
parlance not to call savages, such as the Andaman Islanders, would be
excluded. Professor Max Miiller, in an instructive paper in TA^ Nine-
teenth Century ^ January 1885, has well asked anthropologists what
they mean by a savage. For my part I doubt if we can do more with
profit than make the one distinction of civilised and uncivilised man,
according as they have or have not all the seven following characteris-
tics — (i.) towns ; (2.) an upper class; (3.) an organised government deser\'-
ing the name of a state ; (4.) a certain measure of. skill in the industrial

§90.] DOCTRINE OF SAVAGERY. 125

characteristic that would distinguish the savage or
the civilised family from all others. And then, as no
typical savage family can be found, it seems to me of
no profit for Ethics to collect descriptions of family
life, whether good or bad, in abnormal conditions.
Some of the outcasts of humanity, dwellers in woods
or by the frozen sea, with few arts, and in scanty
numbers, live a simple, peaceful, chaste, and pious
life ; others are sunk in horrible abominations ; and
both may be studied with profit for the purposes of
ethnology and philology. But the political or econo-
mical writer has to do with the bulk of humanity, not
with waifs and strays ; and has to attend to societies
important for their numbers, or power, or intelligence,
Or long duration. And truly, if a little of the atten-
tion given of late years to Australians and Hotten-
tots, to Fuegians and Eskimos, had been given to
the political and domestic life of the great races of
Europe and Asia, political and economical science
among us would have gained, and no other science,
I think, have been the worse. The reason indeed for
this wonderful interest in " savages " is well known.
Certain theories of physical science and philosophy

arts, in (5.) the decorative arts, in (6.) science and history ; and lastly,
(7.) a written literature. In a former volume I explained this view of
civilisation, and how religion, morality happiness, and well-being were
quite distinct from it {Groundwork of Economics ^ § 312). If we liked
we might call societies that had only some of the seven characteristics
semi-civilised, and those with none, uncivilised. An analogous view
of civilisation has recently been given by the Duke of Argyll {The
Unity of Nature^ 1884, pp. 381-384),

1 26 FORE-CHRISTIA N FA MILIES. [§91.

required, or thought they required, for their support
the doctrine that primitive man had no family life,
that there was promiscuous union of the sexes, that
paternity was consequently uncertain, and that gradu-
ally the separate family, in which every man knows his
father, was evolved out of this primitive promiscuity.
On the details of the process there is disagreement,
but the theory on the original state is what I have
said, and the sexual relations of modern savages that
at all resemble that state have been diligently collected
to back up the theory, as well as all indications that
history or archaeology can show that in any way seem

to indicate the existence of such a state in the past.

«

§ 91. The manner in which this theory of original
promiscuity has been upheld might dispense us from
further examining it, as not being founded on evidence,
but on assertion. Still, a few words may not be out
of place, as so many take this theory for gospel
truth.

There is one argument, and there is no other I
think, that has a respectable appearance of weight.
In many societies (we have seen an example in
Egypt, supra, § 76) kinship is traced and property
claimed not through the father but through the mother ;
and this custom, it is argued, comes from the existence
either of polyandry, or of wholly unregulated unions,
since in both cases kinship can be traced only through
the mother, because the father is uncertain ; and

§92.] DOCTRINE OF SAVAGERY. 127

though the custom may co-exist with regular marriage,
it is then a survival of the time when no such institu-
tion as marriage was known.

But this argument rests on the fallacy that because
X may be the cause of j^, it is the cause. No doubt
among the possible causes of tracing kinship through
females only, we can reckon promiscuity; and I do
not say that in some particular cases, as among some
of the tribes of Southern India, or negroes of Guinea,
this possible cause may not have been the actual one.
But then there are a number of other possible causes,
and we commit a gross blunder in reasoning if we
take any one cause, and say without further proof
that any particular case was due to this particular
cause.

§ 92. Let us look at some of those other causes I
have alluded to. (a.) One of them is clearly explained
in the following citation.^ " That the mother should
give her name to descendants " may be the result of
a state of society in which she is " the most permanent
element in the family. There are many tribes recog-
nising the institution of marriage in some form or
other, and yet very familiar with the practice of divorce.
In a state of nature the divorced father has little
inducement to assert his potestas by retaining the
guardianship of infants, whose maintenance, according

^ From Edith Simcox, in an excellent review of Sir H. Maine's Early
Law and Custom in The Academy, 14th April 1883.

128 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 93.

to the primitive division of labour, naturally falls upon
the mother ; the mother, with her children, naturally
marries again, let us say a warrior, who is killed in
the next tribal fray ; then a hunter, who comes to the
like untimely end ; and so on, perhaps, till the family
bearing her name attains quite patriarchal proportions.
Even in such a comparatively civilised community
as Iceland we find women of unimpeachable reputa-
tion married, widowed, divorced, and married again at
a very surprising rate and frequency. This sort of
MuUer-recht only tends to prevail among good-natured,
rather easy-going races, where women are kindly used ;
and these races are not the slowest to settle and
attain a certain degree of civilisation. With peace-
able settlement, life becomes more secure, and family
relations more continuous, but the old habit of tracing
kinship through the mother will survive long after
its raison detre has vanished."

§ 93' C^') Another reason for female rather than
male succession is, that by making the eldest daughter
the heiress the household gets additional strength, and
gets it earlier ; that is, the daughter heiress when she
is say eighteen is married, and brings into the home
her husband, aged say twenty-six, whereas in male suc-
cession the son and heir (assuming the same ages for
marriage) would not bring a helper into the house
till eight years later, and then the helper would be a
woman, not a man. Moreover, the children of the

§93.] DOCTRINE OF SAVAGERY. 129

marriage would be ready to help or defend the house-
hold eight years sooner in the first case than in the
second. In small and uncivilised societies, where so
much depends on strong arms, this reason may be
very powerful ; and it exists in civilised societies to
this day.^

(c,) The particular circumstances of economical life
may make female succession desirable, such as exist or
existed among the Basques, where the men of that
hard and rugged land are frequently absent at sea
and in domestic or military service at a distance ; and
thus, as the management of property must to a great
extent devolve on women, there is an advantage in
the managers rather than the absentees having the
ownership, the authority, and the responsibility. (Le
Play, /. c) Similarly, among the Tawkrek or Berbers
of the Sahara, where women are men's equals, and
most property is in their hands, and the successor to
a noble's feudal rights is the eldest son of his eldest
sister, the origin of these customs may be due to the
nature of the country, interminable deserts with scanty

^ Le Play, Vorganisation de la famille^ 2d ed., sec. 9, notices this
motive, and how among those of the Basques whose customary law
gives the property to the eldest child, whether son or daughter, it is
looked on as a special favour of Heaven if the first-bom is a daughter.
In a high Alpine valley, where there is no custom of female succession,
M. Claudio Jannet met a peasant who had established his daughter as
heiress instead of his son, precisely to have sooner, as he said, a strong
workman to help hip. In this valley, just as in the Pyrenees where
the Basques dwell, the struggle with the forces of nature is very severe
(Letter to the author),

I

I30 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 94,

population ; and over all this vast space the nobles
have to keep the civil and military police, conducting
caravans, collecting tribute from the oases under their
protection, negotiating peace, and making war. That
their goods should be mostly held and managed by
the women left behind, is not surprising.^

§ 94. (d.) Where great stress is laid on purity of
descent, the fear of this being vitiated by adultery
may account for tracing kinship through females, by
which alone you can make sure of the ancestral blood
remaining in the home ; and such a motive does not
the least imply that adultery is common, much less
that paternity is unknown. Superstition may give
great additional force to this motive, where there is a
vivid belief in genii (djinn), as among the Tawkrek,
For these supernatural beings may make paternity
uncertain.

(e,) By the husband being absorbed in the wife's
family, instead of the reverse, the painful separation
of mother and daughter, and the not seldom painful

^ See the noteworthy book of Henri Duveyrier, Exploratiim du
Sahara, Les I'ou&regs du Nord, Paris, 1864. These interesting people
are only nominal Mohammedans, and have in particular preserved the
old chivalrous honour paid to women, and monogamy, in utter contrast
to the modem Arabs. The legend they tell of the origin of the rule of
succession to the hereditary and inalienable goods and honours of the
nobles (the acquired goods of the nobles and all those of commoners
are divided equally among all the children) — this legend, as given by
Duveyrier (p. 397-400), shows no sign of polyandry or even any frequent
unfaithfulness of wives.

§ 95 ] DOCTRINE OF SA VA GER Y. 131

proximity of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, are
avoided; and in times when joint families are universal
can hardly be avoided in any other way.

(/) The mother, by the pains of child-birth, by her
office of suckling, by her greater affection for her
infant, by her constant presence in the house, by her
exclusive care of the child — material and moral — during
the early years of its life, has towards it a far closer
and more visible relation than the father, and uterine
relationship is the most striking to the senses. It is
therefore quite natural (putting aside revelation, or
assuming it had been forgotten) for the children to
belong primarily to the mother or her family, and for
kinship to be traced through her; and the opposite
practices, to which we have been so accustomed,
require at least as much accounting for as those other
practices at which we have been so astonished.

§ 95. (g-) Political grounds also may have been a
reason for succession through the mother instead of
the father ; namely, when kings or nobles gave their
daughters in marriage to those below them in rank,
the conditions or consequences of these unequal mar-
riages may have been that the wife became the head
of the house and the fountain of descent instead of
the father. We know that the daughters and grand-
daughters of the pyramid Pharaohs were wedded to
architects, scribes, and simple country gentlemen ;
and this, it has been suggested, may have been the

132 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 95.

origin of the Egyptian gyneocracy that I have already
described (supra, §§ 76, 77, 79) ; for the law that re-
gulated special cases might easily become the fashion
for all.^ We know also that among the Rajputs the
royal house of Oudeypore, when it was obliged, in
order to gain the support of some other clans, to
grant them the connubium, the longed-for privilege
of intermarriage with the princesses of Oudeypore,
stipulated at the same time that the sons of these
princesses should always succeed their father, to the
exclusion of children of any other wife, and in spite
of any claim of primogeniture these other children
might make (Note to French translation of Maine,
Ancien droit et coutume primitive, p. 360).^

^ M. R^villout thinks the omnipotence of women in later Egypt was
due to the absolute freedom of contract introduced by King Bocchoris,
and which enabled the women, who had always held a high place, and
who were credited with exceptionally attractive and winning manners,
to secure gradually from their enslaved admirers, as time went on,
more and more favourable conditions in the marriage contract, till they
got, as we have seen, the complete supremacy {Droit Egyptien, pp. 217-
218). Whether or not we accept this explanation as sufficient, we at
least know, that the Egyptian gyneocracy and succession through
females was not "original," being preceded by a different family law,
more like that of the early Jews, and utterly without promiscuity,
polyandry, or communal marriage {suprot § 80).

' The Chinese statecraft that binds the Mongol chiefs to China by
giving them imperial princesses— the daughters, sisters, or nieces of the
emperor— in marriage, and then pensioning them and their wives (G.
Timkowski, Travels through Mongolia^ ii. pp. 322-328), has not indeed,
as far as I am aware, resulted in making the chiefs trace their descent
through females, but might easily do so, if the ascendency of the
Chinese grew more, and the native spirit and pride of the Mongols
grew less.

§ 96.] DOCTRINE OF SAVAGERY. 133

(A) Moreover, if the practice of tracing relationship
through females had arisen through any of the afore-
named causes, it might spread — and indeed would be
likely to spread — to other societies, even though none
of those causes were operative, simply through the
habit of political imitation, the potency of which hks
been so well illustrated by Sir H. Maine (Early Law
and Custom, pp. 284—285), that it is needless to add
anything to what he has said.

§96, The main "proof" of primitive promiscuity
turns out therefore to be no proof, not even a pre-
sumption. Nay, I shall be able to show that there is
a presumption the other way, and that where we find
succession through females, we may exclude promis-
cuity from the likely causes, unless we have some special
reason for thinking otherwise in the special case.

Let us turn to some of the other grounds of the
theory, and see if they are any more solid. Com-
pulsory marriage has been declared a " survival " of a
time when the relation of the sexes was a communal
and not a private matter. But the history of com-
pulsory marriage (as well as of compulsory celibacy)
shows us in a number of known cases particular
reasons for the compulsion, that have nothing to do
with the alleged reminiscences of primitive times.
Religious reasons, lest a family die out, the domestic
worship be extinguished, and the family gods be
oflFended, account for some cases; political reasons

134 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§96.

for many others, that the state may have abundant
soldiers, that infant settlements may grow in strength,
that the commune may hold its own against the local
lord or the central government. We need not go
back to remote and obscure antiquity, but can point
to examples in comparatively recent times. Thus in
the thirteenth century, among the vassals of the
Teutonic knights, in perpetual struggle with the sur-
rounding pagans, it was the rule that the loss of men
in battle should be immediately followed and repaired
by compulsory marriages. Still more recently the
same principle was applied by the French Government
in Canada. '' The home country sent out cargoes of
young girls, and in the fortnight after their arrival
every unmarried man had to choose a wife or else
be forbidden to trade in timber. Any father of a
family settled in the colony, if he had not given his
sons in marriage by the time they were twenty, and
his daughters by the time they were sixteen, was
summoned, and if he had no excuse was ordered to
pay a fine that was renewable every six months." ^

^ This citation is from a note added by the French translator of Sir
H. Maine's Early Law and Custom at the end of chap, vii., inserted
with the author's approval. The accomplished translator, from whose
notes I have borrowed freely, goes on to remark : ** Si Ton transporte
un pareil regime dans un passe lointain, — et rien ne s'y oppose du
moment qu'il ne s'agit que d'un acte d'omnipotence communale par-
faitement conforme aux id^es primitives, — on comprendra qu'il soit
difficile de se moi^trer trop affirmative sur la g^n^alogie des coutumes
matrimoniales, et qu'on doive encore moins se hdter d'en conclure au
droit que le sexe mile pouvait avoir 4 I'origine sur toutes les femmes
de la tribu."

§ 97] DOCTRINE OF SAVAGERY. 135

§ 97. The customs of the Levirate and the Niyoga
already described (supra, §§13 and 61) have been
supposed to be a survival of polyandry. But there
are known and adequate causes for these customs
which should restrain us from guesswork. Among
the Jews the desire of being connected genealogically
with the future Messias, and among the Hindus
(Maine, Early Law and Custom, pp. 106— 1 08) the
desire of real or fictitious male offspring to secure
a man's welfare beyond the grave, are the grounds
for these customs ; and there are analogous grounds
for analogous customs elsewhere.

The same logical failing of arbitrarily assuming
possible (or what are thought possible) causes to be
the actual ones, instead of observing the actual ones,
is seen in the following argument. Among many
societies, uncivilised especially, the names for relatives
are not according to degrees of kinship as we reckon
them, but according to the generation ; for example,
a man calls his father and his uncles all by a com-
mon name, his parents; and his brothers and male
cousins of the same generation all his brothers ; and
again the generation below (his sons, nephews and
cousins in the same generation as his sons) by some
common name. A familiar instance occurs in the
Gospels where our Lord's second cousins are called
his brothers ; and the generation names of the
Chinese already described {supra, § 7) are of a some-
what similar character. Now this method of speak-

1 36 FORE'CHRISTIA N FA MI LIES. [§ 98.

ing has been taken as a " survival " of a time when
groups of men were married in common to groups of
women. But this is an arbitrary hypothesis, when
much more obvious and reasonable explanations of
this nomenclature are forthcoming. Sir H. Maine
(Ibtd. 289-290) has suggested the difficulty of com-
prehending a large body of complex relationships.
For in fact, if we take account of the* difference of
sex, there are some 27,000 possible forms of consan-
guinity or affinity, without counting degrees more
remote than the fifth. Among uncivilised people the
naming by generations instead of by degrees may be
simply their best attempt to meet the difficulty. And
it seems to me that in all cases where the joint
family prevails (and how widely it has prevailed can
be seen from the examples I have given), this mode
of speech may at any time arise quite naturally, as for
work and play and deliberation the members are pre-
cisely grouped in generations and not according to
kinship. China, where this mode of speech in some
degree prevails, is precisely the classical land of the
joint family.

§ 98. Idle again is the appeal to instances of poly-
andry as being a survival of what was once universal.
Even supposing that polyandry could spring from

original promiscuity, there are other causes far more
reasonable, and there are known instances of poly-
andry having arisen from some of these other causes.

§ 98.] DOCTRINE OF SA VAGERY. 137

How frequently there has been a deficiency of women
in particular societies through female infanticide/
through women being carried off in war, through
migration of men without the incumbrance of female
companions, and how easy is the growth of polyandry
under such circumstances and its sanction and explana-
tion by law and religion, has been well pointed out by
Sir H. Maine (Ibid., 210-215). And it is what Chris-
tians would expect, who believe in the fallen nature
of man, who read in Scripture how all flesh had
corrupted its way upon the earth (jGen. vi. 12), who
know from history how our evil passions have again
and again been the authors of evil civil laws, and how
many and appalling are the instances of downward
progress and growth in iniquity.^ And they are in
no way surprised at seeing religion the minister and
gilder of iniquity ; for they believe in the existence
of powers of darkness, who have driven men to oven
worse things than community of wives. So it is only

^ Female infanticide may in its turn be due to various causes, such
as the fear of mesalliances, the dislike to marriage expenditure where
custom makes it expensive and also forbids you to keep your daughters
unmarried (so among the Rajputs), the fear of an evil fate for your
daughter if you are poor, the disinclination to rear one who cannot be
of use to you in performing rites after you are dead (so in China), the
desire in a warlike society to have strong arms to fight for you, not
weak ones that have to be defended (so probably in Central Asia).

^ See Mivart, Lessons from Nature^ 147-156, and the Duke of Argyll,
Unity of Nature, especially chap. x. There is indeed no question of the
fact and frequency of decline ; and it is the only rational explanation
of the many instances of depraved societies. For to suppose original
depravity involves, as we shall see, a physiological contradiction.

138 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 99.

what we might have expected when we are told, that
among the low castes of Southern India there is an
intimate connection between polyandry and devil-
worship (Cornish in Madras Census Reports, cited by
J. H. Nelson, View of the Hindu Law^ pp. 144-145).

§ 99. Then again that form of polyandry seen in
Ceylon and among the ancient Spartans {supra^ § 46),
where several brothers live together in a joint family,
and have one wife between them, is a melancholy but
natural abuse of the joint family in situations where
there is no healthy outlet for increasing numbers, but
danger of partition or of beggary from a numerous
family. Here polyandry is a device to preserve the
estate undivided, and is no more a relic of primitive
times than is the artificial sterility practised for the
same end by the modern After-Christian French
peasants. Moreover, polyandry is known to have
arisen in the modern native Indian army (Maine,
Early Law and Custom^ p. 124) ; and among the Vene-
tian aristocracy of the early eighteenth century it is sard
\^ that brothers sometimes had one wife between them ;
V 'vhich can be accounted for by a system of taxation
\ tn^^ "^t made each separate marriage a special source of
exp^^nse (so too in ancient Sparta), and by the highest
office^X notably that of ambassador, being practically
open oxxily to the unmarried, through dread of female
influence j^ politics ; and if an ambassador was
chosen by exception from among the married, he was

\

\

§ 100.] DOCTRINE OF SAVAGERY. 139

not allowed to take his wife with him (Maine, Ibid,,
note of author and translator at end of chap, iv).^

§ 100. And not only are the arguments untenable
that are advanced in favour of primitive promiscuity,
but its advocates cannot answer the objections to
their theory. The manners and customs they per-
versely interpret as a survival of that imaginary state
are not found, for example, among the Aryan races ; ^
and although it would not matter if they were, nor
would there be even a presumption of primitive pro-
miscuity if it could really be shown that a so-called
matriarchal stage of society had everywhere preceded
the so-called patriarchal stage ; still, as our opponents
have chosen to make this Mutterrecht their chief argu-
ment, they are out of court till they can show that
this at least was certainly or probably universal.

Moreover, if the original and universal state was
what we are asked to believe, we may well question

^ In Ceylon, according to Sir J. E. Tennent {Ceylon^ ii. p. 430, 5th
edit), among the causes assigned for polyandry was this, that many
men being absent for such long periods at the feudal courts, there
was need of interested parties being left at home, and thus their
brothers or nearest relatives were adopted as partners of their wives
and fortunes. Be this as it may, the desire to keep together the inherit-
ance is recognised as a motive for the practice at present {Ibid,), and
similarly among some of the high castes in India (J. H. Nelson, Study
of the Hindu Law, p. 103).

2 I know well that this is denied by " anthropologists." But denial is
one thing, good ground for it is another ; and since the question is
eminently one of juridical archaeology and philology, they must begin
by convincing scholars like Professors Maine and Max MUlIer, before
they can properly claim a hearing from the general public.

140 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ loi.

the possibility of any change to a higher state. This
is quite a different matter from the case of societies
who, according to our view, have lapsed into poly-
andry or other abominations from any of the causes
already given (supra, §§ 98, 99). The particular cause,
such as the fewness of women or the danger to the
family property, being removed, and the intelligence
of a higher life being present (either from a tradition
of the past, or from the present voice of conscience,
or from the example of races that have not fallen),
a proper family life may be restored. But restoration
is one thing, a new development is another. And
are we to believe that our ancestors, supposing they
ever were as we are told they were, namely, without
knowledge of a better past, without sense of right and
wrong, without example and teaching of others, — are
we to believe that they raised themselves out of an
infra-bestial state, though it is so hard for the
licentious races of uncivilised men to raise themselves
in our own time with all the aid of devoted mission-
aries, and though there is no known instance of their
raising themselves unaided ? It should be too much
even for anti-Christian credulity.^

§ lOi, Finally, if by any marvel we got over the

^ Sir H. Maine, Early Law and Custom^ pp. 202-203, has noted an-
other difficulty : how the wide-spread opinion (of the classical Greeks, for
example, and ancient Egyptians, and Indians of Brazil) could, without
regular marriage, ever have arisen, namely, that the child descends ex-
clusively from the male parent, and thus is not of kin to its mother.

§ loi.] DOCTRINE OF SAVAGERY. 141

difficulty of men ever rising out of the alleged state of
promiscuity, we should only find ourselves confronted
by a difficulty still more insurmountable. The state
supposed is suicidal, and instead of allowing the
expansion of the human race, would have produced
infertility and probably disease, and at best only
allowed the existing numbers to maintain, under the
most favourable circumstances, a precarious existence.
To suppose therefore that the whole human race for
any considerable time were without regular marriage
is physiologically inadmissible : they could never have
survived it.^

The theory therefore of the horrid state of primitive
man turns out to be as unsound as it is repulsive.

^ There is also an argumenium adhominem against those who derive
us from the brutes and yet start us with promiscuity, that such a state
is eminently not " brutal " in the strict sense, or natural, but anomalous
and artificial, and a sinking below the apes. (Cf, Unity of Nature^ pp.
367-370, 378 seq.) But I do not care to make any use of this argu-
ment, still less of the one on which Sir H. Maine lays great stress, namely,
the difficulty of supposing sexual jealousy was in abeyance or absent
for so long and so widely as the theory of promiscuity supposes {Ibid,,
pp. 205-209, 216). His acute critic. Miss Edith Simcox, notices how
he has been led^astray by Darwin {Academy, 14th April 1883). And she
delicately indicates that his own theory of primitive man is as much
guesswork as the theories he criticises. In truth, if he really means
that jealousy^was "the force binding together and propelling the
ancient social order," that the patriarchal family can be described as
*' sexual jealousy, indulged through power," and that human society
began with such families (/^{'dT., 205, 209, 216, 219), his brutal primitive
man is not much more attractive than the licentious primitive man of
Bachofen ; and both, like the noble savage [homme de la fuUure\ of
Rousseau, are not the fruits of observation and reasoning, but mere
creatures of the imagination.

142 FORE-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ loi.

So let us be on our guard once more (yid. supra, § 32)
against all theories that go against or beyond the
evidence ; and remember that if some rash apologists
have taken liberties with facts that seemed to them
out of harmony with received doctrine, far greater
liberties have been taken with far less excuse by men
of science.

THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY.

I. — Christian Doctrine on the Family.

S 1 02. That nature is not evil in itself and has not
to be destroyed by grace but to be renovated and
raised; is one of the fundamental doctrines of the
Christian religion. Domestic life, like all else, had to
be renewed, as we are taught, in Christ ; and besides
this renewal by which Christianity gathered together
all the good features of the family that were scattered
through the world — all the good that came from the
light of natural reason, the traditions of the past, the
voice of conscience^ — there was also something new.
For the celibate life under vow and the married life of
Christians were both, in seeming contradiction, exalted
together, and held to be states in a supernatural order,
receiving peculiar support and guidance from on high.
Something therefore must be said on celibacy,
otherwise Christian marriage cannot be understood.
A life of perpetual virginity dedicated to God is held to

^ . . . natura reram, memoria originum, conscientia generis humani.
(Leo. XIII. Encycl. Arcanum divina.)

144 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY, [§ 102.

be a tetter life than one of marriage ; but not because
existence is evil and its propagation to be disap-
proved, or because marriage is a mere concession to
human frailty, that worse evils may be averted ; for
Manichaeism, and the milder error of Buddhism, are
both radically opposed to Christian doctrine, which
looks on marriage as a good thing and a holy state,
and, as far as it is lawful to consider the ways of
Divine Providence, the state to which the great mass
of men have hitherto been called. Nevertheless
religious celibacy is the state to which many are
called, and is a nobler and better state, and the call
higher ; inasmuch as the lower parts of our nature
are more completely conquered by the higher, and all
the heroic works of Christian charity can be fulfilled
unhindered, and an example of higher self-control
makes it easier for the mass of men to keep the bonds
of lawful marriage, and a body of men is provided
less unworthy, than if they were married, to fulfil the
awful duties of the Christian priesthood ; and above all,
since man has been created for a supernatural end
and to be transformed into the likeness of God, there
can be among the unmarried closer union with God,
more complete imitation of the Incarnate Word, as
their hearts are more undivided, their self-oblation
more complete, they tread in the footsteps of a
virginal Son of a virginal mother, and passing into
a mystical region, they are, as it were, already in the
celestial kingdom where they neither marry nor give

§ I03.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 145

in marriage, their soul being bound by a chaste and
everlasting union as the bride of the Lamb.^

§ 103. But marriage also is a holy state, and Chris-
tianity claims to have renewed its original sanctity and
raised it to a new dignity. It follows from the Chris-
tian doctrines of original justice, the end of man, and the
creation of the first woman from the flesh of the first
man, that marriage was never simply a natural relation
like the union of the beasts for the propagation of
their species, but was a special work of God, and
from the first a type of the Incarnation and marked
with a sacred character.^ Man and wife were to be
to each other a mutual support, bound in the closest
unioa of mind and heart, the two making but one
flesh, the spiritual union preceding and ennobling the
carnal union, and children being raised up with the
primary end of giving God new worshippers. Nor
were these ends of marriage removed by the Fall :
only now the fresh use was added to it of being a
means of averting licentiousness.

^ See. Hettinger, Apologie des Christenihums, IT., iii. p. 280 seq. (4th
edit); DoUinger, Christenthum und Kirche^ pp. 370, 371 ; T. W. Allies,
Formation of Christendom^ Part I., lecture vi. But I doubt if these
apolc^sts sufficiently explain how the double character of the Christian
dispensation applies, and applies so strikingly here. All that is good
in the celibacy of Buddhism ; all the yearnings of pagans for purer life
expressed in their maxim, casta placent superis^ and any good in any
other celibacy either practised or wished for — all this was included in
Christian celibacy, and then this excellence of nature was raised up
higher, and received a supernatural crown.

^ . . . qusedam Incarnationis Verbi Dei adumbratio . . . inest . . .
religiosum quiddam . . ingenitum {^Arcanum divina)»

K

146 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 104.

Now this original marriage, in its three char-
acters of sanctity, unity, and perpetuity, was brought
back and raised up by Christ, who restored the
dignity of man and perfected the Mosaic Law.^
In addition to the ancient sanctity, every marriage
between Christians was raised to be a Sacrament,
that is, a mystery of religion and a channel of grace ;
nor could there be any marriage among Christians
that was not a Sacrament. And in addition to the
ancient unity and perpetuity, which were renewed by
the absolute prohibition of polygamy, and by making
absolutely indissoluble every marriage finally com-
pleted among Christians,^ a new and mysterious bond
between husband and wife was created. For their
union was made an image of the union between
Christ and His Church ; and the love between that
heavenly Bridegroom and His spouse was to be the
pattern of the love on earth between the two partners
in Christian marriage.

§ 104. These Christian * doctrines on the married
and celibate life have created a special position for
women. To say simply that Christianity raised the
position of women, is vague, and may cause a fighting
about words. Rather let us say that due regard was
paid to the physical and mental differences of men and
women, and their proper place assigned to each. They

1 . . . restitutor dignitatis humanae legumque mosaicarum perfector
{Arcanum divina).
^ Matrimonium consummatum baptizatorum.

§ I04.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 147

were to be distinct in dress, the women were to have
their heads veiled in the churches; only men were
admitted to the Christian priesthood, and women were
not to preach, but to be silent and subject. Moreover,
in domestic society the husband was to be the head
and the wife obedient. But then the headship was to
be like that of Christ over His Church : the obedience
like that of the Church to Christ; and the relation
was to be one of honour, not of servility.^ The wife
was to share the goods and honours of her husband,
and if she belonged to him, he also belonged to her.
Una lex est de viris et/amim's. The Christian religion
made no compromise with vice : allowed no middle
state between marriage and chastity : declared the man
who broke this law to be as guilty and as fallen as
the woman. And if the wife was not allowed to put
away her husband or to have several partners at once,
the same rule was inexorably applied to the husband.
This is the Christian equality, not of power and autho-
rity, nor of mutual independence, like that of Classical
Rome, of Burma, and of New England, but the equality
of mutual dependence.^

^ Vir est familise princeps, et caput mulieris ; quae tamen • . . sub-
jiciatur ... in morem non ancillae, sed sociae ; ut scilicet obedientiae
prestitae nee honestas, nee dignitas absit. In eo autem qui praeest, et
in hac quae paret, cum iinaginem uterque referant alter Christi, altera
Ecclesiae, divina caritas esto perpetua moderatrix officii (Arcanum
diviruB).

' Apud nos, quod non licet feminis, aeque non licet viris ; et eadem
servitus pari conditione censetur. S. Hieronymus, Epist, TJ ad
Oceanum de morte Fabiola,

148 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 105.

It followed that in pardon also there was equality.
If the prodigal son could return and receive honour, so
also the daughter ; and among the penitents who have
received the glory of sanctity and worship, the Church
reckons the fallen women, Afra, Pelagia, Mary of
Egypt, Aglae, and Thais (Hettinger, Ibid,, p. 292).

§ 105. Again, though woman was created after man,
from man, and for man, and though she was the
weaker vessel, and in herself, as woman, being passive
and receptive rather than an active principle, was the
image of God in a less peculiar and complete sense
than the man ; nevertheless, she was truly man, truly
possessed human nature, was truly created in the
* image and likeness of God,^ and was able by grace to
rise as high as one of the stronger sex. Nay, in fact,
among all created persons, a woman rose to a far
greater height of sanctity and glory than any man,
and is worshipped as the queen of angels and of men.
The fall of Eve, as the theologians said, was repaired
by Mary ; ^ and women, the sex that was called fair,
gained a nobler prerogative in being called in the very
liturgy of the Church the devout sex. True, the

^ C/,M, J, Scheeben, Handbtuh dtr kcUholischen Dogmatik, Book

III., n. 365-367.

* Veni ergo, Eva, jam Maria, quae nobis non solum virginitatis
incentivum attulit, sed etiam Deum intulit. . . . Non de terra utique, sed
de coelo vas sibi hoc per quod descenderet Christus elegit, et sacravit
templum pudoris . . . Egregia igitur Maria, quae signum sacrae virgi-
nitatis extulit, et intemeratae integritatis pium Christo vexillum erexit.
S. Ambrosius, De ins^i/utiom virginiSf cap. 5.

§ io6.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, 149

normal position of women in the Christian community
has not been to preach the Gospel, and, where need
was, to witness to it with their blood. To these things
they have indeed been called from time to time, like
St. Agnes and the other virgin martyrs whose fame
filled the early Church, or St. Catherine of Siena, the
leader of Pontiffs and people, or St. Theresa, the channel
of divine oracles. But the normal and characteristic
Christian woman appears as a constant type under
varying external circumstances, whether as a religious
or a lay woman, from the cottage to the throne, alike
in the days of Tertullian or of St. Ambrose, among the
Teutonic invaders of the Roman Empire, in the Chris-
tian Middle Ages, in the age of St. Francis of Sales
and S. Vincent of Paul, and among the Christians of
our own day, ever the same, frequenting the churches,
ministering to the necessities of the saints, serving the
poor, tending the sick, visiting the prisons, instructing
the ignorant, training little children, carrying on a
hidden apostleship — ^weak women, but the servants of
One who has chosen the weak things of this world to
confound the strong.

§ 106. Christianity is a religion for all times and
peoples ; and thus, although in certain essentials the
Christian family remains the same, there can be
diversity in accidentals, and much external variety.
The powers of the father over the family property,
and over the persons and earnings of his children,

I50 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY, [§ io6.

the relations of women to property, the powers and
claims of brethren upon each other, rightly vary
according to external circumstances. Hence, if the
civil laws on the family were always founded on
Christian principles, these laws would have to vary
from time to time and place to place. Still greater
variations must be expected in ecclesiastical discipline
in the face of the great variety of laws, customs, sen-
timents, prejudices, superstitions, concerning marriage :
requiring sometimes severity to prevent error and sin,
sometimes relaxation to prevent unnecessary conflicts.
Thus in the rules on prohibited degrees and other
impediments to marriage, and on the ceremonies
needed, the ecclesiastical authorities have gone on
commanding and prohibiting according to the needs
of the time ; ^ and have never legislated on marriage
without regarding the particular laws and manners
of the people, being ready to follow the civil law in
many things, provided only the sacred character of
marriage, and the essential duties of husband and wife,
parents and children, suffered no hindrance.^ On these
points, indeed, the Church has been inflexible. She
has condemned the error that the family is a mere crea-
ture of the State, and that all the mutual duties and

1 . . . de matrimoniis jubere vetare perseveranint quod utile est,
quod expedire temporibus censuissent {Arcanum divina),

^ . . . Ecclesia . . . ad . . . indulgentiam. . . proclivis . . nihil unquam
de matrimonium statuit, quin respectum habuerit ad statum communita-
tis» ad'conditiones populorum ; nee semel suarum ipsa legum prgescripta,
quoad potuit, mitigavit (Ibid),

§ lo;.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 151

rights of its members are derived from the civil law.^
And she has fought against a number of civil laws
from her earliest existence to this day : marriages
that the Romans approved, she declared adulterous ;
marriages they forbade, those, namely^ between a
free-born woman and another's slave, she recognised ;
marriages they held null, as those between slaves or
between a senator and a freed-woman, she approved.^
She would not tolerate compulsory marriage or com-
pulsory celibacy ; she has not allowed that excess of
parental power that prevents indefinitely the marriage
of sons and daughters ; on the other hand, she will
not suffer parents to be stripped of the right of edu-
cating their children ; nor has she ceased to wage war
against concubinage and divorce. And in our own
day the Christians must again repeat the formula of
St. Jerome : *'Aliae sunt leges Caesarum, aliae Christi :
aliud Papinianus, aliud Paulus noster praecipit " (Ep. ^^
ad Oceanum de morte Fabiolce),

§ 107. But in many other matters there cannot be
said to be a definite Christian rule. Take, for ex-
ample, the laws of women's property. There is a
great variety of usage; and the Church not merely
tolerates different laws, but regards them as creating
obligations in conscience. Dowries, trousseaux, bride-

^ Encycl. Quanta cura of Pius IX. and Syllabus errorum. See
Hergenrother, Catholic Church and Christian State,, English trans., I.
pp. 233-237.

' See Paul AUard, Les esclaves chrStiens, liv. ii. ch. iii.

152 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 107.

money, marriage-money, dowers, and separate goods,
can hardly, without further explanation, be put down
as Christian or un-Christian. But still there are
some things of precept and some of counsel. The
husband is bound by the law of the Church, whatever
the law of the land may be, to support his wife pro-
perly, that is, not with mere aliments, but with enough
to be able to make presents, to give alms, to live
according to her station, and to do whatever would
excite attention if. she omitted to do it.^ And this
claim of the wife does not end with the death of
the husband, but his property is liable to it, if she is
not otherwise provided for. So the Church engrafted
the practice of dower on the Customary Law of all
Western Europe.^ Again, laws or agreements like
those of ancient Egypt, by which the husband ceases
to be the head of the house, and becomes a mere
pensioner of the wife, without the control or adminis-
tration of those goods that serve for the household ex-
penses and for educating the children, are opposed to
the nature of Christian marriage.^ Nay, further, the
habitual possession by married women of much pro-
perty, wholly independent of the husband, is opposed
to the permanent nature and intimate character of the
union of Christians ; is quite unnecessary for the pro-
tection against cruel, spendthrift, or profligate men ;

^ Lehmkuhl, Theologia moralis^ I. n. 895.
^ Maine, Ancient Law, third edit., p. 224.
• Costa Rossetti, Institutionts Ethica et juris Natura^ 1884, p. 428.

§ io8.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 153

(for this can be done by settlements, rights of dower,
and homestead laws that require the wife's consent
for certain alienations and mortgages;) and implies
an anticipation of separation. Whereas the ideal ot
Christian marriage is to hold all goods in common.^
No wonder, then, the Canon Law differed widely in
this matter from the later Roman Law, which was
adapted for divorce and favoured separation of
goods.

§ 108. The same distinction between what is
essential and what is accidental, what variable and
what immutable, must be made in regard to the
general position of Christian women. Her true dignity
is secured by her marriage being made holy, single,
and indissoluble ; and also by her liberty to choose
a life of celibacy or of marriage. This liberty the
Church has maintained for women no less than for
men, and has refused to make the validity of marriage
or the obligation of religious vows dependent on the
consent even of the parents. As I have already said,
her teaching has created a peculiar type of woman-

^ . . . illuc quoque pertinent [matrimonia], ut meliorem vitam con-
jugum beatioremque efiiciant ; idque pluribus caussis, nempe mutuo ad
necessitates sublevandas adjumento, amore constanti et fideli, com-
munione omnium bonorum, gratia cselesti, quae a sacramento pro-
ficiscitur (Arcanum divina),

I think Sir H. Maine would hardly now write as he has done in
Ancient Lanvy third ed., pp. 158, 159, that the expositors of the Canon
Law ** deeply injured civilisation " by keeping up the " proprietary dis-
abilities of married females."

154 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ io8.

hood (supra, § 105). But this does not exclude great
variety in externals, notably in literary education and
industrial employment. But althdugh the Christian
Church pays a wise deference in these non-essentials,
where sentiment is so powerful, to the sentiments of
particular times and places, and contents herself with
proclaiming the essential doctrines that secure the
dignity and equality of women ; still, I think, it can
be laid down that no work and no study for which
women are not unfit physiologically, is discouraged by
the Church, provided always that the two rules are
observed, that there be nought contrary to Christian
modesty or to the order and discipline of the Christian
family. Fof example, the work of women under-
ground in mines and the employment of young men
and girls mixed together in factories, are offences
against the one rule ; while the employment of
mothers day after day and all day away from their
home, offends against the other rule, which also would
be violated were it usual for married women to take
a more public part than their husbands in political
affairs. But neither rule is violated by women
undertaking rough op^n-air farm-work,^ or again by

^ See the interesting description given in TAe Tablet^ 4th March
1882, of the farm of 300 acres at Dam^tal, near Rouen, and being one
branch of a reformatory for girls. Two men are employed to look
after the horses (there are twenty-five of them) at night. Everything
else, including ploughing, carting, and roadmaking is done, and done
well, by the girls under the direction of nuns. There is nothing
unfeminine in their dress or manners ; they wear short stout petticoats,
woollen stockings, strong shoes, and large straw hats while working

§ I09.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 155

their reaching the highest excellence iii literature,
science, and art.

§ 109. When, therefore, we meet the phrase eman-
cipation of women, it is well to inquire its meaning.
If it means assimilation of the two sexes in all things,
we can say it is folly and mischief; since their posi-
tion and occupation in every society must be widely
different, and ought to be : must be, because of the
mental and bodily peculiarities of women ; and ought
to be, because of Christian modesty and the sub-
ordination of women in the Christian family. But if
emancipation of women means freeing them from
unjust scorn and disabilities, from being thought
inferior beings, vicious and incompetent for high
things, but admirably fitted by Providence or nature
to minister to man's sensual enjoyment, to bear him
children, to rear them for him during the troublesome
age of childhood, to nurse him in sickness, to manage
the cooking and scrubbing, on the whole, a most use-
out of doors, and a difTerent dress on Sundays. They are all attached
to the home, and the excellence of their work is attested by the medals
of the Society of Agriculture and by the farm paying extremely well.
The girls at the age of eighteen are sent to situations, and are much in
demand as gardeners, dairy women, and farm managers. Mark that
town-bred girls are sent to other departments of the reformatory, and
not to the farm, which is for country-bred girls. And this is no isolated
case ; for there are many other feminine agricultural colonies in France,
that flourish under the superintendence of nuns. What is injurious to
women is not hard muscular work, but continuous work like pressing
the pedal of a sewing-machine for hours, or standing for hours behind
a counter.

156 THE .CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 109.

ful possession ; we can say that emancipation in this
sense is excellent, but old. For women were emanci-
pated centuries ago by Christianity.^ The essential
doctrines I have already sufficiently explained ; and
here need only be added how there arose, as a natu-
ral consequence, the intellectual cultivation of women.
Ozanam, in a beautiful chapter on Christian women,
has described this feature of the new religion.
'* Christianity had scarcely appeared when already the
exampte of Christ instructing the Samaritan woman,
was imitated. St. John wrote to Electa, and all the
Fathers of the Church wrote for women. TertuUian
composed the two books Ad uxorem suam, the treatise
De cultu foeminarum, and the treatise De velandis
virginibus. His proud and untamed genius bowed
down before these handmaidens of Christ, and he
declared himself the lowest and humblest of their
brethren. St. Cyprian used the same language in his
book, De habitu vtrgmum. St. Ambrose composed
three works on virginity, and speaking to the virgins
who might read him, said : " If you find any flowers
here, they are those of your virtues ; and the per-
fumes, they are all from you" (A. F. Ozanam, La
civilisation au cinquieme sieck, ii. p. 95, 96. Second edit.,

^ Those who cling to the notion that what has raised women has
been the "progress of civilisation," die hohere Kuliur (Roscher,
NationalokonomUy § 250), should compare the women of Demosthenes
or Seneca with those of Homer or of regal Rome ; and the wealth,
power, art, literature and science of late gyneocratic Egypt, with these
things in early Egypt.

§ no.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. is?

1862). He notices the honour paid by St. Augustine
to the philosophy of his mother ; and how St. Jerome
was surrounded by Christian matrons full of eagerness
for learning, who formed at Jerusalem a sort of school
of theology and languages, and at whose pressing
requests he undertook the gigantic work of translat-
ing the Hebrew Scriptures (Ibid., p. 96-101). How
serious was the training this same St. Jerome thought
fit for women, can be seen from his letters to Laeta
and Gaudentius on the education of their daughters.^

§ no. And what was done in the fifth century has
been repeated again and again, whenever external
conditions have allowed it, and can be seen to this
day.^ The Church, the perpetual champion of learn-
ing and reasoning, has no wish to keep half her children

^ Epist. 107, ad Ldtam^ de instUutione filuBy Ep. 128, ad Gaudentium^
de Pacatula infantuke educatione (ed. Migne).

' An interesting article on these matters is to be found in The
Catholic World (New York), June 1875, vol 21, p. 324 seq, A woman,
St. Catherine of Alexandria, was the patroness of learning and elo-
quence ; her statue was in the old universities and schools. The papal
university of Bologna can show the names of many women illustrious
in canon law, medicine, mathematics, art, and literature. And not
merely were they learners, taking their degrees, as late as the eighteenth
century, in jurisprudence and philosophy, but teachers also. Anna
Mazolina in the year 1758 was professor of anatomy, Maria Agnesi was
appointed by the Pope professor of mathematics, Novella d* Andrea
taught canon law for ten years, and a woman succeeded Cardinal
Mezzofanti as professor of Greek. Remember, among painters. Sister
Plautilla a Dominican, Marietta Tintoretto, and Elizabeth Sirani ; and
that a woman, Plautilla Brizio, was an architect at Rome in the seven-
teenth century, building a palace and the chapel of St. Benedict.

158 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ in.

from study and science ; and it is not from her friends
that has come the unseemly ridicule cast on learned
women, but from her foes. In France the prejudice
against the intellectual labour of women was " one of
the most evil inventions of the eighteenth century,
that century of impiety and licentiousness. ... It
was useful to all those husbands without virtue to
have wives without worth. . . . For a man has to
give some account of himself to a woman who is
cultivated ; . . . and so, for those vicious husbands, the
desideratum was an ignorant wife, . . . not an incon-
venient judge, a living conscience, an ever-present
reproach." ^ The view that there are only two proper
female parts, the coquette and the drudge, is wholly
anti-Christian ; and the Church, as if to mark her own
view with the greater solemnity, has raised on her
altars age after age, and still raises, women for our
worship, saints like Catherine of Alexandria, Paula,
Marcella, Lioba, Bridgett, Gertrude, Hildegarde,
Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Bologna, Theresa, the
venerable founders, like Madame Barat, of new orders
of religious women, and many other glorious names
who have combined learning and literature with their
sanctity.^

§ 1 1 1. The relation of parents and children, although

^ Bishop Dupanloup, Femtnes scevantes et fimmes studieuses, sixth
edit., 1868, pp. 21, 22.

' Ibid., pp. 10-14, cf. Hettinger, Apologic des Christcnthums^ II. iii.
pp. 292, 293.

§111.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 159

not so liable as the relation of husband and wife to be
distorted by passion, still needed to be restored and
raised ; and Christianity, as the reasonable religion,
has had to contend against the excess of paternal
authority on the one side, and its deficiency on the
other. The child is not to be held a mere product
of generation and the property of its parents ; for
Christian doctrine declares that the whole nature of
man cannot be transmitted simply by the act of genera-
tion. But those also are equally to be condemned
who, in their zeal for the dignity and independence
of each individual soul, teach that this soul is created
independently and even previously to the material
generation. For if the first error contradicts the
truth that the human soul is a purely spiritual
substance and the image of God, the second error
contradicts the unity both of the individual man and
of the human race, and gives us two natures instead
of one. Whereas the truth is this, that every human
soul is not begotten by parents, but is altogether
created by God ; yet not created apart from the body
either in time or in idea, but created for the body
and in the body, so that by one indivisible act the
soul is created, the body is informed with this soul,
and a human nature is constituted. This doctrine of
the origin of the soul is of great importance for the
Christian view of moral responsibility, original sin,
and redemption, and also, what is to the present
purpose, for rightly understanding the nature and

i6o THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§112.

limits of paternal power. That man, unlike all other
living organisms, cannot of himself, without the
special intervention of God, bring forth one of his own
kind, may seem an imperfection ; but it is an imper-
fection of greatness ; for man is a personal being, and
the entire fatherhood of such a being cannot by any
possibility belong to a being that is itself created.
And the imperfection, such as it is, is richly com-
pensated by the earthly father being raised by God
to be His fellow-worker and representative. Paternal
power, or rather parental — for the mother is glorified in
this co-operation no less than the father — thus assumes
a sacred character such as is possessed by no other
human power; and each child becomes a holy pledge,
intrusted by God to the parents' care.^

^112. The distinction between what is accidental
and essential to the Christian family has already been
drawn (§ 106) : the particular circumstances, for ex-
ample, of England or Russia may lay particular duties
on fathers or sons; but there are some duties that
spring from the nature of the parental relation, and are
the same in every country and every century. Now
these last and essential duties are briefly as follows.
Parents are bound to provide for the life and health of
their children, till these can provide for themselves ;
and even then, if the children fall into want, and

^ I have followed M. J. Scheeben, Handbuch dcr kathol. Dogmatik^
§ 151 (Book III. n, 446 seq,)

§112.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, i6i

through their own fault, still the parents must give
them at least aliments till they can support themselves.
They are also bound to give each child the means, in
particular the technical training, needful for his getting
an honest living according to his station ; similarly to
provide a daughter with the means needful for her
forming an honest marriage or for entering the religious
life. But to heap up riches for them beyond this, there
is indeed no obligation.^ Parents, moreover, are bound
to the utmost care for the spiritual welfare of their
children, ever giving them a good example, teaching
them the truths of religion, rooting out their faults,
guarding them from evil associates, taking care, if they
are taught outside the paternal home, that the teaching
and the teachers be Christian ; in a word, they must
see that their children grow up and live as good
Christians, mindful that they are themselves the minis-
ters of Christ,^ and must guard inviolate the sacred
pledge, the image of God, with which they have been
intrusted. Nor can any civil law absolve them from

^ Lehmkuhl, Theologia Moralis^ 1 883, I. n. 785.

' Their functions in this ministry have been set forth by St. Augus-
tine, Tract 51 in Joan, ^ «. 13 : Cum ergo auditis, minister meus erit,
nolite tantummodo bonos episcopos et clericos cogitare. Etiam vos
pro modo vestro ministrate Christo, bene vivendo, eleemosynas faci-
endo, nomen doctrinamque ejus quibus potueritis prgedicando ; ut
unusquisque etiam paterfamilias hoc nomine agnoscat paternum affec-
tum suae familise se debere. Pro Christo et pro vita seierna suos omnes
admoneat, doceat, hortetur, corripiat, impendat benevolentiam, exer-
ceat disciplinam : ita in domo sua ecclesiasticum et quodammodo
episcopale implebit officium, ministrans Christo, ut in seiernum sit cum
ipso.

L

i62 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY, [§ 113.

any of these essential sacred duties ; and whatever
rights they need to fulfil this their office, such rights
no civil law can take away.

§ 113. Children of every time and every place owe
their parents, their mother as well as their father, the
triple duty of honour, affection, and obedience. The
honour and affection must never fail : though the son
be ever so exalted, the parents ever so lowly, ever so
decrepit or ignorant, he must treat them with respect
as his superiors ; and neither time, nor distance, nor
misconduct of the parents can cancel the duty of the
children to help them in their necessities. The duty
of obedience, on the other hand, is less absolute and
lasting. For, its main reason being the training of the
child and the order of the household, it comes to an
end in great part when the child has become a man
and has quitted the paternal home. As long indeed
as he remains he must obey in matters of domestic
order ; and at all times he must think of their wishes
(for this is part of the perpetual duty of respect),
though in some cases he need not or must not follow
them. For the Christian religion, in spite of, nay
rather as a part of, its glorification of the parental
office, puts limits to parental power. The very dignity
of the child — with his likeness to God and his super-
natural destiny — which makes the dignity of paternity
and maternity, sets the child free from absolute depen-
dence. And whereas he belongs to the State only

§114.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 163

indirectly, that is, through his parents, he is imme-
diately and directly a member of the Christian Church.
When he is old enough to know the difference, he
must do right and refrain from wrong ; and though
obedience is the rule for him, there may be exceptional
cases where if he is to obey God he must disobey his
parents. And when old enough to choose a state of
life, if he is called to a religious life, he must go. Even
those in the world, although they are bound to consult
their parents in regard to marriage, and to obey them
in all that is reasonable, are not bound to marry
whomsoever their parents may choose, or refrain from
taking as husband or wife one whom they love and
against whom the parents can bring no just objection.^
But though obedience to parents is thus limited, remem-
ber that the other two duties of honour and aflfection
remain, and remain even when the parents are dead.
For the Christian child will honour their obsequies,
their tombs, their memory, their last wishes, and will
show his affection by diligent care that fitting and
reiterated prayers and sacrifices be made to God for
their welfare.^

§ 114. The Christian principles on the relations of
parents and children leave much to be more exactly

^ Lehmkuhl, Ic. «. 790-795.

* Postremo vel mortuis parentibus honor tribuitur si iis funus faci-
mus ; si exequias cohonestamus ; si honorem sepulturse iinpertimus ;
si justa et sacrificia anniversaria curamus ; si, quae ab iis legata sunt,
diligenter persolvimus. Catechismus Romanus^ iii, 5, 12.

1 64 THE CHRISTIA N FA MIL Y. [§115.

settled by the civil power, and allow a wide margin
for different laws and customs suiting the mental or
bodily peculiarities of any race, the economical or
political constitution of any country. There are
limits, indeed, as I have already observed (supra,
§ 106) ; the powers, for example, of the Chinese
father over the marriage of his sons and daughters,
and the deprivation now suffered by French parents
of powers over the education of their children, are
both anti-Christian. So too would be communistic
equalisation of inheritances, or the absence of inheri-
tance, each individual being provided for by the State,
and not by his parents. Other laws and institutions,
though bad in principle or in their results, are less
unendurable, though they could scarcely survive in a
Christian State. Such, for example, are the English
Poor Laws that have worked such havoc with filial
piety among our poor; and the French Law of
Succession, with its compulsory partition, rendering a
permanent home and a united family very difficult, and
fostering disputes among relatives."^ This French and
that English law are alike in both having had their
origin in a great revolt against the Christian Church.

§ 115. A third class of laws and institutions are
fully tolerated, and cannot be said to be against the

^ Thus in the year 1868 the number of judicial decisions in France
on suits regarding successions nearly equalled those on all other civil
suits, being 21,317, and all the others only 24,899 (Le Play, La Riforme
SociaUf chap. 20, § 7, fifth edit.)

§ 1 1 5.] CHRISTIA N DOCTRINE. 1 65

Christian principles of the family, but only to fall
short of the highest standard. Thus the absolute
power of the father in England and in some American
States to give his entire property to strangers, and
leave his children in beggary without even giving a
reason for it, though perhaps in practice productive
of little harm, still allows a very startling divergence
between a man's legal and moral obligations in dealing
with property. On the other hand, laws that restrict
very narrowly the powers of testation may, under
certain circumstances, like those of modern France,
unduly weaken the father's authority, and always
unduly restrict pious foundations, the proper support
of Christian worship, and the proper service of the
poor. Whereas the legacies we meet, for example, in
mediaeval Italy, to defray the outfit of one or more
crusaders, to give dowries to so many poor girls, to
construct or repair bridges and harbours (Cibrario,
Economia politica del medio evo^ II. pp. 2, 93, 262, fifth
edit), are quite in a Christian spirit ; and the Church
may be said to have favoured the right, but not the
arbitrary right, of testation."^ Finally, there are

* Of modem laws of succession perhaps the most reasonable and
suitable to the times are those recently enacted for different parts of
Germany, notably for the province of Hanover in 1874 and of West-
phalia in 1882. According to the Hanoverian Law the yeoman's home-
stead {Bauerhof)f including easements and live and dead stock, besides
land and house, if registered and rated at not less than seventy-five
marks (;^3, 14s.), can be bequeathed by the father to any one of his
children ; and this heir (Atterbe) succeeds to the whole registered pro-
perty, and has to pay to his brothers and sisters only a very moderate

i66 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ ii6.

many laws and institutions that in the abstract are
indifferent ; for example, the rules to secure the authen-
ticity and validity of testaments, the age fixed for
reaching majority, the liability for debts contracted
when you were a minor, the capacity of children to
acquire property or conduct business separate from
their father. It is for the civil law to determine
these matters, and when determined they give rise
to obligations in conscience, since we are taught
obedience by the Church to every just law of the
State.

§ 1 1 6. Brothers and sisters are bound by the
Christian law to love and help one another. One of
the family cannot take his portion and wash his hands
of the rest, saying they are bound to him only, like
every one else, by the common tie of Christian

portion, and this in money, and not necessarily paid (if the father so
appoint) till they are of age. These portions (legitims) are reckoned as
follows : — The whole property, after deducting debts and charges, is
valued at twenty times the average annual revenue — as we should say,
at twenty years* purchase. The sum obtained is then divided into
thirds ; one goes entirely to the heir, the other two are divided equally
among all the children, the heir included. If there is no will, the
eldest son is the heir of a registered Bauerhof. Mark the importance
of the low rate at which the revenue is capitalised, to the gain of the
heir. If it was reckoned at over thirty years' purchase, as in England,
he would have to pay his brothers and sisters much more. See Claudio
Jannet in La Riforme Sociale, I Juil 1883 ; Roscher cited by R. Meyer,
Hdmstdttenund andereWirthschaftsgesetzey pp. 351-356. The common
law of Germany (derived from Rome) fixes legitims at one-third of the
property to be divided equally among all the children, or one-half if
the children are more than four. All the children succeed equally in
case of intestacy.

§ ii6.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, 167

charity. For there is the special virtue of dutifulness
(pietas) which he must practise towards them : ^ it
may fall on him to help the education of his younger
brethren, to give dowries to his sisters, to give help
to apy brother or sister who has fallen into distress.
This does not indeed imply the necessity of joint
families, a joint family being where more than one
married couple live together in one household. You
cani be friendly and helpful to your parents and
brethren, though you live with your own wife and
family in a separate house. Still the initial stage of
the joint family, where at least one married son or
daughter lives with the parents, is more congruous
to the Christian ideal of parental and fraternal rela-
tions, than where marriage habitually means separation.
We may therefore expect to find this kind of joint
family among Christian populations. How it was
still common in France, even among the rich, before
the First Revolution, is known from the passage in
Arthur Young's travels where he expresses his sur-
prise and admiration at finding families habitually
dwelling together in one house.^ Exactly the same
feature excites the attention of the American tra-
veller in modern Mexico,^ of the English consul in
the Balearic Islands,* and of an English lady settled

* Lehmkuhl, Tkeologia moralis, I. «. 794, 890.

^ His testimony is cited and the contrary practice of England noticed
by Le Play, La Riforme Sociale, chap. 30, § 8.
' A. S. Evans, Our Sister Republic, p. 369.

* C. T. Bidwell, Balearic Islands, pp. 9-10.

i68 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 117.

among the peasantry of Central Italy.^ Whereas in
England, although we read, we do not follow the
counsels of the Psalmist : Ecce quant bonum et quam
jucundunty habitare fratres in unum (Ps. cxxxii. i).
And the custom that has long prevailed among our
land-owners, that on the death of the head of a house
the son and heir, with his wife, who have hitherto
lived apart from the parents, come in, and the
widowed mother has her place taken, and goes away
from the house that she has long ruled : is scarcely
to be reconciled with the Christian teaching of what
is due to a widow and a mother.^

§ 117. On the other hand, we must not think there
is anything peculiarly favourable to the Christian ideal
in the later stage of the joint family. This is where
the several united families are no longer under the
direction of a common ancestor, but under an elected
head. Such families are common in China and India,
and in the middle of this century were common in

^ Country Life in Italy ^ in The Cornhill Magazine^ November 188 1,
pp. 687, 688.

^ Even Le Play, who in general has a great admiration for all that
is ** Anglo-Saxon," has only blame for this practice {I.e.) It is no
characteristic of our race, for, as Claudio Jannet has pointed out, in the
Middle Ages the widowed mother remained mistress of the home, as
she still is in France, Italy, and Spain, among those families who have
kept to the old traditions ; and he refers to the fifteen volumes •of wills
published by the Surtee and Camden Societies, La RSfornie Sociale^
(not Le Play's work of that name, but a magazine by his followers),
1st July 1883, p. 73. Moreover, much of North America has reverted,
as we shall see directly, to the practice of mediaeval Catholic times.

§ 117.] CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 169

Russia and among the Sclavonians of the South of
Austria. Now I think that under the circumstances
both of the Northern and Southern Sclavonians these
joint families were of immense benefit to them, being
a security against poverty and against oppression —
f union /att la forces a. school for self-government and
association, promoting hospitality and wholesome re-
creation, protecting the weak and keeping the idle
and worthless under control. It has fared ill with the
domestic life of those people since the general break
up of the joint families that began among the Russians
in the seventh, and among the South Sclavonians in
the eighth, decade of this century ; ^ and if the only
alternative was the family law of England or of
France, I should say that a peasantry could fulfil the
duties of the Christian family better when joined in
great households. But there are other alternatives,
that neither dissipate the inheritance and break up
family ties and mutual responsibility of brethren, nor

^ On Russia, see D. M. Wallace, Russia, chap. vi. and chap, xxxii. ;
E. de Laveleye, Primitive Property, pp. 18, 19 (English translation) ;
On South Sclavonia, A. J. Evans, Through Bosnia and Herzegovina, pp.
45-60; A. J. Patterson, in The Fortnightly Review, 1872, New Series,
vol. xi. : Rudolf Meyer, Heimstaetten und andere Wirthschaftsgesetze,
Berlin, 1883, pp. 139-146. Mr. Wallace*s testimony to the evils of
the change is all the more unimpeachable as he shows a dislike to
joint families, imagining, as a true (modern) Briton, that they involve
the pleasant alternative of perpetual squabbling or domestic tyranny !
(i. p. 142). The impoverishment of the Croatian peasantry and the
gain of pettifogging lawyers, by the break up of the " Zadrugas " (joint
families), since 1874, is well described by the special correspondent,
"Among the Southern Slavs," in The Times ^ 19th August 1884.

I70 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ ii8.

on the other hand, like the extended joint family,
lessen the peculiar responsibility of parents for their
own children, the peculiar care of children for their
own parents, and the liberty of marriage.

§ Ii8. Take, for example, the admirable body of
legislation known as the Homestead Exemption Laws
of North America. The States are many, and the
laws are seldom exactly the same in any two of them ;
but I think the following general statements can be
made. In the great bulk of the States a genuine
farmer's homestead is privileged "property, sometimes
ipso facto, sometimes if he register it. The home and
the farm, with household utensils, stock and land
enough to live and farm decently, are exempt from
seizure for almost any kind of debt, the main excep-
tions being taxes and arrears of purchase money.
The owner of the homestead can alienate it, but in
most States he must first get his wife's consent, and
in many this consent must be given apart from her
husband. Mortgaging is still more restricted, and in
Texas and Louisiana is forbidden even though the
wife give her consent. Moreover, if the homestead is
sold, the purchase money, or a part of it, is generally
exempt from seizure for a year, and a fresh homestead
can be acquired with it in the interval. Nor is the
family to be scattered at the death of the head. On
the contrary, the widow has the right to dwell in the
homestead all her life, and the children have a right

§ 119.] CHRISTIAN PRACTICE. 171

to dwell there undisturbed till the youngest of them is
twenty-one years old. The homestead therefore forms
no part of the assets of the deceased that the adminis-
trator deals with to discharge his liabilities : it is not
liable for his debts. And by some means which I do
not fully understand, the law will not allow you by
your last will and testament to deprive your widow
and children of this sacred reserve.^ It is not difficult
to see how such legislation, whatever the motives that
produced it, is in complete accord with the Christian
teaching on family duties.

II. Christian Practice.

§ II 9. But perhaps it may be objected, what is the
use of a teaching that is not followed, of an ideal that
cannot be attained ; that if the foregoing sketch of
Christian doctrine be correct, the family life proposed
may (or may not) be a fine fancy, but certainly in fact
has proved a failure ; and that Christianity by med-

^ I have followed the instructive collection of laws published at
Berlin in 1883 by Dr. Rudolf Meyer, entitled Heimstaetten und andere
IVirthschaftsgesetze. The chief and best part is the collection of various
American laws. The Homestead Exemption Laws began in Texas in
1839, and by 1882 had spread to forty-one out of forty-five States and
Territories of the Union, and to British Columbia and Manitoba. A
far-reaching Homestead Exemption Law has been in force in Servia
since 1874 {Ibid, pp. 260-276). And so, unlike the rest of South-
Eastern Europe, Servia is not agitated by a Jewish Question (Academy ^
loth May 1884, reviewing E. de Borchgrave, La Serbie),

172 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 120.

dling too much with morals has made matters worse.
We shall have to listen perhaps to the proverb,
Naturam expellas furca^ tamen usque recurret; and to
its illustration from the history of Christian scandals,
from the courts of Byzantine or Merovingian princes,
the manners of the troubadours, the tales of Boccaccio
and Chaucer, the age of the Medici, down to the mis-
deeds of the continental cities or South American
youth of the present day. This is the practice, we
may be told, that comes from all that preaching.

Now this objection is founded, partly on facts whose
significance is misapprehended, partly on ignorance of
facts. It is quite true, from the time of the Corinthian
converts of St. Paul down to our own day, there has
been a great divergence between what has been taught by
the Church and what has been practised by Christians.
This applies to all departments of morals ; and if we
supposed all Christian children to be dutiful and parents
exemplary, all husbands and wives faithful and friendly
to each other, no discord between brethren, we should
be greatly mistaken. But then we have no business to
make any such supposition. We may, if we have the
mind, take up the position that the Christian Church
is mistaken and mischievous, and try and support that
position. But we are unreasonable if we blame her for
not doing what she does not profess to do.

§ 1 20. Now she teaches us that nature, though not
evil in itself, is weak and fallen, and thus, on the whole.

§ I20.] CHRISTIAN PRACTICE. 173

in conflict with grace. She teaches us that the life of
the Christian must be a constant warfare against the
world, the flesh, and the devil ; that being a Christian
does not remove the perpetual tendency to lapse into
sin, but only supplies means not to fall, and possi-
bilities of rising again. But the Christian may reject
the means of safety or recovery. For " faith is illu-
minative, not operative ; it does not force obedience,
though it increases responsibility." And thus, on the
one hand, the bad Christian is worse than any non-
Christian, corruptio optimi pessima ; and, on the other
hand, the Church cannot protect herself from the
intrusion of the vicious and weak. She is there for
them ; each of their individual souls is to her of price-
less worth ; and though they disgrace her during life,
she is satisfied if they can be hers in reality as well as
name at the hour of their death. For, quite in con-
trast to the world, her primary interest is not how
men live, but how they die. And again, quite in
contrast to the world, she holds that riches are prima
facie an incentive to vice, and poverty prima facie a
state favourable to virtue ; whereas the world, having
quite another standard of vice and virtue (reducing
them to what is disreputable or respectable), agrees
rather with .the northern farmer :

" Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', Sammy, I'm blest
If it isn't the saame oop yonder, fur them as 'as it's the best ; "

and with the converse truth :

** Taake my word for it, Sammy, the poor in a loomp is bad."

174 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 121.

But from the Christian principles ^ there ought to
be nothing to surprise us in the existence of much
immorality among Christian populations, and of occa-
sional instances of extreme depravity. And, further,
just as among the trading classes, busy in making
money, we must expect habitual rebellion against the
Christian teachings on fair dealing ; so among the
rich and powerful we must expect habitual rebellion
against the Christian teachings on chastity : a per-
fumed, indolent, and gilded youth will assuredly kick
against the yoke.

§ 121. But the objection I have named is also
founded on ignorance of facts. The Christian ideal of
family life is not impossible, but is reached by many.
Even for those who fall short, it is a great thing to
have a noble ideal that is ever inviting them to a
reform ; and it is better that there should be scandals
than that morality should be so lax that scarce any-
thing is scandalous. And in spite of scandals we say
that the burden laid on us is not heavy, inasmuch as
grace makes it light, and that the examples of the
practice of Christian life, both celibate and married, are
abundant and consoling. For, besides the type of
devout Christian lay-woman already spoken of (supra,
§ 105), and seen in every century, besides the crowd

1 In speaking of which I have followed Cardinal Newman's lectures
viii. and ix. on the social and religious state of Catholic countries in his
Difficulties FeU by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, fourth edition.

§ 122.] CHRISTIAN PRACTICE. 175

of men and women who follow the religious life, and
who are ever being persecuted by the world, that finds
in their virtues an unpleasant commentary on itself,
we see the Christian Church ever striving to produce,
and often successfully, the observance of Christian
family life among the poor. Who, for example, has
not heard of Ireland, and how there a vast popu-
lation, sufiering the extremities of economical and
political oppression, without literary or artistic cul-
tivation, the externals of their religion and all its
accidental dignity and attractiveness reduced to
a minimum by persecution, still in virtue of that
religion, and by docility to its teaching, amid their
hovels that were not fit for cattle, how they showed
a shining example of Christian family life, sins of the
flesh being scarce known among them, and reverence
for parents and dutiful care for their brethren being
universal. Nor were these virtues the product of the
race or the land, but of the religion. For the same
land had been once a scandal in Christendom for its
licentiousness : the same race, when transplanted
among the After-Christian populations of English and
American cities, frequently loses in a single generation
the characteristics of chastity and dutifulness. These
are no peculiar gifts of Kelt, any more than of Teuton
or Slav, Greek or Latin ; they are gifts of religion.

§ 122. Take again another country, and one not in
high repute, a land of mixed races and revolutions.

176 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY, [§ 122.

where, if family life is good, the goodness can scarce
in reason be ascribed to anything but the religion, and
hear what an After-Christian traveller, without know-
ledge or love of the Christian religion, found after
the land had passed through about forty years of
anarchy. The American Colonel A. S. Evans speaks
as follows of Mexican family life as seen in the years
1869 and 1870 (Our Sister Republic, chap, xvi.) — "As a
rule the influence and control of parents over their
children never fully ceases save with death, and after
death their memory is cherished, it seems to me, with
more fondness than elsewhere in the world. . . . The
children in Mexico strike you with surprise and
admiration. You see no idle, vicious, saucy boys
running around on the streets, annoying decent people
by their vile language and rude behaviour. All the
boys you see have earnest faces, and walk with a
sedate and grave demeanour like grown-up men. I
never saw a badly behaved child in Mexico. In the
family circle the people are models for the world.
The young always treat the old with the deepest
respect, and the affection displayed by parents for
their children and children for their parents is most
admirable. The daughter of a good family in Mexico,
though grown to womanhood, will kiss the hand of
her father when she meets him on the street, and
always kisses her parents, brothers, and sisters at
morning and evening, and many times during the day,
with great warmth and earnestness. When the

§ 123.] CHRISTIAN PRACTICE. 177

children marry, they usually remain under the
parental roof as long as the parents live, and the
parents control the house." ^

§ 123. But the American traveller was wrong in
one point, in thinking that Mexico was a solitary and
marvellous example ; for the same causes had produced
among many other lands and races the same effects.
Let any one look through the collection of monographs
now published in an accessible form under the title,
Les ouvriers eurppeens^ by F. Le Play, second edition,
Paris 1878. An elaborate description is given with
all the needful details of some sixty typical families of
the working classes from one extremity of Europe to
the other, as they appeared about the middle of this
century. Now the reader will find not a few examples
of populations where the Christian religion is practised
in its integrity ; and in all these examples he will find
the Christian family flourishing, as in Ireland and
Mexico, with its two great characteristics of chastity
and dutifulness. Look at the Hungarian peasant
family on the plains of the Theiss observed by Le
Play in the year 1846 (vol. ii. chap. 7) — solid
piety, religious education of children, purity of morals,
not an illegitimate child in the commune, affection
and care bestowed on children, respect for women
and the aged, early but not premature marriages,

^ The same testimony is given in the last chapter of Mexicans at Home^
by a resident, London 1884.

M

178 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 123.

profound reverence by children all their life to
their parents.^ Look, again, at the German iron-
smelter's family at Hundsrucke, near Coblentz, observed
by Le Play in 1851 (vol. iv. chap. 2). Look at the
Basque families of peasants or fishermen as they were
to be seen in 1856 at St. Sebastian in Spain, or at
Lavedan and Labourd in France (vol. iv. chap. 6 and
9, vol. v. chap. 5). Look at that amiable Proven9al
family described by M. Focillon in 1859, and typical
of a whole class, half peasants in their native village,

^ There was also great prosperity and security among the rural popu-
lation, protected by a feudal constitution. The land was mostly held on
a tenure of service (tilling the lord's land) ; the peasant's holding was
not divisible beyond a certain limit ; the second son generally was the
heir, the eldest son joining the army ; and no mortgaging was possible.
By the changes that followed the troubles of 1848, completed after i866,
the peasants were left defenceless, and a swarm of Jewish usurers
descended on them, and have filled the land with desolation and woe.
The appalling official returns are given by R. Meyer, Heirtistdttengesetze^
p. 7 :—

Rural Population of Hungary in 1870. x88o.

Landowners .... 1,631,071 1,133,086

Farmers 46,317 22,236

Officials 14,860 10,923

Farm servants hired by the year 1,332,080 518,814

Day labourers . . . . I>3i4»293 783,748

. 4,338,621 2,468,807

Thus in ten years over five hundred thousand farmers and over thirteen
hundred thousand farm labourers were swept away. In- the single year
1878 the compulsory public sales of lands numbered 15,285, and the
proceeds of these sales fell short by over eight million florins of the
debts they were meant to cover. Besides these sales of landed pro-
perties, there were 157,5^9 others; and the fresh mortgages were so
much in excess of the old ones paid ofiF that the total indebtedness of
the land increased in that one year by over fifty million florins.

§ 124.] CHRISTIAN PRACTICE. , 179

half workers in the soap- factories of Marseilles, and
whom the iniquities of French legislation, and the
temptations of a great city, had not been able to turn
from faith and reverence, from moral purity and domestic
peace (vol. iv. chap. 8). Look at the crofter of Brittany
visited by M. Duchatellier in 185 1 (vol. iv. chap, y)}
Look at the family of Tuscan metayers as they were
found by M. Peruzzi in 1857, and, like a multitude of
their fellow-peasants, living happy and secure, full of
affection and reverence, and honouring their religion
by the outward and inward practices of piety (vol.
iv. chap. 3).

§ 124. Further, there is another class of examples
that can be brought forward. For although Chris-
tianity can only be fairly judged from its effects where
its doctrines are held in their integrity, and though
the ideal can never be reached in family life or in

^ A charming picture of the two Breton islands Hoedic and Houat
was given by the AbW Delalande in the Annales de la SocUti Acadhnique
de Nantes^ May and June 1850, and reprinted. They truly might have
been called the islands of the blest. Mark among the traits of their
life : " Une naissance ill^gitime est chose inouie . . . inou'le qu*un homme
ait frappe sa femme ; celle-ci tient la bourse, mais elle en delie facile-
ment les cordons pour les menus besoin^ du mari, et une entente cordiale
regne toujours au sein du manage. La proposition Cr^mieux pour le
retablissement du divorce . . . ne trouverait dans nos lies aucun echo,
aucune sympathie. Les hommes et surtout les femmes se disputent
quelquefois, mais jamais leur bouche ne se souille de paroles obsc^nes
ou injurieuse." And he describes how courtship and marriage are con-
ducted with the modesty and dignity that is natural where all life is
penetrated with the Christian religion (pp. 86-89).

i8o THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 125.

anything else among those whose doctrine has suffered
mutilation or corruption, still they may hold so large
a portion of Christian truth and be so obedient to the
Christian traditions of the past, that their family life,
though not the highest, may be very admirable. It
would be unfair and ridiculous to call them After-
Christian, and to treat, for example, the family life of
the Puritan New Englanders at the beginning, or of
the English gentry in the middle, of this century, or
of the North German miners, as though it could be
put under the same head as the family life of the
modern New Englanders, of the English working
classes, or of the German liberals and democrats of
Berlin. We might as well mix up the Roman family
under the kings with that under the emperors, or the
Homeric with the Periclean. And these examples of
what can be reached by an incomplete Christianity,
render it still more preposterous to maintain that
Christian teaching is impracticable.

§ 125. Turn, therefore, again to Le Play's great
collection of monographs, and read the account by
MM. Coronel and Allan of the fishermen and crofters
of the island of Marken in Holland in the year 1862
(vol. iii. chap. 5). They were a church-going, Bible-
reading community, the children receiving a religious
education, parents receiving, with scarce an exception,
respect and obedience, mothers devoted to the training
of their children, illegitimate children rare, and the

§125.] CHRISTIAN PRACTICE. i8i

fault always repaired by the subsequent marriage of
their parents. There was freedom of choice in mar-
riage, mutual affection between husband and wife ; and
divorce, although permitted by their civil law and by
their Calvinist religion (they followed the synod of
Dordrecht of i6i8), was unknown in practice ; nay,
even second marriages were rare, for to continue in
widowhood was held a form of conjugal fidelity.

The same simple observance of all the Christianity
they knew, and the same happy and healthy family
life, were to be found among the Lutheran lutemakers
of the Erzgebirge in Saxony (vol. iii. chap. 2, § 22),
and much good was to be found in the family life of
the Lutheran Swedes in 1845 (vol. iii. chap, i), of the
Russian peasants in 1853 (vol. ii. chap. 2), and of the
Bulgarians in 1848 (vol. ii. chap. 6)} And as I shall
>. have to say things about the lower ranks of my own
country that to Christian ears are shocking and sad, it
some consolation that among the toilers on our land
the Christian family is by no means unknown ; and
the household of the Shropshire small farmer recently

^ Much information on the Bulgarian peasantry during the twenty
years previous to 1878 is to be found in the work, TAe People of Turkey ^
by a consul's daughter and wife, London 1878 : not very polished, but
simple, docile to the clergy, the women good housewives, and having
much ascendency over their husbands, and the home happy and united
(i. pp. 26-34, 195-204 ; ii. pp. 26-30, 1 14-125). Notice that a large
trousseau of jewellery, dress, and other soft goods was customary, and
also the payment of bride-money worth some £<p to ;f 300. But I
understand (ii. p. 125) that dowries were coming into fashion, and
bride-money going out.

i82 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY, [§ 126.

described by Lady Gaskell (Nineteenth Century, Oct.
1884) — church-going, God-fearing, where a chapter of
the Bible is read daily after the morning meal, where
there is order, and discipline, and union — is cast in
the same mould as those Dutch and Saxon peasants
already named. And the mould is Christian.

§ 126. If we turn from the present century and
look at those that have gone past, from the time
when the Christian Church was first able to work on
a grand scale at the sanctification of the poor, we see
her striving to set up a family life such as I have
described. It is sufficient, as so much has been
said already, to give two brief illustrations. And as
France will supply us with a conspicuous example of
the After-Christian family, it is well that the same
country should supply an example of Christianity.
The sources of history, in particular those unpublished
family records known as h'bri rationum or livres de
raison, have been examined by M. de Ribbe in his
book on the families of France in the olden time.^
The inner life of the French homes has been laid
before him, and he has found in the fifteenth, sixteenth,
and seventeenth centuries a deeply religious spirit
among rich and poor, filial piety, parental devotion,
reverence to the mother and the widowed mother, the
traditions of the past handed down from one generation

^ Charles de Ribbe, Lfs families et la sociHi en France avant la
Rivolution^ Paris 1873. I have used the first edition, but there have
been several subsequent ones.

§ 127.] CHRISTIAN PRACTICE. 183

to another, a family house for poor as' well as rich, not a
lodging or a tenement, cultivation of the intellect among
women as well as men, charity to the poor, edifying
deaths, pious legacies (notably there were foundations
in almost every village to enable poor girls to marry),
wills a source of union, not of disputes and lawsuits,
peace among brethren, in a word, the Christian family.

§ 127. The other illustration can be taken from
Germany, and here again I can refer to a book that
is easily accessible and is filled with facts not fancies.^
Here we see a sweet picture of the German house
and its inhabitants, their union and piety. And the
rules of the trade guilds throw a light on home life.
For not only was immorality a bar to admission ; not
only were mutual kindness and help, as though they
had all been brothers, an essential feature of the
guilds, as well as religious worship together and
charity' to the poor, but in two other points they
show the family spirit of the time.- One is the
honourable position and privileges given to the wife
and .widow of a master ; the other is the fatherly
care bestowed on apprentices. For the master and
apprentice were bound together by a solemn covenant ;
the boy became one of the family, and the master was
responsible not merely for his technical training, but

^ Johannes Janssen, Geschkhte des deutschen Volkes sett dem Ausgang
des Mittelalters^ ninth edit, 1883. See especially vol. L pp. 26-29, 151,
206, 331, 338-340.

i84 THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY. [§ 127.

for his moral life ; and the covenant was no empty
form, but habitually fulfilled in letter and in spirit.
And just the same' attractive features are to be seen in
the guilds of England and France ; ^ for, as a conclu-
sion to this part, let me say of all the previous illustra-
tions, that they are to show the effect, not of race but
of religion ; to set forth, not what is Irish or Mexican,
Basque or Hungarian, French or German, but what is
Christian.

* On England; see L. Brentano, History of Guilds^ London 1870,
pp. 65-70. On France, C. Perin, De la Richesse, ii. pp. 267-274
(second edit.)

AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES.

§ 128. The Christian doctrine of the family does
not profess to be welcome to carnal man, nor expect
to be followed without resistance or backsliding. It
is not surprising, therefore, but natural, that the
Christian Church should have had to cast forth,
century after century, the insurgents against Christian
marriage, such as the Gnostics and the Manichaeans,
the Albigenses, the Lollards, and the Anabaptists.
But the doctrines of this formidable array of heretics
have been suicidal by their excess, and although
working much mischief, are not of world-wide in-
fluence. They are rather to be classed with the
Shakers, the Perfectionists, and the Mormons of our
own day ; and though they are the most extreme
among the insurgents against the Christian family,
they are the least important, and need not occupy us
further.

Very different are the other forms of the After-
Christian family, which occupy half the globe and have
supplanted the Christian family on innumerable hearths.

1 86 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 128.

These forms can be reduced, I think, to two. The
first is the Mohammadan family, the family, that is,
of a religion which professed to be an improvement
upon Christianity, and which, in fact, gained the
mastery over about one-half of Christendom, nor has
ceased in making its votaries even to this day almost
impervious to Christian teacliing. The second form
of the After-Christian family arose some twelve cen-
turies after the first, and, unlike Mohammadanism, is
not based on religion and an alleged new revelation,
but on what is supposed to be reason in opposition
to revealed religion. But, like the doctrine of the
Mohammadans, it professes to have weighed Christi-
anity, to have found it wanting, and to offer something
better. Beginning in France in the last century, it
has become widely spread in the present century, and
its chief seats (though it is nowhere wholly dominant)
are France, North Germany, Switzerland, England,
and the United States of America. Let us make some
examination of both of the chief forms of the After-
Christian family.

§ 129.] ^^^ MOHAMMADANS. 187

I. — The Mohammadans.

§ 129. In speaking of the Mohammadan (or Moslem)
family, I mean, not Mohammadan Hindus or negroes,
nor, again, the Beduin Arabs or the nomad tribes of
Central Asia — for these are to be considered rather as
Fore-Christians than as After-Christians — but I mean
the settled and civilised Mohammadans in Arabic-speak-
ing lands and in the Turkish empire, and as they
were in the early part of the present century. For
as their family life was then, so it had been in most
of its features for many centuries.^

A Mohammadan may not marry within certain pro-
hibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity;^ moreover,
the foster-mother is treated in this matter as a real

^ My chief guide is Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole*s edition of E. W.
Lane's notes to the Thousand and One Nights, under the title,
Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, London 1883. I can refer also to
the two monographs of a peasant pommunity at Bosrah, in the Hauran,
in 1857, and of a carpenter at Tangiers in 1855-56, given in Le Play's
Ouvriers europiens, torn, ii., edition of 1878 ; C. B. Klunzinger, Upper
Egypt, London 1878 ; The People of Turkey, by a consul's daughter,
edit, by Stanley Lane -Poole, London 1878; Almaric Rumsey,
Moohummudan Law of Inheritance, third edit., 1880 ; T. P Hughes,
Notes on Muhammadanism, 1 875. Also, with much reserve, M*Coan,
Slavery in Egypt and Slavery and Polygamy in Turkey, in Eraser's
Magazine^ May 1877 and October 1878.

* Namely, no ascendant, descendant, sister, sister of ascendant, niece,
or her descendants ; nor, again, wife's mother or daughters, father's
wife, son's wife, grandson's wife, nor to have at the same time two
wives who are sisters or aunt and niece. Unlawful connection creates
the same barriers of affinity as lawful marriage.

iS8 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 130.

mother, and relationship by milk treated, with some
exceptions,^ as relationship by consanguinity; the wife,
if not a Moslem, must at least be a Christian or a
Jewess, and a man may not marry his slave till he has
emancipated her. More noticeable than these prohibi-
tive rules is the habitual practice of relations inter-
marrying. The daughter of your father's brother is
preferred, or, failing her, some other collateral ; and the
large majority of all marriages are consanguineous, form-
ing an extreme contrast to the practice of the Chinese.^

§ 130. As the usual age for marriage is from 12
to 16 for women and from 15 to 18 for men, the choice
of a partner for first marriages must clearly not be
made by the parties themselves, and in fact it is habi-
tually made by the parents or relatives. It is held a
duty of the father to procure a wife for his son ; and
the services of some female relative or professional
intermediary (kkdtibeh) are generally required, as
there is not merely a rigid separation of the sexes,
but women are carefully veiled, and a man may only
see those unveiled whom he may not 1 marry. Nay,
even the legal permission to see, before the contract
is made, the face of the girl he is to marry, is seldom

^ You may marry your sister's foster-mother, your foster-sister's
mother, your foster-brother's sister.

^ Remember, however, that second wives (the first being still alive)
are usually chosen from strangers, and slave concubines always so ;
and thus there is a mixture of blood which would not exist if they kept
up the custom of intermarriage and gave up that of polygamy.

g 130.] THE MOHAMMADANS. 189

allowed by parents except among the lower classes.
The help of astrology is often called in to ascertain
whether the proposed husband and wife will agree.
We must not, however, suppose that romantic attach-
ments are unknown. There is quite a language of
flowers and other emblems by which two lovers may
communicate. Only this is exceptional both among
Arabs and Turks, and must be so from the surround-
ings, and is probably a relic of ancient manners, when
the modern strictness and seclusion were less observed.
A young girl given in marriage by her father or guardian
never has any freedom of choice; an elder woman, I
think, seldom or not much ; and though her consent
is asked, this is rather a form than a reality. But as
polygamy and divorce are allowed, a man, after receiv-
ing his first wife from his father, may have many
opportunities of choosing for himself. If he seeks
one of his own rank he must trust to female inter-
mediaries ; the parents of the girl may make difficulties
about his rank being not high enough,^ or his pre-
ference of a younger to an elder daughter, or his
being of a different trade to them, or may require an
exorbitant sum to be settled on the bride. It is not
surprising, therefore, that in view of these difficulties,
and to get a contented and submissive wife, he often

^ The "equality" {ka/at) required, that a marriage be not voidable
by the guardians, means that the husband be not inferior to the wife in
his tribe (obsolete, I think, among the civilised Moslems), in his reli-
gion, his freedom, his character, his fortune, and his trade. But there
is nothing against the wife being inferior to the husband.

I90 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 131.

selects a girl of inferior rank or one of his own slaves
to be his wife. Even in the last case the marriage is
not considered as a mesalliance, and there is this pecu-
liar advantage, that there is no mother-in-law or other
relatives of the wife to interfere with the husband's
autocracy.

§ 131. Mohammadan marriages are characterised
by the absence of a dowry on the one hand, or of
bride-money on the other, and by the invariable
presence of marriage money, which is known by the
name of Mihr. A certain sum, namely, must be given
from the husband's side and settled on the wife,^ the
smallest sum allowed being ten dirhems, now only
worth some five shillings of our money, but fixed
when the sum could purchase many times over what
it can now. Moslems of the middle class frequently
give what would equal thirty or forty pounds among
ourselves ; ^ but only a half or a quarter of that if the
bride is a widow or divorced woman. Usually the
larger portion is paid when the marriage contract is
made ; and the girl's father or guardian buys with it a
stock of movables for the wife, and adds an outfit of
his own, so that the girl gets a trousseau as well as the

^ Mi/ir is usually translated as *' dower ; " but this term is wanted to
express the property the widow receives from her husband's estate.

2 Lane says " about twenty pounds sterling " {Lc. p. 230). But this
no longer means what it did in the first half of the century, and readers
in the year 1885 require money comparisons adapted to the prices they
are accustomed to.

§ 132.] THE MOHAMMADANS. 191

marriage money.^ And this stock of goods the hus-
band cannot take from her. It is absolutely her own.
She can dispose of it at her pleasure ; can sell it, if
it be a specific object, to her husband ; and may even
give it up to him after they are married, though per-
haps this letter of the law is restrained by custom.
One-third of the marriage money remains an obliga-
tion on the husband's estate,^ to be paid on his death,
or on his divorcing his wife, or on her death to her
heirs, if she die before him.

§ 132. Beside always receiving at least some marriage
money to do as she likes with, and usually a trousseau,
the wife has also her dower, namely, the right to a
share in the property of her deceased husband. This
amounts to one-eighth of his property, or even to one-
fourth if he has left no children or son's children.
And the divorced wife only loses this claim after four

^ In Turkey — and perhaps it is the same in Egypt — it is customary
for the bridegroom to furnish the wedding-dress, which among the rich
may cost over ;^ioo, being embroidered with gold and pearls {^People
of Turkey^ ii. pp. 85, 89). The goods furnished as trousseau or bought
with the marriage money are generally in the form of bedding, kitchen
utensils, plate, furniture, house linen, clothes {Ibid,, pp. 89, 90). The
burden of expensive marriage festivities {Ibid.f p. 90) is not, I think,
common to all Moslems ; and in Egypt thb expense of the feast is
lessened by every guest sending a present of provisions (Lane, p. ^233).
The same convenient custom prevails in the Hauran ( Ouvriers euro-
pints, ii. p. 396).

' This is called by M. Rumsey "deferred dower," opposed to "prompt
dower." But even this deferred payment is better expressed by some
other word than "dower.**

192 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 133.

months and ten days have elapsed (the legal interval
before she can marry again). So dower cannot be
evaded by a death-bed divorce. Remember, however,
that there may be four legal wives ; and the share pf
each will then be only one-fourth of one-eighth.

Finally, a Mohammadan married woman, besides
her claim for dower and for the remainder of her
marriage money, and her absolute and separate owner-
ship of what was given her at marriage, may also
have separate goods quite distinct from her trousseau
and marriage money. For marriage gives the hus-
band no power over the propeVty which a woman
has, or gets, of her own ; and she is likely to get
some, because, as we shall see, women inherit, and
are in the main not excluded by men, but only receive
less. Nor does her possession of separate goods, if
I rightly understand, exempt her husband from his
obligation to give her maintenance and habitation.

S 133, The Moslem Law of married women's pro-
perty is adapted for habitual divorce and polygamy.
The husband has an absolute power of arbitrary and
instant divorce ; but he must pay something for the
indulgence. The wife naturally keeps her own separate
goods that were in no way his, but also takes with
her out of his house the goods that made up her
trousseau and her paid-up marriage money, and
what is yet unpaid he must also hand over to her,
and give her three months' alimony into the bargain;

§ 133] THE MOHAMMADANS. 193

and he alone has to maintain any children of the mar-
riage.^ When indeed the wife herself seeks a divorce
(a rare case, and only allowed if the husband con-
sents), she loses both marriage money and trousseau.
A man may take a wife back again a first or a second
time ; ^ but if he divorce her a third time (or even the
first time by a triple sentence), the deed is irrevocable,
and she can only again become his wife after being
married to another man, and then being divorced by
this new husband ; after which the former husband,
if she gives her consent and he makes a fresh marriage
contract, can marry her again.'

The law therefore puts some check upon divorce ;
but this check is slight. Marriage money, even among
equals, is not large ; to give it up need not be very
burdensome ; payment may be evaded by treating
the wife so harshly that she herself sues for divorce ;

^ If they are very young they remain with the mother till a certain
age, the father paying for them, and having the right to see them as
often as he wishes (Klunzinger, Upper Egypt ^ p. 168).

* Any time within three months of the divorce he may take her back,
even against her wish ; and not till after the three months (or, if with
child, till she has given it birth) may she contract a new marriage.
He must give her support until she has weaned the child aforesaid,
which of course belongs to him, and has to be maintained by him.

* In Turkey, where " this strange and disgusting law " is in force,
when the two parties wish to be reconciled once more, their only
resource is to pay an old man, generally of the poorer class, to play
the part of intermediary husband. But if by any chance he turns
traitor, and refuses to divorce the woman, there is no remedy ; and
cases of this kind do occur, though rarely {^People of Turkey^ ii, pp.
83-85). Similarly in Egypt (Klunzinger, Ibid,^ p. 169).

N

194 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 134.

and, as we have seen, many men marry those below
them in rank, even their own slaves. It is not sur-
prising, then, that " there are few of middle age who
have not had several different wives at different periods,
tempted to change by the facility of divorce *' (Lane,
p. 223). Nor is a man lowered in public estimation
by so doing. The divorced women also are frequently
married again, sometimes more than once. Indeed
there is a counsel to marry a divorced woman, as
likely to be humble, in preference to a widow with
her bewailings and her comparisons.^

I 134. Divorce among Mohammadans is closely
connected with polygamy, and both are supported by
the separation of the sexes and the seclusion of women.
It is natural to allow a man to put away a woman
whom he has married without even having seen her.
But if she would be reduced to want by divorce,
humanity seems to call for a permission, while taking a
second wife, to keep the first. Then, if you have more
than one wife, and they become irreconcilable, divorce
can be used as a remedy ; at the same time, the ease
of divorce checks polygamy, when a man fears that he
will have to divorce his first wife, through her influence
or that of her relatives, if he takes a second. Then,

^ The sentiment that a widow or divorced wife should not marry
again, is not altogether unknown, at any rate among the Moslems of
Egypt, where it exists as an exceptional sentiment, chiefly in country
towns and villages. LNine knew of a family where it was the rule
(Lane, p. 223).^

§ 135] THE MOHAMMADANS. 195

too, if the first wife is barren (and barrenness is said
to be commoner in hot climates than in temperate),
and you are too attached to her to divorce her, you
may take a second wife in the hope of obtaining
children. So there is much to say from a Moham-
madan standpoint in favour of these two institutions.
And the Moslems defend the separation of sexes and
the separate lives and worlds of men and women as a
happy contrivance, truly democratic and fraternal, allow-
ing the free mingling of different ranks and extending
the sphere of friendship and society, because there is
no risk of unequal marriages (in their sense, see ^ 130),
each sex keeping to itself; and there is but this one
barrier instead of the numberless barriers of European
society. True indeed "fickle passion is the most
evident and common motive both to polygamy and to
repeated divorces" (Lane, p. 245), the latter being
much the most frequent of the two. But the Moslem
may retort that this is better than the hypocrisy and
licentiousness of Europe. And indeed, as we shall
see, the champions of the After-Christian family in
the West have no title to throw stones at their
After-Christian brethren and predecessors in the
East.

§ 135. We have yet to look at Moslem polygamy
somewhat more in detail. The law allows a man to
have four lawful wives at the same time ; and although
to have more than one wife at a time is rare among

196 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 136.

the middle classes, and not common among either the
higher or the lower, still it is sufficiently common to
be an important feature of social life, especially as the
chief barrier to its greater prevalence is not any dislike
to it, but its expense.^ How far it is productive of
jealousy and hatred is a matter that is not easy to find
out. There are many examples of sincere afifection
between fellow-wives, and a good husband is supposed
to treat them with impartiality and lodge them in
separate houses or chambers. Still there is evidence
of much jealousy. To suppose that the majority of
polygamous husbands will treat a childless and faded
wife with impartial attention is to suppose too much;
the Arabic word for fellow-wife is derived from
" injury," '* because fellow-wives usually experience
injurious treatment one from another " (Lane, p. 245) ;
and there is a common proverb, " The life of a fellow-
wife is bitter " (Ibid., p. 246).

§ 136. But if plurality of wives is still rarer among
the middle and even the upper classes than among the
poor, the seeming moderation is made up for by the fre-
quent practice of keeping one or more slave concubines.^

^ " A poor man may indulge himself with two or more wives, each
of whom may be able, by some art or occupation, nearly to provide
her own subsistence ; but most persons of the higher and middle orders
are deterred from doing so by the consideration of the expense and dis-
comfort which they would incur " (Lane, pp. 244, 245).

2 The more austere Moslems hold that the permitted number of four,
means that wives and concubines together must not exceed that number.
The laxer allow four wives and any number of concubines besides.

§ 137.] THE MOHAMMADANS. 197

For the most part these concubines are Abyssinians
or Circassians, and are indulged with the same luxuries
as free ladies ; they rank high above free servants ;
they are often taught needlework and embroidery,
sometimes music and dancing, and formerly many of
them were well read in poetry. Nor are female slaves
wholly at the mercy of their master ; for, besides the
strong pressure of public opinion that would condemn
inhumanity, the law has several provisions in their
favour. The master may give a slave who is not his
concubine in marriage to whom he pleases, but he
may not dissolve the marriage when once made. And
if a man recognises, as his own, a child of his slave,
the mother can never be sold, and becomes free at his
death, while the child is in all respects legitimate, and
in the same position as the son of a free wife. The
law may be said to contemplate the union in marriage,
or at least in concubinage, of master and female slave ;
for he may not possess any one as a slave who is
within the prohibited degrees of kinship. True, the
barren slave is unprotected ; and even if she bears him
a child he need not recognise it, and it becomes his
slave, not his son ; but the love of offspring makes
this rare.

§ 137. Slavery, therefore, is quite different among
Mohammadans from that under European planters, or
that of classical Greece and Rome. No doubt it is
like them in the horrible cruelties of the slave trade ;

198 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 137.

but when once the slaves are procured, they are
habitually treated, it seems certain, with kindness —
as kindly perhaps as any domestic servants anywhere,
and occupy, I believe, a position in society more
honoured than that of domestic servants in England.^
Indeed the precepts of Mohammad on humanity to
servants are an echo of Christianity. The gulf
between Christians and Moslems is not in kindness
but in morals. We must not indeed exaggerate; the
traffic in eunuchs is small, as they are only to be
found in the houses of those high in rank or of great
wealth ; and the bulk of the male slaves who are
negroes, are merely domestic servants, well clad and
fed, and often liberated in a few years and set up in
business. Nor, perhaps, must we judge of all Islam
from the depravity of the rich classes among the
Turks during recent centuries, or of the Saracens
under the later Chalifs. But the standard of chastity
is indeed low ; the purchase of slaves to be wives,
or concubines, or trial concubines, is conducted in a
manner shocking to Christians to hear ; and when we
are told that a man's relation to his female slave has
no stigma of immorality attached to it, that frequently
a slave is raised to be a wife, that this is not
thought a mesalliance, that slaves frequently marry the

1 Sometimes even a man will buy a slave to be the husband of his
daughter (Klunzinger, p. 40). But is not this, indeed, almost confined to
the case {Ilnd,^ p. 16) of a handicraftsman without a son, and who buys
a slave, teaches him his trade, and gives him his daughter ?

§ 138.] THE MOHAMMADANS. 199

daughter of their master (Klunzinger, p. 387 seq.) : we
answer the Mohammadans that their creed is an
abomination to us, that they belong to the religion of
sensuality, that these dealings with slaves appear so
light to them, not because they have raised up the
slave women, but because they have lowered all women
to immodesty and degradation.

§ 138. In truth, according to the theory and the
practice of Mohammadanism, women are held as an
inferior order of beings, higher than the brute creation,
but lower than men, and existing to minister to the
wants and pleasures of men ; to be treated kindly,
indeed, and forming the choicest of all their husbands'
treasures, and guarded carefully in a place forbidden
(Jtariifi) to strangers ; but no rational companions for
a man, being both deficient in judgment, so that you
consult them only to do the opposite to what they
advise, and so much more depraved than men that
the devil was full of joy when they were created. A
woman has no right to sit at table with her husband ;
he avoids her in the street ; she is among unclean
things in religion, is generally excluded from the
mosque, and excused the prayers incumbent on men.
For, in extreme contrast to Christianity, devout women
are quite an exception among Moslems ; girls are
taught a few chapters of the Kuran, but are not even
supposed to be taught the whole, and piety in women
is even looked on with dislike. They seldom learn

20O AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 139.

to read or to play any instrument, except to beat a
kind of drum and tambourine with their fingers ; but
embroidery and other ornamental work is often taught
to girls of the middle and higher ranks,^ and ladies
bestow some care that their daughter may have an
elegant gait and " various alluring and voluptuous
arts with which to increase the attachment of their
future husbands " (Lane, p. 205). The service of the
husband and caring for the children, cooking, baking,
cleaning, sewing, weaving, and spinning, form the
occupation of the poorer women ; while those of
higher position have at least to see that these duties
are done by the female slaves. But although seden-
tary and unhealthy indolence is not the rule among
Moslem women, as some ill-informed persons think,
still it is very common, at least in Turkey and Morocco,
among those who have slaves to do the household
work. Leisure hours are spent by women in adorning
themselves, in bathing, in smoking, and above all in
conversation and visiting each other,

I 139. Indeed the women form a little world of
themselves and a society apart, excluding even the
master of the house from their meetings, in which
bath-women and midwives are conspicuous ; having
only women doctors to attend them ; ruling over the

1 Even in the houses of the wealthy, many women replenish their
private purses by the sale (done by a female broker) of ornamental
needlework they have made (Lane, p. 239).

§ 139.] ^^HE MOHAMMADANS. 201

little children, or rather pampering and petting them,
not teaching or training them ; and in the society of
their slave women and their neighbours' slave women,
indulging, for lack of rational interests, in conversa-
tion that at best is frivolous, more likely malicious
gossip, and probably often, as is certainly the case in
Turkey, conversation that is filthy. They acquiesce
in their position of inferior beings to men, and make
up by asserting their power in artful and hidden
ways.^ So no wonder it is held certain and notorious
among Moslems that they are more cunning than
men.

Nor is it the least in contradiction to this picture
of Moslem women, that not seldom we find sincere
attachment between husband and wife, though the wife
has lost all her beauty, and has no power or wealth
of her own or of her relatives (Lane, pp. 207, 208,
combating Burchhardt). For just as the evil passions
of men will break out at times even amid the best
surroundings, so too our better nature is not wholly
suppressed by the worst of misreligions or irreligion.
Moreover, among the peasantry there is less oppor-
tunity for the worst features of harim life. But a
philosophy or a religion must be judged by its effects
where its influence is least frustrated. And Moham-
madanism cannot even boast that if its level of
morality is low, it is at least kept up to. On the
contrary, there is much, and manifold, and sickening

^ Cf, James Bryce, 7ranscaucasta and Mount Ararat ^ p. 376b

202 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 140.

immorality, that even by that lax religion is acknow-
ledged to be immoral.^ The French in Algeria had
to suppress the revolting public shows known as
Karageuz; but they have continued in Morocco,
where, shameless and nameless foulness appears to
reign {Ouvriers europ^ens^ ii. chap. 9., pp. 436, 442).
Among the Turks of the upper classes the disregard
of the innocence of children, who learn all filthiness,
especially among the servants, with whom they pass
much of their time, the disgusting dances of the
dancing girls at marriage festivities, the widespread
practice among the women of all classes, when once
they have had a male child, to destroy any further
children before their birth {People of Turkey)^ and
other abominations, place the Mohammadans of Turkey
in the front rank of After-Christian progress.

§ 140. One point more requires to be spoken of
regarding Mohammadan women. Their present posi-
tion is eminently the result of Mohammadan theology,
and is by no means the result of the victorious Arabs
having substituted their own manners and customs
for those of the nations they conquered. It was not
the race but the religion that worked the mischief;
and in truth the family life of the Moslems, after their

^ See the admissions of Klunzinger, p. 166. Also Lane, pp. 220, 221,
who well marks the higher moral purity of the nomad Arabs (whose
Mohammadanism, remember, is feeble, and almost nominal) — '* Affairs
of gallantry . . . are . . . infrequent among most tribes of Bedawees, and
among the descendants of those tribes not long settled as cultivators. **

§ I4C.] THE MOHAMMADANS. 203

religion had had time to work, was almost as unlike
that of the former conquering Afabs, as it was unlike
that of the conquered Christians. A change had
come that in many ways reminds us of the change
from Homeric Greece to the Athens of Pericles. " In
old times " — I am citing Mr. Lane- Poole's resume of
von Kremer ^ — " the Arab woman was not merely
reckoned her husband's equal, she was the object of
chivalrous respect All the old stories and traditions
bear witness to this noble trait in the character of the
Arabs of early days. The modern harim system was
as yet undreamt of. The maiden of the desert was
unfettered by the ruinous restrictions of the later
Moslem life. She was free to choose her own hus-
band, to bind him to have no other wife than her-
self; she might receive male visitors, strangers even,
without suspicion. Her virtue was too dear to her
and too well assured to need the keeper. She went
to the mosque as well as men, a practice now unheard
of. Jurists decided that it was impossible that a
woman could be bought. Her husband treated her,
not with love only, but with reverence. It was she
who inspired him to deeds of valour, and it was
her praise that he most valued when he returned
triumphant. To protect the lives and the honour
of women was the highest duty, the noblest privilege,
of the Arab chief." The polygamy that existed was

^ In TTie Academy^ 2d February 1878, reviewing the second volume
of Alfred von Kremer's Culiurgeschichie des Orients unter den Chalifen,

204 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 141.

like that of the Scriptural patriarchs, and almost a
matter of necessity and public duty, that the head of
the clan might strengthen his alliances and secure his
people, and in no wise a sign that the Arabs thought
little of the sanctity of marriage, of the dignity of
women, and of the disgrace of immorality. On the
contrary, they held bastardy an indelible disgrace,
they paid the greatest attention to purity of blood,
• bad women were scarcely known among them, and
unnatural vice not at all. The dismal change that
came had for its efficient cause, not, forsooth, Arab
blood, or some chapter of accidents, but the great
After-Christian religion, working amid favourable sur-
roundings its miserable work.

§ 141. Mohammadan law gives much power to the
father of a family. It is not a capital offence for a
man to kill his .own child or descendant ; children are
taught to show to their father great external respect ;
and he is supposed to train his boys in good man-
ners, good morals, and religion ; to send them to the
schools where theology, law, and literature are taught
gratis or for little (as educational endowments abound
in Islam) ; and finally to provide them with a wife.
Disobedience to parents is reckoned one of the seven-
teen " great sins ; " and I think the Moslem father can
generally count on reverence, support, and even great
affection from his children. How far the mother
shares any portion of this filial piety is another

§ 142.] THE MOHAMMADANS. 205

matter ; in Morocco she is said to receive as a rule
much love and respect from her children (Ouvriers
europeenSf ii. p. 430), and I think the same can be
said of most Moslem peasant mothers. But in Turkey,
both in high and low life, mothers have little control
over their children, whose rudeness and disobedience
are painful to witness (People of Turkey^ ii. p. 154
seq^ And from adult children it seems more likely,
considering the general Mohammadan view of women,
that a mother will receive care and kindness rather
than obedience and respect.

§ 142. In the disposition of property the father has
much power. He can incur debts for which his heirs
are liable as far as there are assets. The creditor
indeed must take money first, then personal effects,
and lastly houses and lands ; moreover, no interest is
allowed and no mortgage recognised — I am not speak-
ing, let it be remembered, of Moslem countries where
or since they have come under the sway of non-
Moslem money-lenders. The father also, besides
incurring debts, may freely alienate his property
during his life, and is by no means only a co-owner
with his family. Of course he cannot alienate what
is not his ; and as much of the land is not what we
should call freehold, but rather is held on a perpetual
lease from a mosque {Vakouf or Wakfi land), the
holder can only transfer the lease. But this he can
do; and the only class of property, if I understand

2o6 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 143.

rightly, which a man may not alienate at pleasure
during his life, is that held of the Government in the
Turkish empire, and known as Mirie or Miri; and
even here all that is required for alienation is the
permission of the authorities.

This power of the father to alienate his property
without the advice or consent of his family has, as its
natural complement, the power of his wives and of
his sons to acquire and hold property apart from him,
and over which he has no control,^ only a claim to
succeed to a portion of it if he outlive them. Thus
the rights of fathers and of widowers form an impor-
tant part of the law of inheritance. Further, on the
same principle of keeping goods separate, and each
man and woman being for himself or herself, a man's
widows and children are not liable for his debts beyond
what can be met by the property he leaves behind.

§ 143. The power of disposing of your property
after your death is much less unlimited. You may
leave one-third of it, but no more, by will ; and even
this third may not be left to any one you please ; for
you may not alter the order of heirs to your estate,

^ Thus the eldest son of the perfumer at Tunis, described in torn,
iii., No. 25, of Les ottvriers des deux mondes (from observations in the
year 1858), though only twenty-five years old, and though living with
his father, and on the best terms with him, had his interests separated
from his father's, had his own private stall at the bazaar, distinct from
his father's stall, and paid for his board and lodging (and for that of
his wife) at his father's house. ,

§ 143.] ^^^ MOHAMMADANS. 207

and favour one by giving him or her a legacy. Such
a legacy is invalid, unless indeed it is made valid after
your death by the consent of the other heirs. So,
in fact, you have only full power to give legacies to
strangers ; and the right of testation is, I take it, rather
a means to provide for old servants, slaves, and con-
cubines, than to alter the position of your heirs, or to
regulate according to their deserts or necessities the
amount each of your children is to receive. But in
one point the Mohammadan testator has the advantage
over the English, that he is not bound by elaborate
formalities nor liable to have his wishes set aside
through some technical flaw; but his wishes are car-
ried out, and his will is equally valid whether by word
of mouth or in writing. Women, be it observed, have
the same testamentary powers as men.

The rule that any legacy to your heirs is invalid
(unless the other heirs consent to it after your death),
applies to all kinds of deathbed gifts. But the other
rule, that you may bequeath only one-third of your
property, though it applies to ordinary deathbed gifts,
manumissions, and the half-gifts known as acts of
mohabatf^ by a strange oversight or inconsistency, does
not apply to a gift in the shape of a deathbed acknow-
ledgment of debt. Thus, according to the letter of
the law, you can on your deathbed grant the whole of

^ Namely, where you purposely give more or take less than the
proper price of an object, or proper reward of labour, a.^., seU me
pearls for 100 dirhems that would fetch 500 at the bazaar, or give me
double the wages you promised.

2o8 AFTER'CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 144.

your property to a stranger. But custom may be
stronger than law, and I doubt if this mode of disin-
heriting your heirs is ever put in operation.

§ 144, The law of inheritance among the Moslems
is very curious and complicated, and quite unlike
any other example that I have cited or that I know.
Whether or not its origin was in the application to
all property, and notably to land, of the rules that
had been in use for distributing the animals and tents
of nomad Arabians, its effect is to break up the family
property and to prevent the endurance of any family,
age after age, in an ancestral home. This law of
inheritance, omitting technical terms and the detailed
rules for a number of contingencies, we may state in
its main features as follows : — All property is treated
alike, no distinction being made between movables
and immovables, or between inherited and acquired
property. When a man dies," his father has a claim
to one-sixth of his property, his mother to one-sixth,
and his widows together to one-eighth ; the residue
is divided among his children in equal shares, except
that the shares of daughters are half those of sons.
If your father, mother, and widow are all alive, little
over one-half of the inheritance is left for your
children ; but as a man usually survives his parents,
it is more usual that only the widow's eighth has
to be deducted from the children's share. Grand-
children have no claim if any children are alive —

§ 144.] THE MOHAMMADANS. 209

there is no representation ; but in default of children,
the sons of sons take the place of children and have
the aforesaid residue divided among them per capita.
If there are daughters but no sons, then the daughters
have a right, not to any residue, but to a definite
share of the property, namely, two-thirds ; but an only
daughter takes no more than one-half. In default of
both sons and daughters, then the daughters of sons
can claim as though they were daughters, namely,
two-thirds, or if there is but one of them, one-half.
If there are no widows, nor children, nor son's
children, then the father takes two-thirds and the
mother the remaining third, unless indeed the deceased
has left brothers ; for these between them will take a
sixth and the mother a sixth. The widow, if there
are no children, takes a fourth instead of an eighth.
On collateral succession it is enough to remark that
the whole blood generally receives a larger share than
the half blood, and the male line than the female ;
and that the same principle holds good of dividing into
shares and disallowing representation. The property
of women is not a separate category, like the Hindu
stn'dhan, but, mutatis mutandis, follows just the same
rules as men's property, the husband succeeding to
the wife, just as she would to him, only with the
difference that he takes a fourth, where she would
take an eighth, and a half, where she would take a
fourth. And there can be only one husband, but
many wives.

2 ro A FTER'CHRISTIAN FA MILIES. [§ 145.

S 145. The full significance of this order of succes-
sion would escape us, unless we remember that by
children are meant the children of concubines no less
than of wives ; and that through polygamy and divorce
the existence of half brothers and sisters is common,
not, as among ourselves, the exception ; and how the
property of man and wife is kept apart. We might
fancy the law devised to scatter every inheritance and
to produce with its complicated fractions the utmost
possible confusion.^ A lasting home, a solid peasantry
and nobility, are scarce possible with such a law.
Already I have spoken of the democratic nature of
Moslem society, meaning by democratic the absence of
hereditary inequalities in position and power. There
is the great inequality of the sexes ; but beyond that
there is great equality. One trait is the absence
of surnames, which are quite exceptional, and only
existing where some ancestor has gained great re-
nown. Generally all that is added to the personal

^ Sir H. Maine (iv. p. 126) agrees with Mr. Almaric Rumsey's
conclusion that the first expositors of this law (supposed to be of divine
origin) were ignorant of some simple principles in the manipulation of
fractions. The mathematical greatness of the Arabs came later. An
illustration from Mr. Rumsey's eleventh chapter will give some idea
of the calculations required. A man dies leaving three wives, six sons,
and six daughters. Wives take J altogether, and thus ^^ each.
Residue ^ — J=J, to be divided in the ratio 2:1. Hence sons take
I of J = /y altogether, and thus /^ each. Daughters take J of J = ^V
altogether, and thus yj^ each. Reducing the fractions to a common
denominator, we find each wife takes yJx» each son yit> ^^^ each
daughter yj^. This case is a comparatively simple one.

§ 146.] THE MOHAMMADANS. 211

name is the name of the father or native place. Often
if a man or woman has a son, you call them the father
or mother of such a one, naming the son. How
different from the careful genealogies of the Chinese !
nay, how unlike the nomad Arabs of the desert, among
whom so much attention is given to good blood !

S 146. Another tontrast to the Chinese is the
rarity of joint families, which might keep together in
fact what was scattered at law. No doubt there is
not the same rapid break up of the members of a
family, which is familiar to us in England and
America; on the contrary, among the peasantry in
Egypt the children as often as not remain with their
father and mother in their common dwelling till both
are dead, and need not always separate even then.
Still there is no legal community of ownership and
earnings ; the father may squander the property ; the
sons can go away ; the wife may keep her own
goods separate.^ And mark, as the converse of use

^ In that district of Syria that is known as the Hauran, bordering on
the desert, joint families are indeed the rule ; but the reason is the
absence of any orderly government, so that mutual help is needed as
protection against the Beduins, and necessity compels brethren to
dwell together and to be subordinate to their head. The land, more-
over, open and abundant, is not held in permanent ownership ; and
even if a discontented member, who wished to separate without the
consent of the community, was able to get a judicial decision to take
according to Moslem Law his share of the oxen, sheep, and other
movables ; the legal judgment would not have the smallest chance of
being executed in the Hauran {Ouvriers europ^ens, ii, chap. 8).

212 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 146.

in common, that not seldom, where property will be
damaged by partition, the co-sharers resort to partition
by usufruct, that is, each of them in turn enjoys the
property for a time that corresponds with the amount
of his share. Nor is there worship of the dead to
keep up family traditions and feelings. True there is
a great desire for children, whose support knd whose
training is so small a burden ; "and this desire is
stimulated by the Mohammadan doctrine, that their
infant children who die before coming to the know-
ledge of sin, will introduce their parents with them
into Paradise. But this is merely an encouragement
to marriage or to polygamy, and no means of making
the family tie permanent. The desire for children is
chiefly for male children, on the part of the wife
that she may please her husband, and on the part
of the husband that he may have companions and
helpers, and support in his old age ; not that there
may be successors to the name, and virtues, and tra-
dition of his ancestors. And so, like the rest of After-
Christian families, those of the Moslems are feeble and
transitory.

§ 147.] THE FRENCH PEASANTRY. 213

II. — The Irreligious French Peasantry.

§ 147. The apostle of the After-Christian family
of France, nay, of Europe and America, is a title that
may be given to Rousseau. And whereas Christian
doctrine tells us of man's fallen nature, that we have
within us a root of corruption, how it is all-important
that the young be early trained to subdue their evil
passions, and by repeated acts to gain the habits of
virtue and the means of resisting the capital vices of
pride and concupiscence, and that the family is the
chief and primary institution for this training : Rous-
seau taught that man is naturally good, loving peace
and justice, his natural inclinations always right ; that
children are born free, and only associated with their
parents as long as they are too young to support
themselves. As soon as they are old enough for this,
then the society is dissolved and father and son both
become independent of each other.^ And the func-

^ See the citations given by Ribbe, Les families en France^ Bk. il chap.
I, and by Le Play, Vorganisation de lafamille^ second edit pp. 104-106.
Part of Le Play's indignant comment is as follows ; — " Never, in four
sentences, has the true nature of a free and prosperous society been
more completely falsified. Never has man been more naively brought
down to the level of the brute. The child, far from being free at his
birth, is dependent on all that surrounds him. And then he only
raises himself to the degree of liberty and well-being which, by a long
series of efforts, his race has secured, if he is willing to submit with
docility lb the moral law and to the traditions that are taught him by
his parents and his masters. Moreover, when he has grown up he
only preserves this liberty, and transmits it to his descendants, by

214 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§148.

tions, importance, and duration of the family being
thus reduced to a minimum, there remains as the one
great bond of social union, and as the one great agent
and director of education, the State.

§ 148. These doctrines were a part of the general
revolt in the eighteenth century against Christianity;
and when they triumphed in France at the First Re-
volution, the various ancient laws of succession were
swept away and a new and uniform law was intro-
duced for the whole of France. This law in its main
features was adopted in the Code civt'l, and has since
remained part of the French Law. Men and things
are treated as though they were figures in an arith-
metic book. No distinction is made of age or of sex,
nor between acquired and inherited or movable and
immovable property. In the case of intestacy every-
thing is divided equally between all the children, and
an army of officials, interested in their fees, enforce
the letter of the law, however disastrous to the sur-
vivors, and prevent the making of family arrangements.
Nay, so eager is the law for partition that even when
all the co-heirs are of full age they cannot make an
agreement to remain in undivided ownership (tftdivi-
siofi) that is valid for more than five years. Nor can a

remaining united to a numerous family by the ties of respect and of
love. Finally, it is only by having this family to back him up, by this
pleasaiitest and most natural of communities, that he can escape the
tyranny of those who hold the reins of power in the commune, the
province, or the State.**

§ 149.] T^HE FRENCH PEASANTRY. 215

father avert the partition by testament or evade it by
donations. For what he can give during his lifetime
or bequeath at his death is strictly limited, and must
not exceed in value one-half of his property if he
have but one child, one-third if he have two, and one-
fourth if he have more than two.^

§ 149. Moreover, you cannot settle as you like this
disposable half, third, or fourth of your property : all
you can do towards keeping it safe in your family is
to settle it by donation or bequest on your grand-
children or on your nephews and nieces, but on no
others, and to give a life estate to your children, your
brothers, or your sisters.^ Mark also that at the
death of either parent, the children, if they have
reached eighteen years of age, come in at once for their
share of the deceased's property, and the surviving

^ If you are childless, but have ascendants alive in both the paternal
and maternal line, you may give away or bequeath only half your
property. If there are ascendants in one line only, your power extends
to two-thirds ; and if you have no ascendants (and of course no de-
scendants), to the whole of your property.

* This is called substitution de la quotiti disponible. Notice that in
these settlements you are still obliged to do homage to the equality of
age and sex, and whatever you give must on the death of the holder of
the life estate be divided equally between all his (or her) children.
Thus, although you may choose any particular son, daughter, brother,
or sister you like to be the holder of the life estate {Je grevi)^ say your
youngest daughter, you may not choose any particular one of her chil-
dren to succeed on her death, but all you give must be equally divided
between all her children. A law of the Restoration allowing you to
settle on two generations {substitution d deux degrh) was rescinded in
1849. Le Play, La Riforme Sociale^ fifth edit., chaps. 20 and 23 ; Code
civil f art. 1 048 seq.

2i6 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 149.

parent has no usufruct for life, much less any right of
disposing of this property. Indeed all the kindred
that can succeed come in before husband or wife, and
the succession ab intestato of widower or widow is a
last resource before the property escheats to the State.
True, though you have children, there is a special
provision in the Code (Art. 1094) allowing you to
leave your wife or your husband the usufruct of one
quarter of your property and the full ownership of
another quarter ; but failing this the widow or widower
takes nothing ; and if the dead parent were the rich
one, the children may be seen living in opulence and
the surviving parent in penury.^ The Code seems
devised to strike at the root of parental power, to
scatter every inheritance, to make every family unstable,
to prevent permanent residence in one place, to break
off domestic and national tradition, to fill the pockets
of all the harpies of the law. And it seems a sorry
jest when this very Code takes to preaching the filial
duties it* prevents you practising, and solemnly enun-
ciates in its 371st article — " Uenfant, k tout ^ge, doit
honneur et respect k ses pdre et m^re."

^ The father, or if he is dead, the mothe^, has the usufruct of the
children's property till they are eighteen and the administration till they
are twenty-one. But he loses both if he emancipate the children ; and
this can be done when a child is only fifteen. Bishop Dupanloup
notices how difficult it is for a surviving parent not to emancipate a
child that has much property of his or her own, and the wretched
cases of poor parents and rich children {De V education^ tom. ii. chap. 12,
Paris, 1857). In this and the previous chapter he shows the frivolous
bringing up, the utter neglect and spoiling, of the French children of
the richer classes ; the corrupted and insolent youth ; the break up
and disappearance of families.

§ ISO.] THE FRENCH PEASANTRY. 217

§ 150. Of latQ years anti-Christian legislation in
France has made two great steps in advance, by set-
ting up irreligious primary schools and by sanctioning
divorce. But these measures are too recent for their
effects as yet to be rightly judged ; and the following
description of the After-Christian* family among the
French peasantry refers to the time of the Second
Empire.^ I need hardly say that it only applies to a
certain portion of the peasantry, as a large portion,
particularly in Brittany, Auvergne, and the South of
France, remained Christian. I need hardly say, also,
that although I take my illustration from the peasantry,
there were and are abundant examples of the After-
Christian family among the urban work-people and
among the upper classes.

Religion appeared to the enlightened peasantry as
childish. Their children indeed they allowed to be
baptized and to make their First Communion, and the
parents would sometimes on great festivals be present
at Mass. But this was not because they were reli-
gious, but because they were indifferent : they had no
objection to the parish priest plying his trade, as long
as he in no way interfered with theirs ; and the
children to be respectable must have made their First

^ The chief sources I draw from are the monographs of families
given in Les ouvriers des deux moftdes^ torn, iv. No. 29, and Les otwriers
europienSy tom. v. chap. 7, torn. vi. chap. 4. The dates of observation
were respectively the years 1861, 1856, 1858-60. Some of the ameni-
ties of French rural life are amusingly described by Sardou in the play,
Nos bans villageois, A brief notice of Balzac's description of the
peasantry (or one type of them) under Louis Philippe is given by Mr.
I^illy in The Contemporary RevuWy June 1880, pp. 1028- lo^p*

2 1 8 A FTER'CHRISTIA N FA MI LIES. [§ 1 5 1.

Communion. So they used what means they could
to get the troublesome ceremony over as soon as
possible, and put pressure on the clergy to make the
age for it no later than twelve. For after the cere-
mony the children could be set fully to work and had
no need to attend school or catechism any longer.
Nay, they had every encouragement to forget every
Christian doctrine and forego every Christian practice.
The parents only spoke of religion to deride it. Were
you to name to them the future life and judgment to
come, they would scornfully reply, " Qu^en savez-vous?"
(How can you tell ?) But they made up for lack of
religion by plenty of superstition : scarce a village was
without a practitioner in hidden arts for curing men
and cattle, or without an old dame who could be use-
ful in various ways ; for example, throw grains into
water, and manifest by the way they sank the nature of
some illness ; while a sorcerer who promised a lucky
number for the conscription, was sure of a welcome.

§ 151. The freedom from the trammels of dogma
give scope for the play of man's natural dispositions.
The particular disposition that will appear most active
is determined by the surroundings, and affords an
interesting study to the psychologist. Among the
freethinking French peasantry two principal types
can be observed — one dominated by the desire of
acquisition, the acquisition of land in particular ; the
other by the desire of enjoyment. The first class
have been compared in their eagerness for gain to the

§ I5t.] THE FRENCH PEASANTRY. 219

Polish Jews (Ouvr, europ,y v. p. 362), and are perhaps
the most laborious and parsimonious race in Europe.
For if they do not spare their wives, their children,
and their workmen — they generally end by being rich
enough to employ workmen — they certainly do not
spare themselves. They live to acquire. Not a
farthing can you get from them for worship or for the
poor ; at the same time, they keep from drunkenness
and debauchery, for such pleasures are costly. They
cannot waste every seventh day in idling, and so the
Sunday is employed in doing repairs, taking stock,
and doing the commercial part of farm work — travel-
ling, buying, and selling.

The same desire of acquisition will guide a man of
this class in his choice of a wife ; he will see that she
has a good dowry and ulterior claims of succession ;
and she herself will share in a minor degree the
philosophy of her husband, and, if possible, surpass
him in industry, adding the labours of the house to
those of the farm. M. Callay reckoned that the wife
in the family he observed (and it was no exceptional
case) did, in fact, 405 days' work in the year, reckon-
ing a days' work at ten hours. The man, it may be
added, rested only seven days in the year, and his
children only twenty-one days {Ouvriers des deux
mondeSf iv. p. 68). That such work should produce
physical degeneration, is not surprising ; and, besides,
the mother weans her child as soon as she can, and
then often leaves it all day while she works in the

220 A FTER-CHRISTIA N FA MI LIES. [§152.

fields, returning only at mid-day to feed it. So we
find many children diseased, deformed, or imbecile.

The children as soon as they are nine years old
begin to work for their parents ; and when they have
reached twelve and made their First Communion
they work, as we have seen, with little interruption of
holiday. But, after all, there is something to be said
for getting what you can from them while they are
young ; for the parents, as we shall see, have little to
expect from them when they are grown up.

§ 152. Another characteristic of the family of the
wise and sober peasant is the small number of his
children. The law of succession being what it is,
and the prevailing gospel being, " Every man for him-
self," it follows that if a man has many children his
property, for which he has so striven, will be scattered
at his death, and much of it be swallowed up by the
legal expenses of partition. Besides, previously, there
will probably be intolerable pinching if he is to find
the marriage portions that his respectable position
requires. So it is a good thing to have not more
than two children, and best to have only one. For
the Christian doctrine of children being God's gift
and marriage a consecrated state, they consider anti-
quated, and cast the Christian teaching on morals to
the four winds. The civil law indeed, where it can
detect and punish, they duly respect, and thus refrain
from infanticide ; but only to effect their end by the

§ 152.] THE FRENCH PEASANTRY. 221

abominations of artificial sterility. This practice has
spread like a cancer, and its progress and prevalence
can be traced by the progressive decline of the birth-
rate. So it has come to pass that in much of France
the births, although the rate of mortality is not high,
are not equal to the deaths. Part of the decline of
the birth-rate may be due to the general spread of
licentiousness and the growth of great towns and
their vices. But these evils are not peculiar to
France, nor is there any disproportionate number of
unmarried people. It is the small number of children
to each marriage that is her characteristic, and is at
once a political weakness and moral opprobrium.^

^ Before the First Revolution the number of 9hildren /<fr mi/ has
been reckoned at 312 ; in the decade 1849-59 the proportion had sunk
to 284 ; it was only 277 in 1866, and has lessened since. In the first
sixty years of this century the number of children to a marriage sank
from nearly four to little over three (Perin, Richesses^ Bk. iv. ch. 3).
The birth-rate for fifteen years before 1785 has been reckoned at 38
fer mil. In the present century, from

1800-10 the rate was 33

181 1-20

»»

« 32.15

1821-30

»>

„ 30.9

1831-40

»

„ 28.9

1841-50

)V

» 27.4

1851-60

fl

„ 26.7

1861-68

»

„ 26.4

— (Z^ Correspondant^ 23d July 1 878) —
and now I believe it has sunk below 26. Remember for comparison
that the birth-rate of Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, Italy, and Spain in
the decade before 1870 was from 34 to 38 per mil. But the popula-
tion of France increases much faster than you would think if you only
looked at the surplus of births over deaths. For there is a great sur-
plus to be added of immigration over emigration. The immigrants are
mostly Belgians and Italians.

222 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 153.

§ 153. The other type of the after-Christian rural
population puts pleasure first and acquisition second.
Drink, gambling, and debauchery are the pleasures
most appreciated and attainable. Sunday afternoon
is the great time for the public-houses. " Formerly,"
says M. Callay writing in 1861 (Ouvriers des deux
mondesj iv. p. 72), " recreations were held in the open
air ; they cost little, and so were simple and joyful.
The villages showed a cheerful aspect now unknown :
in one place you saw numerous groups of men playing
at fers (quoits ?) ; in another place women playing
skittles (quilles) ; while the old men in the village
square forgot their infirmities and remembered their
young days as they watched the dancing of their
grandchildren. Nowadays these games have been
given up, and the workmen prefer to spend Sundays
and holidays in the public-house, seated with a bottle
before them amid the fumes of tobacco and alcohol."
Previously Le Play had observed (Ouvriers europeens,
v. p. 422) — " In France the class that does most
injury to the workmen is that of the publicans and
low lodging-house keepers and innkeepers. With a
skill you could scarce imagine if you had never
watched it, they turn to account the thoughtlessness,
passions, and vices of their victims. In our new
society the charge of the thoughtless workmen that
was taken in the olden time by the corporation, the
employer, or the priest is taken by the publican
(cabaretier)^

§ 154.] THE FRENCH PEASANTRY. 223

§ 154. The treatment of the young is in keeping
with the rest. The children early learn what are the
chief ends of life. Example and precept teach them
to forget with all practicable speed the lessons of the
Catechism ; and if they are so attached to the ways
of childhood as to wish to fulfil the duties of a Chris-
tian (for example, to go to church on Sunday morn-
ing), their parents grudge them the time. Moreover,
as no respect .is paid by their elders to the innocence
of childhood, they become habituated to filthy conver-
sation and songs ; no precaution is taken to keep
them from bad companions, and thus, when they pass
from childhood to youth, they are exposed to fall into
the worst excesses. And temptations abound. For
it is not as in the old times, when the young people
used to meet on Sunday after mid-day in the public
square to dance, every one going when service-time
came, to church, and every one going home early in
the evening. " Now they only dance in saloons
where the parents can exercise no surveillance ; and
young fellows who have been all the afternoon in the
public-house will not be over modest when the even-
ing comes, in their words and conduct. And when
they do dance in the open air, namely, on the days of
the village fair (fete patronale), it is by lamplight, to
imitate townsfolk, and the dancing only begins when
it is dark, and goes on till midnight {Ouvriers des
deux mondeSf iv. p. 73). Yet it is not held shocking
for parents to let their daughters go to these dances.

224 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 155.

or worse still, go to those of a neighbouring village,
returning at what hour of the night and with whom
they please. It is not surprising, therefore, to hear
complaints of the precocious immorality and the noisy
effrontery of the young. And as nature is allowed
its way, the phenomenon of natural selection can be
observed. Thus in the poorer regions of Champagne
the grasping and sharp-witted characters I have
previously described secure bit by bit most of the
land ; the weaker lose their land, if they have any,
and work as labourers, with the ignominious title of
** petites gens/^ for the stronger peasants ; the worst and
weakest are eliminated, and go chiefly to the plains of
Picardy, where they work on the great beetroot sugar
estates ; and without any human influence to restraii)
them, and lacking faith and morals, live in indescrib-
able debauchery. This is the extremity of rural
degradation ; but the peasantry they have left behind,
excluding, of course, the scattered remnant who keep
the old religion, although by no means simple plea-
sure-seekers, still have broken to pieces the code of
Christian morals.

§ 155. Sometimes even in this life we reap as we
have sown ; and among the French peasantry the aged
parents taste the bitter fruit of their own misdeeds.
Their own grey hairs receive no more respect than
they have shown to the innocence of childhood. The
children, encouraged to despise religion, do more, and

§ 155.] THE FRENCH PEASANTRY. 225

despise their father and mother ; and the law of suc-
cession and of equal and compulsory partition gives
them opportunities of showing their feelings. In the
region of Laon, "when one parent dies, the children,
in virtue of their legal rights, despoil the survivor,
taking away the furniture (mobih'er), and having it
sold by auction. The old mother is driven from her
home, and obliged to lodge for periods of three months
[with her children], faring ill at the hands of a son-
in-law or daughter-in-law, laughed at by the grand-
children, . . . and longing, as a blessing from Heaven,
for the moment when death shall take her from a
family where she is an encumbrance." The same
thing happens when the parents, worn-out with age,
toil, and privations, divide their goods among their
children, reserving for themselves a pension for life.
For if the children are got to fulfil their agreements,
they fulfil them in a manner always most offensive,
and do not hide their wish that the obligation may
soon cease ; so little have the sweet affections of the
family been nurtured in them in their youth, so com-
pletely has natural affection been stifled by covetous-
ness (Ouvriers des deux mondes^ iv. p. 69). Often indeed
these children will find pretexts to evade giving the
money, or board, or lodging they have promised ; the
father is like a troublesome creditor, and is ill-treated
accordingly; and especially when there are money
difficulties he becomes simply a nuisance, and is let

know it ; sometimes they call him Monsieur vit tou-

p

226 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 156.

jours, that is, Mr. Never-die ; sometimes the wretched
man is driven to put an end to his miserable life.^

§ 156. The French Law, avowedly directed against
the union and permanence of great families, acts with
still greater force to break up the families of the
poorer classes, as the costs of partition as well as of
lawsuits are relatively greater. The poorest families
suffer most. Thus during the year 1850, according to
an official report, 1980 sales of less that 500 francs
each realised 558,092 francs altogether, whereas
the total legal costs amounted to 628,906 francs
(Le Play, Reforme Sociale, iii., Appendix C.) So all
was swallowed up. The situation of orphan minors
is peculiarly disastrous. Le Play (Ibid.) gives a
melancholy but not exceptional case of four young
children left orphans with a little property worth
900 francs ; the forced sale realised only 725 francs,
and the legal expenses, of which he gives every item
in detail, reached 643 francs. So the poor orphans,
when the funeral expenses (42 francs) and some other
small charges were paid, had left between them just
30 francs 37 centimes. This is a case to excite un-
mixed pity ; but in many other cases the sufferings
of the peasantry are as much their own fault as that
of the law. For they are in extreme contrast with
the Chinese, not only in the lack of filial piety, but in

^ See the testimony of Pinart, Bonjean, and Legouv^, cited in
Appendix A. of the third edition of Le Play's Organisation du travail.

§ 156.] THE FRENCH PEASANTRY. 227

the lack of joint families and fraternal union. Far
from keeping together in harmony, they often dispute
the justice of the partition, and in consequence a large
proportion of civil causes, as I have already noticed
(supra, § 114), are concerned with matters of succes-
sion. Often when the old parents are yet alive, but
have already divided their property, disputes arise
among the children ; and then the parents are likely
enough to be the first victims. In some regions the
extraordinary division of property into innumerable
scattered plots instead of conterminous farms increases
the occasions of quarrels and lawsuits.^ But this
very division is as much an effect as a cause of the
dissolution of families and discord among brethren ;
and where there is no such morcellement (for it is a
local malady) we shall still find the prevailing motto,
"Every man for himself," and shall look in vain among
After-Christian society for union and peace.

Nor let it be said that I take the bad among the
After-Christians and contrast them with the good

^ Such a village ^ banlieue morcelie, in the department of Aisne, is
described by M. Callay in Ouvriers des deux mondes, iv. p. 37 seq.
The total surface of the commune, amounting to something like 13,000
acres (5292 hectares), was divided in the year 1861 into 6786 parcels,
owned by 776 persons, of whom

545 owned from I to 10 parcels.

lOI

»»

10 „

20

77

ft

20 „

50

29

»>

50 »»

75

9

»»

75 »

100

15

over

100

If

228 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 157.

, among the Christians. For I am considering principles
of moral action ; and these French peasants are not
black sheep among the After-Christians, but white
and fleecy members of the flock; for they act on
principle, and follow their premisses with excellent
logic to their conclusion.

III. — The North-Eastern Americans.

§ 157. The change that a hundred years have
witnessed in the family life of the French peasantry
is not more startling than the revolution in America,
in parts of which the Christian family has been almost
wholly superseded by the After-Christian.^ The North-
Eastern States of the American Union, and the New
England States in particular, are the chief seats of the
new order of things. In New England at the time of
the separation from the mother-country the Christian
family flourished, not indeed in its full perfection, but
in many of its leading features (cf, supra, §^ 124, 125),
among the Puritan inhabitants. Home life was inter-
woven with religion, parents were greatly reverenced,

^ I have chiefly followed the instructive work of Claudio Jannet,
Les £,tat5'Unis contemporains^ third edit., Paris 1877. Also a series of
articles on America in The Months 1884, especially in September and
December 1884, on American Public Schools and Cheap Literature.

§ 157.] THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS, 229

morals were good, marriages generally early, and also
permanent ; for divorce, though not unknown, was
very rare, and generally required a special law in
each case ; and all schools and colleges were deeply
and thoroughly religious.

How completely this has all changed will be seen
from what is to follow. The further question, indeed,
why there was this change, it is not in my province
to answer, any more than to say why the Christian
family has been superseded in Palestine or Picardy.
In all cases, indeed, the immediate cause of the change
is that Christian doctrine is superseded ; for then the
Christian family cannot stay. Thus the difference
between France and America— for there is a difference
—is not in the mental change having come first and the
change in family life second ; for that must always
be the order; but in the particular application of the
new views to practice. In France the evil had its
centre in the father, who was irreligious, or at least
disabled or demoralised by a bad law of succession ;
and the schools in vain sought to stem the corruption
of the home ; and the women were more Christian
than the men : whereas in New England the laws of
succession are by no means bad, but the schools have
been the centres of corruption, which the influence of
the home has not been enough to stem ; divorce, scarce
known in France, has played a great part in America ;
and the women have cast aside the austere dogmas
of Christianity as completely as the men.

230 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 158.

§ 158. The "public schools" of America have for
many years been the boast of the country; nay,
worshipped with a blind devotion as a sacred thing,
like the African's fetish ; a matter not of reason but
of faith. These schools have much resemblance to
the Board Schools in England, being schools pro-
vided by Government out of public funds for
elementary instruction. But there are some diflfe-
rences. The American schools are more thoroughly
"gratuitous," that is, the parents pay no school
fees and have to provide no books, paper, or other
requisite apparatus ; all is paid for out of the
funds of the particular State, or out of public lands
with which the schools have been endowed. The
sums annually voted for the support of these public
schools reach for the whole Union the immense
amount of eighty million dollars (sixteen million
pounds). Mpreover, they are frequented by a much
larger proportion of the population than the English
Board Schools ; for the distinctions of class are less
marked, and all the middle ranks, nay, the children
of many bankers, lawyers, and physicians, attend the
" public schools," leaving a much smaller number than
in England at the top of society, who provide out of
their own pockets for the private education of their
children. Further, there are no other elementary
schools that receive Government help, like the so-
called denominational schools of England. There are
a certain number of Catholic elementary schools, and

§ isa] THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS. 231

some for the German Protestants ; but these get no
farthing of public money ; and as there are no other
elementary schools to speak of, the great bulk of the
American youth receive their early training in the
public schools. These are mostly without any definite
religion, and have been so for years. Sometimes
there is Bible-reading, sometimes a hymn sung or
even a prayer said, but no serious attempt to teach
any religion beyond a feeble and profitless Deism.
The knowledge of this world indeed is well taught,
as far as it can be taught, at school ; the technical
methods and results are, I believe, excellent ; and if
we hear bitter complaints of the teaching unfitting for
the rough work of after-life,^ it is unfair to blame the
schools for giving the culture they are meant to give,
and for giving it so well.

^ See the lamentations in TAe North American Review^ vol. cxxxviii.,
February 1884, especially pp. 189, 190 — ** The present system, while it
fails to fit the great mass for real life, actually trains large numbers
into a positive distaste for what must be their real life-work. . . .
Witness the crowds of working girls in the great cities, not willing to
fill a position of honourable service in anybody's family ; not willing
even to marry an honest man and make a home for him, unless he can
keep her in idleness and furnish her with servants ; choosing rather to
jostle one another for a place behind a counter, though on starvation
wages, which must be eked out even at the price of womanhood and
honour. Witness the crowds of young men surrendering the home
that might be earned by the * labor ' they think themselves educated
* above,* and in its place taking a garret, and amusements of which
they had better be ignorant ; seeking for 'positions' already too full ;
while most of them are not really educated into the ability to do
anything particular, and do it well.'*

232 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 159.

§ 159. But I am concerned with moral and not
technical results; and these well-appointed, well-
attended, but godless schools have to answer — for
they alone can be taken as an adequate cause — for
the change that has come in America over the morals
of the young. Now precocious immorality has be-
come a characteristic of North-Eastern America. The
schools themselves, where boys and girls are generally
mixed — and this with mere lay teachers among a
population anything but simple, and with precautions
anything but efficacious — these schools themselves are
often the centres of moral corruption. The circula-
tion in most of them of obscene books and prints is
an evil now of long standing and unremedied ; the
occasional disclosures to the public of frightful dis-
orders cannot shake the infatuated faith in the After-
Christian dogmas on the nature and rights of man ; ^
and the combination of " free schools " and a " free
press " lead the American boy or girl to an almost
inevitable shipwreck of faith and morals. To judge
of the free press, let us hear what a Protestant clergy-
man of America writes on the foul literature of his
country — "Tons of the murderous rubbish flood the
market. . . . This sort of literature aims low for the
undergrowth. It is adjusted to the level of the
nursery, the playroom, the school, the shop — any-

^ Some fourteen years ago (in 1871) the investigations of Professor
Agassiz were made public, how a large proportion of the prostitutes
traced their demoralisation to the public schools. See TAg Catholic
Worlds October 1873, PP- 5» 6.

§ i6o.] THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS. 233

where, everywhere where boys and girls may be
encountered. Not only is literature steeped . . . with
the fatal contagion, but art is become siren, ... so that
the unlettered even may be assailed. . . . On ten
thousand news-stands, on the street corners of all
cities, villages, and hamlets, these alluring lascivious
cartoons and obscene cuts . . . are thrust full in
the faces of little children. You shall find them in
groups crowded about these infested windows and
booths, drinking ignorantly and greedily of this damn-
ing unwisdom that poisons flesh and spirit together.
It is peddled at railway stations, hawked persistently
through cars and steamboats. Every other boy has
the contraband stuff hidden in his pocket or under
his pillow. The labouring girls, that swarm the
great cities in underpaid wretchedness, stimulate their
dreary minutes with the illicit novel or newspaper.
Even tradesmen have caught the trick of utilising this
influx of uncleanness, and float their merchandise to
a wider market through the service of filthy pictures."^
These are the attractions of life ; and what is there
in the training and teaching of the public schools that
should hinder their enjoyment ? From the prison-
house of dogma and from the gloom of asceticism
have we not at length been set free ?

§ 160. Many of the young, mere children, having

' * Vlhg Churchman^ 2 1st June 1884, cited in The Month, December
1884, pp. 514, 515.

234 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ i6o.

set at naught the laws of God, take a further step and
set at naught the laws of man. The boy or girl is fed
from an early age on tales and police reports of crime
as well as of immorality ; and the knowledge of evil
induces imitation. Twenty years ago most of the
boys sent to the New York Reformatory had been
taken for pilfering^ but now for every sort of criminal
offence. Of tramps (and the tramp is a shocking
character in North America) a surprising number are
under sixteen or seventeen years old ; and the follow-
ing details, recently given, and referring to Boston or
New York, are instructive : — " There have been ar-
rested during this time £within the last nine months]
four bands of youthful bandits. One gang of seven
were all under sixteen years of age ; of one gang of
ten, all were under seventeen ; of one gang of nine,
all were under ten; and of one gang of seven, all
were under twenty. Those of the gang of nine
under ten years of age, just before their arrest, had
passed a resolution at their headquarters that each
one should poison his own mother. One of the boys
relented ; ... he thought he would practise on the
servant girl. She heard him discussing it with one
of his companions, . . . and caused the arrest of
these young criminals. Almost all these young boys
attributed their downfall to the reading of sensational
stories." ^ In Chicago, which, being a great town, may
perhaps be considered morally in the North-East,

* Cited in TAe Month, December 1884, p. 516.

§ i6i.] THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS. 235

though physically in the West, a Citizens' League for
enforcing the laws, especially those against drunken-
ness, found about the year 1879 that in their city
more than 30,000 boys and girls frequented the liquor
saloons, that 7000 boys and girls were arrested in
one year, and that more than half the business of the
courts was taken up with the trials and punishment
of these young delinquents.^ There has been a great
reduction in drunkenness by the efforts of the League ;
and they claim to have diverted over 20,000 children
from the liquor bars. But a reform league cannot be
kept at permanent high pressure ; whereas the irreli-
gious public schools and free press remain permanent
forces in the work of corruption.^

§ 161. The outbreaks of youthful crime are but the
more extreme signs of an habitual evil, the premature

^ See Mr. William Tallack's letter in the Tkg Times, 28th May 1885.

^ See some unsuspected testimony on the public schools " developing
crime cause," cited in The Catholic World, October 1877, p. 65. The
growth of crime and vice is noted by Mr. Grant White in an article,
" The Public School Failure," in the North American Review, December
1880 (vol. cxxxi. p. 546). How futile was the attempted answer to this
article in the same Review is well pointed out in the Church Quarterly
Review, July 1881, vol. xii., in an article, "Failure of the Common School
System in America." It may be well to add, I am not saying or imply-
ing that a knowledge of the " three R's " is the cause of crime ; it is no
more so than is the ignorance of them. The real cause is our depraved
nature— our anger, greed, lust ; and these will break out into crime
under "favourable" circumstances both among the literate and illi-
terate, unless they have been brought into subjection by a religious
training.

236 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ i6i.

independence of the young. Rousseau's theory is
admirably followed, and parents and children with all
possible speed shake off their obligations to one
another, and return to their natural liberty. The
almost unlimited powers of the father to dispose of
his property by will, is of no avail to secure his
authority, where fortunes are easily made and lost,
where public opinion condemns the exercise of parental
power, and where at school the young are so taught
as to think themselves capable of judging all questions,
and of guiding their course of life without being con-
trolled by their parents. Boys and girls of twelve
or fourteen will write to the newspapers on questions
of school teaching and discipline, and their letters are
treated seriously.^ Moreover, a newspaper press has
sprung up entirely written by boys and girls from
thirteen to eighteen years old ; an inquiry made in
the year 1877 showed that in the space of a few years
nearly 5000 newspapers of this kind have been pub-
lished in the United States and Canada, some having

^ Father Clarke relates the following anecdote in TAe Month,
September 1884, p. 107 : — " A little boy of nine years old presented
himself not long since at a large Catholic college in one of the American
cities, and asked for the Prefect of Studies. When that official pre-
sented himself the child informed him that he intended to study the
l^atin language, and would like to see the prospectus of the course of
studies pursued at the college. It was handed to him with such expla-
nations as were possible to such a youngster. He sat and read it for
some time with a critical eye, and then quietly gave it back, with the
remark, * Don't feel like coming to your college. Good morning, sir,'
and off he went."

§ 1 62.] THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS. 237

a large circulation, and generally marked by extrava-
gant sarcasm. And when these boys and girls grow
to be young men and women, they appreciate and act
on the doctrine that the young alone are able to
assimilate the latest conquests of science and walk in
the van of progress, and that the young therefore,
and not the old fogies, should have as much influence
as possible. No wonder, then, that you need not
consult your parents before marriage, much less ask
their consent. No wonder that the life of a farmer
in the North-Eastern States is despised, and that the
young Americans flock into the town, without regard
to their aged parents or to the home of their child-
hood. No wonder that an observer accustomed to
the domestic life of the Spaniards, looks in vain among
the Yankees for family affection.^ For in the main
there is as little of brotherly love as of filial piety ;
and when the parents are dead it is common for
brothers to become completely strangers to one
another.

§ 162. America is the classical land for the emanci-
pation of women ; but, be it well understood, emanci-
pation not in the Christian sense of securing their
rights to the weaker and gentler sex by honouring
virginity, by making marriage a holy and perpetual
state, and by assigning women the supremacy in
works of mercy ; but in the un-Christian sense of

^ Eezdsia contcmporanea^ Madrid, June 1883,

238 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 162.

assimilating them to men (see supra, §§ 108, 109). I
have already spoken of the effects on morals of the
education of boys and girls in common ; and by giving
both the same training the girls run the risk of serious
physical injury. How far this injury is common is
hotly disputed, and I am not competent to enter on a
physiological discussion. Nor, again, will I give as
typical the excesses of individuals and the language
and conduct of certain masculine women, or such ill-
guided movements as the Women's Whisky War in
1874, when troops of women camped round the liquor
shops to reclaim the drinkers and the publicans. The
real point is, that many of the women, by their irreli-
gious education, are rendered unfit for the duties of
wives and mothers. This evil, among others, is set
forth in the following passage from an American
magazine : — " How fearfully the family relation has
been impaired in America all intelligent observers
know. The laxity and confusion of the marriage
laws ; the shocking frequency of divorce ; the publicity
given to scandalous and indecent investigations ; the
prevalence of the crime of infanticide ; against which
the press, the pulpit, and the medical profession have
long exclaimed in horror; the growing inability or
unwillingness of American women to bear the burden
of maternity ; . . . the breaking-up of homes ; the
licence allowed to the young of both sexes — all these
things are the appalling symptoms of a deep-seated
social disorder. . . . The mother no longer lives in

§ 163.] THE NORTH'EASTERN AMERICANS. 239

the midst of her children. . . . Children are educated
by hired nurses, and before they are full-grown
emancipate themselves from the control of parents
whom they have never been taught to respect and
obey. . . . The hotel and the boarding-house are
driving out of existence those model homes which
were once the glory of America. What else could we
expect ? It is the woman who gives character to the
household, and the tendency of our time is to remove
woman from the fireside and set her upon the plat-
form" (The Catholic IVorld, July 1876, vol. xxiii. p.
461). Only mark, it is not so much the being on the
platform that is the cause or sign of evil, much less
any abundance of culture and learning, but the love
of pleasure and ease, and the lack of the restraints
and supports of religion.

§ 163. As might be expected, if all is to be so free
and easy, the men on their side have been emancipated
in their relation to women. How marriage itself has
been affected we shall see directly ; but, apart from
this, the reins have been let loose and men have fol-
lowed their passions. True, there are excellent laws
in most or all of the States against seduction (though
absurd laws if men and women are alike). But they
do not prevent the deluge of obscene literature, nor
the great cities being hotbeds of every abomination.
Never, perhaps, has vice been so prevalent and pre-
cocious. A priest in one of the largest American

240 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 164.

cities, when asked by a traveller on the state of mora-
lity, answered that in all the city there were few boys
of thirteen or fourteen who had not already lost their
innocence. Pittsburg is said to contain more bad
houses in proportion to the population than any other
city in the world, and the age at which boys begin to
frequent them is scarcely credible. Cincinnati is not
much better, and there are sad accounts in Chicago of
the unblushing effrontery of open vice.^

No wonder that we have complaints that " marriage
is ridiculed, conjugal affection put down as antiquated,
home-lovingness pitied as old-fashioned, family re-
unions voted dull, and, as a natural consequence,
youth is more or less alienated from the unfashionable
circle."^ No wonder that among the richer classes
the After-Christian French, with their late and mer-
cenary marriages, have many imitators. No wonder
also among this new generation of Americans, with
their shallow smattering of all knowledge and their
deep acquaintance with all vice, that there is an
audience ready to receive the most childish falsehood
and the most ribald blasphemies against Christianity and
against God, with continual laughter and applause.^

5 164. Among the North-Eastern Americans mar-
riage is liable to the two notable maladies of dis-

1 The Month, July 1884, p. 371.

2 Catholic Worlds March 1873, vol. vxi. p. 782.
• The Month, May 1884, pp. 48, 49.

§ 1 64.] THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS. 241

solution and unfruitfulness. The first indeed, namely,
divorce, is common in many other parts of the Union,
and is so frequent as to reduce marriage almost to the
level of temporary cohabitation. No less than six-
teen causes of divorce are generally recognised by
the laws of the different States,^ namely — (i) bigamy ;
(2) adultery on the part of the wife ; (3) voluntary
desertion during one, two, three, or five years ; (4) pro-
longed absence during five years ; (5) insanity ; (6) co-
habitation of the husband with a coloured woman;
(7) vagrancy ; (8) violence ; (9) gravely insulting
language; (10) habitual drunkenness or opium-eating;
(11) imprisonment for crimes determined by the laws
of the particular State; (12) impotence; (13) refusal
of the husband to give his wife the means of subsis-
tence ; (14) refusal of the wife to follow her husband ;
(15) licentiousness on the part of one of the married
pair; (16) joining the Shakers, who practise conti-
nence. In Kentucky, for a husband to announce in
the newspaper that he will not pay his wife's debts, is
a sufficient ground for her to claim divorce. In some
States the matter is left to the discretion of the court,
as in Maine (previous to 1883), "when the judge
decrees it reasonable and proper, conducive to domestic
harmony, and consistent with the peace and morality
of society." Only a very few States allow judicial sepa-
ration, and where allowed, it is little used. Moreover,
the restrictions in some States, such as a delay before

^ I follow Jannet, J^iats-Unis, third edit., i. pp. 207-2 la

242 A FTER'CHRISTIA N FA MI LIES. [§ 165.

making a fresh marriage, can, I think, in great mea-
sure be frustrated by change of residence. Thus it
is dubious whether frequent divorce will be really
checked by the recent legislation in Maine (given in
The Times, Sth September 1883), restricting the causes
of divorce, forbidding the petitioner to marry again
within two years, and forbidding the respondent ever
to marry again except with permission of the Court.

§ 165. What complicated legal scandals can arise
from the diversity of the marriage and divorce law,
can be seen from the following case, reported in

December 1 880: — "William A. S — married a

woman in Ohio, and subsequently removed to Iowa;
and there obtained, through a Chicago lawyer, a
divorce. On the day of his divorce he married
another woman in Iowa ; but the courts of that State,
being appealed to, declared the divorce illegal and the
re-marriage void. Yesterday the Chicago court held
the divorce valid according to the laws of Illinois.

Under these cross decisions S , who has children

by both wives, cannot legally live with either within
certain territorial boundaries, though he may legally
live with his Ohio wife in Iowa, and with his Iowa
wife in Illinois." It is not surprising, under such
circumstances, that the newspapers treat morals and
marriage with levity, and that they facilitate divorce
by the daily insertion of advertisements like the
following : —

§ i66.] THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS. 243

"Absolute divorces legally obtained in different
States. Desertion, &c., sufficient cause. No publicity.
No charge until divorce is obtained. Advice free.
, Attorney J — Broadway."^

On the actual number of divorces a few figures will
suffice. In Massachusetts the ratio of divorces to
marriages in the years from 1869 to 1873 was i to
about 42, but in the years from 1874 to 1877, I to
23 {The Tablet^ iith September 1880). The most
recent figures I have (from The Times^ nth April 1883)
show, according to the Secretary of the New England
Divorce Reform League (and there was need of such
a league), that in Massachusetts the ratio was i to
21, in Vermont I to 13, in Connecticut I to 10.4, in
Rhode Island i to 10, in Maine I to a little over 9,
in New Hampshire I to 9. The population of Con-
necticut increased in thirty years something under 70
per cent. ; the divorces increased nearly 500 per cent. ;
and the increase and prevalence of divorce among the
After-Christian population is greater than it seems ;
for there is a large and growing Catholic population
among whom divorce is never practised ; and thus in
reality the ratio of divorces to marriages among the
After-Christians of Connecticut (for example) is pro-
bably the startling figure of I to no more than 8.

§ 166. Logic is said to be remorseless; but this
term of reproach only means that people dislike having

^ Cited in The Catholic World, Maidi i%n^, ^. I'^'i*

244 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ i66.

to confess that they are in the wrong, and have started
from a false principle. Now the Yankee population are
proverbially sharp-witted, and are practical logicians.
If married people fail to agree, why should they not
part company and each seek a pleasanter companion ?
Why not change wives or change husbands, as you
do houses or servants, according to your requirements
for the moment? On certain grounds we certainly
should be allowed to; and on the same grounds, why
should married people have children, if children are
an encumbrance ? Now in New England they are an
encumbrance, especially to the mothers : it is a trouble
and expense to bring them into the world, and a
trouble and expense to rear them ; they are incom-
patible with the pleasures of society and a proper
toilet. And if one or two are bad enough, to have
many is intolerable. Thus the New Englanders reach
the same conclusions as the After-Christian French
peasantry, and practise artificial sterility : so little has
race to do with these matters, and religion so much.
The evil, first noticed about the year 1850, has
gradually grown up, and is now notorious. The
Catholic bishops who met at the Council of Baltimore
in 1869, judged it needful to send a warning to all
their flocks against the growing and unnatural vice of
destroying children before their birth. The legislatures
of New York and Illinois in 1872 and 1873 enacted
penalties against those who practised or aided in such
guilt. And Congress so\i^\. \.o ^mxv\^\v \.\\s: ^^\iers of

§ 1 6;.] THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS, 245

wicked drugs. Recently the Secretary of the Sunday-
School Association of New York County tells us —
"There are lots of these big churches on Broadway
and Fifth Avenue, with from eight hundred to fifteen
hundred members, who cannot show a hundred Sun-
day-school scholars. ' Why is this ? ' you ask. Well,
I guess rich people have about quit having children.
And even middle-class Christians don't seem to do
much better."^

§ 167. The prevalence of these habits can be
measured by figures, the result of various inquiries.
Thus in 1870 in New York among strangers there
were more births by 8870 than deaths ; among the
native Americans there were more deaths by 7000
than births. A report on Rhode Island showed that
the annual birth-rate among the Americans was only
two in the hundred (or 20 per mt'l), less than half the
birth-rate among the immigrants. Figures from Mas-
sachusetts from 1876 to 1 88 1 show that during these
six years the deaths among native Americans exceeded
the births by 29,796, while among the foreign-born
population, births exceeded deaths by 87,824. The
statistics of the schools show the deficiency of New
England in children. Massachusetts has a much larger
population than Kentucky, yet Kentucky has nearly
twice as many school children. The proportion of chil-

^ Cited by Bishop M'Quaid, TAe North American Review, February
1883, vol cxxxvl p. 149.

246 AFTER'CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ i68.

dren of school age to the total population is 31.4 per
cent, in the South ; in New England only 19.5 per cent.
True, some of the dififefence is due to the emigration
of young men from the North-East, leaving old people
and spinsters behind. But still the great cause re-
mains, not so much in the fewness as in the unfruitful-
ness of marriages. As the Chicago Tribune says —
" One or two children at most are the rule in families,
which two or three generations back were large
enough to absorb nearly all the scriptural names that
are euphonious." ^

§ 168. Such is family life among the After-Chris-
tians of America. But, again, let me point out, lest I
be accused of exaggeration, that only a portion of the
Am'erican population is affected. Multitudes of native
American farmers in the West and the South, multi-
tudes of foreign-bom inhabitants of the North and
East, retain more or less of the Christian family ; and
the excellence of many of the American laws, especially
the Homestead Exemption Laws (supra, § Ii3), might
commend them to our imitation. There are many
powerful elements of good in the great Republic ; and
the Revolution which separated the United States
from England, had nothing in it of a revolt against
Christianity. But I have not been attempting a
description of America ; what I have attempted is
to describe the nature and the immediate causes of

1 Cited in The Times, 1st July 1884.

§ 169.] THE NORTH'EASTERN AMERICANS. 247

one phenomenon, namely, the After- Christian family.
I will but add that as long as the public elementary
schools remain what they are, the spread of the After-
Christian family among those who have frequented
them is almost certain.^ The happy home-life of old
days must go. It might be pleasant to keep it when
you have dropped the dogmas, but you -cannot ; for it
soon follows after them and disappears.

§ 169. Look, for example, at the youth of Australia,
in particular Victoria, who have been trained, or, rather,
been let grow in the new fashion, with moral discipline
and religious teaching both reduced to a minimum.
A*n observer, who is all the more trustworthy because
he does not see the significance of his testimony,
describes the (to us) extraordinary laxity of discipline
both at home and at school ; how boys lack respect
for any one or anything ; how public opinion favours
the self-willed child ; how childish disobedience passes
into disrespect towards parents, and disrespect into
want of affection ; how any intimate union between
father or mother and the grown-up son or daughter,
is most rare, the motto of the young Australian

being, " Every one for himself, and devil take the hind-

•

* The serious Protestants in America have long recognised the need
of religious education and the evils of the public schools. See a
report of the year 1865 given by Claudio Jannet, ^tais-Unis, ii.
pp. 81, 82, and an article in Tht North American Review^ August 1883,
pp. 99-117.

248 AFTERXHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 170.

most." ^ Again, a recent work on South Africa maiics
among the English colonists the general prevalence
of indifference or hostility to religion (J. S. Little,
South Africa, 1884, i. pp. 36-38), and also of the ab-
sence of parental authority, precocious independence,
and in Natal a rude and insolent race of boys and
young men, who fill the stranger with disgust (Ibidj pp.
50, 75—76, 77—79). Yet the writer does not observe
how the one phenomenon is connected with the other.
But they are. And the youths of South Africa, as
well as of Australia, follow the example of the Ameri-
cans ; and you will soon find they '' don't feel like "
doing anything that is against their own sweet will
to do. The march of mind indeed is not everywho'e
equally rapid, and we cannot say that in South Africa
or Australia "they have about quit having childrer,"
or that for every ten or twenty marriages there is a
divorce. Both phenomena indeed can be observed, as
we have seen (supra, §§ 133, 139), among the Moslem
After-Christians, and also in different parts of Europe.
I have given a European example of the one (supra^
§ 152), and will now illustrate the other, namely,
frequent divorce.

§ 170. Among the so-called Protestant population
of Switzerland — thq bulk of them are really not Chris-
tians at all — divorce has reached the New England

^ R. E. N. Twopeny, Town Life in Australia, London 1883, pp. 83,
54, 88, 89, loi, 102.

§ I70.] THE NORTH-EASTERN AMERICANS. 249

level. It is becoming quite common, we are told,
among the working classes, for people to marry on the
understanding that if, after a trial of a few months or
a year or two, they grow tired of each other, they
shall make a joint application for divorce ; for such
application is taken by the courts as proof of irrecon-
cilable incompatibility of temper, and this is ground
sufficient for divorce. In the whole Confederation in
1 88 1 the proportion of divorces granted was one to
about every twenty marriages, or 5 per cent. But
this includes the Catholic cantons and population, and
the proportion is really much greater, as divorces are
rare in the Catholic cantons. Thus there were none
in Uri, Obwalden, Nidwalden, and Appenzell-inner-
Rhoden ; only 0.18 per cent, in Valais, and 1.48 in
Lucerne ; but 8.68 in Zurich, 8.79 in Geneva, 9.22
in Thurgau, and 13.18 in Appenzell-ausser-Rhoden.
And this great frequency of divorce has arisen, I be-
lieve, only recently, in particular since the legislation
of 1875, that made it easy throughout the Confedera-
tion both to marry and to dissolve marriage (The Times,
13th September 1881 and 27th August I883). And the
ominous decline of the birth-rate from 33 per mil in
1876 to 29.8 in 1 88 1 seems to point, if we again
separate off the genuine Christian cantons, to the
spread of sterility among the After-Christian inhabi-
tants. In Geneva the birth-rate in 188 1 was only
33.7, the lowest in the Confederation ; at the other
extremity the rate in the thoroughly Christian cantoa

256 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 171.

of Appenzell-inner-Rhoden was 34.90 (Times, 28th
January 1880 and 6th October 1882).

I might add other illustrations, for example, of the
divorces in Berlin and Saxony. But I have said
enough about foreign countries, and am bound to look
whether in our own England a great example of the
After-Christian family is not to be found.

IV. — The English Labourers.

§ 171. There is no need to discuss the question,
which is to a great extent one of words, whether
England is a Christian country or not. There are
multitudes of English families, especially amoAg the
upper and middle ranks, that display with more or
less completeness the characteristics of the Christian
home ; but there are multitudes also that are in fact,
and often in name also, un-Christian. Now I am con-
cerned at present only with these last ; and 1 think
they include the majority pf two great classes, namely,
the agricultural labourers, and the lower grades of
workmen, also known as labourers, in the great cities.
Let us look briefly at both these two classes.

The family life of most agricultural labourers in
most districts of England has the two marks that are
incompatible with the Christian family, namely, habitual

§ 171.] THE ENGLISH LABOURERS. 251

undutifulness and habitual immoralitj.* The first, in
particular the absence of filial piety, has long beoi well
known to all who have had to do with the administra-
tion of poor relief; and the following picture, which
is not overdrawn, will show others the nature of the
evil. Mr. W. H. Roberts, in TJu Fortnightly Review^
April 1875 (voL xviL pp. 519, 520), after observing
how among the English agricultural labourers, unlike
the Irish poor, there is scarcely a trace of r^ard for
the aged, especially aged parents, goes on to say —
" Abundant evidence might be adduced . . . that, . . .
whatever their circumstances may be, the children of
worn-out agricultural labourers will do nothing for
them except on compulsion, having a fixed idea that
that duty pertains solely to the parish. Repeated
instances have come under the writer's own observa-
tion in which unmarried sons, earning good wages,
. . . have not only not contributed towards the sup-
port of their pauper parents, but have actually lived
with them rent free, and filched from them all they
could of the parish allowance. Not even the smallest
offices of filial duty will they render without being
paid. When, as frequently happens, an out-pensioner
of the parish lives with a married son or daughter, if
the poor old creature falls ill, an instant demand is
made at the Board for an allowance for nursing. As
a rule this demand is granted; but when exceptions
occur, it is not an unheard-of thing for these unnatural
children to send the aged sufferer at once to the work-

252 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FA^ILIES. [§ 172.

house. . . . The agricultural labourer shows . ♦ .
the same desire to shirk his obligations towards his
orphan grandchildren. ... The cases the writer has
in view are those in which the grandfather can be
shown to be in a position to do something. * . » The
poor children will be brought to the workhouse by the
grandmother, who will declare before their faces, and
amidst their tears and sobs, that ' she can't keep 'em,
nor won't,' and that she will leave them there."

§ 172. And why should she keep them when she
has nothing to expect from them when they are grown
up but neglect or abandonment? And, again, what
else can be expected of children, when they have never
been taught how to live a good life in their homes,
have never been apprenticed to the arts of obedience
and reverence, of kindness and affection ? " You
must like somebodyy don't you ? " Dr. Jessopp asked
of one Daniel, a rustic youth of nineteen.^ But he
answered : " 1 dunno as no one ha' done anythin' for
me as I should loik 'em for. There's lots on 'em as
don't loik me particler, and there's lots on 'em as I
shouldn't moind where they went to. I ain't a-goin'
to loik them as don't loik me ! "

These are just like the sentiments common among
the French peasantry. And in rural England, like
France, the home has been the centre of evil, not, as

^ As he narrates in The Nineteenth Century, October 1883, p. 599,
in an interesting but melancholy article on " Clouds Over Arcady."

§ 172.] THE ENGLISH LABOURERS. 253

in America, the school. No doubt the two former
countries have begun to imitate the godless schools
of the last ; but at any rate in the rural districts of
England the schools have hitherto helped rather than
hindered religion and morals. The source of vice has
been the godless home. For a great portion of the
country folk can be said, I think, altogether to lack
religion ; and if the churches of the Establishment are
empty, so too are the chapels of the Nonconformists.
These rustics are above the squabbles of bigotry,
and in the issue of the strife of creeds they will take
less interest than they would in a dog-fight.^ And
mark, it is the godlessness, the religious and not the
physical deficiency of the homes, that is the cause of
moral evil (or what Christians call such). No doubt
the overcrowding of cottages, which has again and
again been pointed out during the last forty years,
and still remains in great part unremedied, is the
immediate occasion of many shocking things — of the
loss of modesty, of horrible incest, and other evils,
all of which are well known. No doubt, also, if the
population could be decently housed there would be
much less of these evils. But still there would be
no rooting out of them, nothing to prevent some
other occasion of them arising. Surroundings are not
everything ; and, remember, the most virtuous popu-
lation in Europe have lived crowded into miserable

^ Cf, Dr. Jessopp in The Nineteenth Century^ October 1883, pp,
600, 601.

254 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 173.

hovels, from which even an English agricultural
labourer would shrink. But these labourers, lacking
spiritual force, have been the slaves of their physical
surroundings.

§ 173. Thus the man, being the stronger animal,
and with no fear of punishment, social or legal, to hold
him in check, often treats his wife with brutality, and
sometimes his children. And the public-house form-
ing the one recreation, the one interest, left of all that
used to break the monotony of life, to the public-
house he goes. Meanwhile he can hardly be expected
to attend much to the moral training of his children.
Still it is startling how amid the green fields they live
a life as though they were in the streets of a great
town. In play-time, just as you must look for the
father in the drink-shop, so you must look for the
children in the gutter. Games are becoming a thing
of the past ; inclosures of common land, notably of
roadside strips, have destroyed many a playground
and cut off many a chance of boyish rural sport ;
while the condition of the labourers, often with scarce
a strip of garden, gives no opportunity for those many
employments, half work, half play, that occupy the
children of petty cultivators and cottiers.^ So, in

^ The change that has come over the Eastern Counties, among
other things the change in the condition of the children, is narrated by
Dr. Jessopp in TAe Nineteenth Century ^ August 1 88 1. Thirty years '
ago the young people could have interest and amusement with the
donkeys, the cows, and the geese kept by their parents ; there was the

§ 174.] THE ENGLISH LABOURERS, 255

default of all rational recreation or occupation, the
boys and youths have two main forms of amusement.
One is to stand or sit in groups at the corners of the
village streets, and watch all that passes, addressing
the passers-by, when there se^ms a safe opportunity,
with rude and ribald jesting. The other is to wander
about with the girls. And soon the youths can add
a third form of amusement, that is to be their chief
solace in subsequent life, the frequentation of the
public-house.

§ 174. What the second recreation brings with it
is easy to see. A recent witness speaks of how,
casting his mind back over several years, he can but
recall two weddings that have not been hastened
by the approaching confinement of the bride ; and
how these exceptions prove the rule, since in one the
bridegroom was nearly eighty, in the other the bride
was past sixty. ^ And now this reparatory kind of
marriage is no longer to be expected Let us hear
again that excellent observer of his own times. Dr.

chance of hunting for rats and weasels, snakes and hedgehogs, some-
times even rabbits and hares. Now all this is over, and the dull life
of the elders, with nothing but gossip for the women and the public-
house for the men, is reproduced among the children, who play marbles
in the gutter in dread of the road surveyor (p. 270). He has actually
seen children crying because the school was shut for the holidays, and
they had nothing to do at home and no place to play in (p. 274).

^ "A Villager" in a long communication in TAe Daily NewSy
1 6th September 1884, in which he describes the decline of village mirth
and the miserable substitutes for healthy recreation.

256 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 174,

Jessopp (in the Nineteenth Century y August 1 881, pp.
273, 274) — '* Thirty years ago marriage also followed
as a matter of course, and a man was looked upon as
a bad fellow who delayed to ' father his child ' by
making the mother his wife. Of late years this
remnant of honourable sentiment has been dying out,
and ♦ . , female prostitution in country villages is by
no means uncommon. The young men have no
houses to bring their wives to ; the young women will
not be content with the ruinous hovels. So the child
is born, weaned, and left with the grandmother; the
young fellow slinks off into the town or takes * a job '
in some remote county — the order of affiliation is
never served, and the girl goes out to service, or she
hangs about the village with nothing to do, and hoists
her flag again in hopes that sooner or later she may
capture some weak besieger of the citadel, and be
made an honest woman of by bearing another's name.
If this should not happen, . . . and if youth passes,
. . . she has still another chance. A labourer finds
himself suddenly a widower with three or four young
children and no female to look after them. What is
he to do ? The natural course would be to marry
again. Formerly this used to be invariably done, and
usually with very little delay. Now he tells you he
can do better than that. He takes a housekeeper^ and
pretends he means to look out for a wife. He has
not the least difficulty in finding the housekeeper^ and
forthwith new relations are entered into. He has

§ 175.] THE ENGLISH LABOURERS, 257

nothing to gain by marriage — nothing as far as he
can see — and something to lose by tying himself for
life to a woman whose antecedents will not bear look-
ing into, who has perhaps two or three children that
may be anybody's, and whom, moreover, he has in
his power as long as he can dismiss her at a week's
notice."

§ 175. Can we wonder that crowds of young
people quit such miserable homes, so dull and hopeless
a country life, for the town, and that the rural districts
of England are in general (as the Census returns
show) declining in population. The young have not
the memories of a happy childhood, the presence of a
happy home, the sense of duty to their parents, to
keep them back ; nor have they gained that love for
country life and its pursuits, that cHnging to the soil,
which is so common among the country-born else-
where. The energetic and laborious have no pros-
pect of advancement or a secure and happy old age if
they stay in their native village. So a select few go
to rise. But most who go are in quest of pleasure ;
and on these emigrants from the village let us cite
Dr. Jessopp once more : — " The young men, having
once broken away from the parents' nest, acquire
roaming habits, go to the 'pits,' run up to London
for a spree, become navvies, and speedily learn the
coarse vice and foul language of the society into

which they have plunged ; and if they come back to

B

258 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 176.

their birthplace, they come back brutalised, unsettled,
reckless; always with empty pockets, and . . . denounc-
ing every class except their own. . . . But these men
do not marry ; too often they return at thirty, broken-
down sots and badly diseased," spreading poison both
physically and morally. But they are not likely, if
they do return to the village, to rest there long. For
these excavators or navvies, who are so conspicuous a
feature in our large towns and on all great works,
have been well described by one in a position to
know them,^ as " physically among the finest men in
England, but in their habits thriftless and nomadic,
who gradually glide downwards until eventually they
become tramps and inmates of common lodging-houses
and casual wards. They all come from the land.
They are chiefly farm labourers' sons, who are at-
tracted by high wages to go from one kind of public
works to another, seldom marrying or accepting any
settled pursuit." This class of emigrants from the
country form one contingent among the labourers of
the town, to whom we now turn for a second example
in England of family life among those who have lost
Christianity.

§ 176. One-half, probably much more than one-
half, of the common labourers of London, and petty
dealers in the same social rank, may be said, I think,

^ The son of an agricultural labourer, cited by Mr. J. F. Boyd in TAe
Times, 21st November 1883 ("Letters on State- Directed Emigration").

§ 177.] I^HE, ENGLISH LABOURERS. 259

themselves and their homes, to show the following
characteristics : —

First, they deserve to the full the beautiful epithets
that have of late been added to our language, unde-
nominational and unsectarian. They are above narrow
creeds and dogmatic teaching ; nor do their tenets of
theism, deism, or atheism require, and they do not
give, attendance at chapel or church.^ And they are
mostly free from political as well as religious super-
stitions, and are not to be awed or moved by phrases
like Lawful Authority, Love of Country, Rights of
Property, any more than by the Decalogue, the
Gospel, or the Church. Indeed they have mostly
discovered the real state of the case and the origin
of civil and religious authority. A few men by
combined force and fraud monopolise the good things
of this world, and set up the State to secure them
in their enjoyment. And then, as a masterpiece of
policy, they invent the next world, with its rewards
and punishments, to serve as required, either as a
soothing syrup to quiet the discontented and disin-
herited masses, or else as a scarecrow to terrify them
into submission. Only now the time for playing
these tricks is over.

§ 177. Secondly, these labourers are not tied in

^ See some figures in the well-known (Nonconformist) pamphlet,
TAe Bitter Cry of Outcast London^ 1883, p. 3, e.g.^ in two localities
observed the inhabitants numbered 2290 and 4235, the churchgoers
135 and 39.

26o AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, [§ 177.

bonds, like the upper classes, by the institution of
marriage. Let us hear a recent witness : — " Marriage
as an institution is not fashionable in these districts.
Yet ... so long as neither the hospital, the prison, nor
the churchyard effects a separation, the couples are
fairly faithful, and look upon themselves as man and
wife. . . . Both . . . exhibit great reluctance to ' break '
of their own free will, and it is marvellous [nay, rather
a witness to the natural sanctity of marriage, supra^
§ 103] to see the tenacity with which a decent hard-
working woman will cling to a ruffian who spends
her earnings and blackens her eye as regularly as
Saturday night comes round, although he has not
the slightest legal claim to her allegiance. If you
ask the couples who live happily together why they
don't get married, some will tell you frankly that they
never gave it a thought, others that it's a lot of
trouble, and they haven't had time " (G. R. Sims,
How the Poor Live^ pp. 25, 26). Still, desertions of
husband by wife and of wife by husband, both when
they are legally bound together and when they are
not, are no rarity. " Those who appear to be married
are often separated by a mere quarrel, and they do
not hesitate to form similar companionships immedi-
ately " {Bitter Cry, p. 7). Besides this there is a sort
of community of husbands and wives ; for, as Mr.
Sims tells us (How the Poor Live, p. 24), when a
husband is taken to prison, or (I gather) if he is
absent any time for any cause, his place is almost

§ 178.] THE ENGLISH LABOURERS. 261

invariably taken by another man — one of those
nomadic husbands who wander about from family
circle to family circle, ready to replace its absent
head at a moment's notice. A little child of eight
coming to school with at last a new pair of boots,
and asked where she had got them, answered, " One
of my fathers give 'em to me, mistress ; the one what's
at home this week." On which Mr. Sims pertinently
remarks that this father must have been better than
most of his kind. For the new-comer is not gene-
rally friendly to the children of his predecessors. And
this brings us to the third characteristic, the hideous
aspect of their homes.

§ 178. In the autumn of the year of grace 1883 the
Christian people of England were much moved by a
series of disclosures concerning the wretched and un-
christian state of the dwellings of the poor ; and for a
time even the world of fashion took an interest in pros-
pects of horror and projects of reformation. But the
horrible facts in the main were not new, and had been
known for thirty or forty years before, and there had
been previous outbursts of sympathy and legislation.
No wonder, then, we may doubt whether the new
sympathy and any new laws will work better than the
old ; and no wonder we find one of the leading English
journals speaking of the housing of the poor as " the
insoluble problem of the day " (The Spectator, i6th May
1885). Whether it is insoluble by After-Christians

262 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 178.

we have not to inquire ; only to notice the fact of the
almost incredible squalor and overcrowding, scarcely
any family with a really decent home, numberless
families with only one miserable room apiece, whole
houses parcelled out into such rooms, multitudes
resorting, for want of such " homes " as these, to the
common lodging-houses, the horrors of which, as well
as of those homes, any one who has seen them will
say cannot be believed till they have been seen.^

A fourth characteristic of domestic life is the insti-
tution of the gin-palace, in which the men and women
of the class I am considering take their chief recreation,
and where filthy talking and blasphemy, brawling and
drunkenness, have their chosen home. I need not say
more of the drink-shops except that they are frequented,

^ The descriptive literature of the dwellings of the poor has become
enormous, and perhaps may be classified into three main groups, all
springing from or leading to parliamentary reports. First, the group
over thirty years back, and whose chief writers were Pashley and
Kay ; secondly, the group represented by Mr. J. Hole [^Homes of the
Working Classes, 1866), Mr. May hew {London Labour and the London
Poor, 1 861), Mr. James Greenwood, the * Amateur Casual,* and Miss
Octavia Hill ; thirdly, the modem group, among which Mr. Sims'
book, How the Poor Live, with its excellent illustrations, ought to hold a
high place. But again let me repeat the caution already given (§ 172),
not to expect too much from the physical reformation of the dwelling-
places. For families to have but one room apiece is not the cause of
their degradation, and need not be the occasion. " It is astonishing,"
says Mr. Crowder in The Times^ 3d November 1883 (and he has
experience), " what comparative decency and comfort is attainable in
a single room when the wife is capable and cleanly, and when the
water-supply, drains, laundry, atvd oxivw svLrroundings are under con-
tiDuous supervision."

§ 179.] ^^^ ENGLISH LABOURERS. 263

willingly or unwillingly, by no small number of children.
And this brings me to the fifth characteristic, that
might have been anticipated from what I have already
said, the cruel or neglectful treatment of children.

§ 179. "The child misery that one beholds is . . .
appalling. . . . From the beginning of their lives
they are utterly neglected ; their bodies and rags are
alive with vermin ; they are subjected to most cruel
treatment ; many of them have never seen a green
field, and do not know what it is to go beyond the
streets immediately around them, and they often pass
the whole day without a morsel of food " (Bitter Cry, p.
13). Study the police reports and coroners' inquests,
and it is startling how many cases you find of children
dying or half-dying of starvation because the parents
spend their money on drink instead of on food and
clothing for their children. And the cases brought to
light represent a larger number that lie hid. The
same may be said of the many examples of brutal
violence, beating and kicking the children in drunken
fury or sober malevolence ; ^ and mark that the
frequency of step-children, due to the habits of mar-
riage I have spoken of, adds to the likelihood of ill-

^ Extreme youth is no protection. A father, who, by the way, was
a teetotaler, "book-learned," and an atheist, was found in 1885 to have
almost beaten to death his boy of two and a half years old, and even
his still younger boy of under twelve months old. The offence given
by the last was that of disturbing his father's sleep. See TAe Tahlety 29th
August j88Sf p. 323.

264 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES, ' {% i8o.

will. Sometimes children are let or sold to profes-
sional beggars to be paraded in rags and emaciation
to get the money of the benevolent. Sometimes they
are given over to be trained with shocking cruelty as
acrobats and " contortionists." Sometimes, worse still,
the children, instead of being shielded from evil by
their parents, are apprenticed to crime and vice. And
although virtue can be preserved on the stage, still
the theatres, the music halls, and the multitude of
public-houses with music and dancing licences are
sources of premature corruption to the thousands of
wretched children who are employed there to act, to
sing, or to dance ; and their ruin is so likely that a
good parent would rather, as one of them said, see
his children in their coffins than allow them to earn
their bread, as the phrase is, " on the boards." ^

§ 1 80. Sometimes children are simply cast out into
the streets and left to shift for themselves. The life led
by many of these has been so well described by Mr.
Rice Jones, a Protestant clergyman in St. Giles's, that I
will give the description in full (from a letter on " Under-
ground London" in The Times, 30th May 1884) : —

" That certain localities are the haunts of large gangs of
lads and girls, who spend half the night in the streets, and
give much trouble to the police, is a fact which has long
been notorious. But it is not so generally known that the

^ See p. i8i of the small but heartrending volume entitled Panto^
mz'ma fVat/s, by Miss Bailee, "Loivdoiv, i?>%v

§ i8o.] THE ENGLISH LABOURERS. 265

reason why many of these young people infest the streets
and become law-breakers is that they have no homes.
The truth is, however, that many of them are real out-
casts. They have been cast out of the only homes they
ever had by their own fathers, not necessarily for miscon-
duct, but simply because they were felt to be incumbrances*
And this is the greatest misfortune to hundreds of poor
children in London, that their fathers are known, or sup-
posed, to be still living. Had they been orphans they
might have had the advantage of a good early training in
some charitable institution; but because they are unfor-
tunate enough to have fathers alive, they are ineligible
for admission into the ordinary industrial schools, and are
left to shift for themselves, sometimes at a very early age.
The natural consequence is, that they become street Arabs,
and band together — boys and girls — for mutual protection,
amusement, and in some cases for mutual help.

" But what becomes of these homeless ones after they
leave the streets ? That is the question to which I now
more particularly wish to call attention. Where do they
sleep? Sometimes in threepenny lodging-houses, some-
times on door-steps, and very often in the passages or on
the staircases of houses, let in one-room tenements to
people of their own class. But the majority of the street
Arab fraternity generally prefer quarters where they are
not so likely to be interfered with or disturbed. So they
now utilise the empty cellars which were formerly occu-
pied by poor families, but which have been condemned
by the sanitary inspectors as unfit to live in. And when
they have ended their night's levelt^ m \.W ^\.\^^\.%^ "^ \^

266 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ i8a

in these underground holes that they mostly take refuge,
boys and girls together, some of them being mere children.

" The poor people who live in such houses are not all
bad people. But the hardships which they themselves
have gone through have made them blind to the con-
sequences of such irregularities ; and so, in spite of sani-
tary inspectors, and the police to boot, they allow the
cellars of the houses in which they live to be used nightly
in the way I have pointed out.

" Nor are the boys and girls who lead this kind of life
all thieves, or so utterly depraved as to be past reclaiming ;
on the contrary, many of them, although they have been
dragged up in habits which lead to crime, still retain in
themselves the makings of good and useful citizens.

" This district, where I work and live, is teeming with
such young outcasts. It is, in fact, a sort of human rabbit-
warren. But it is a mistake to suppose that the evil can
be remedied by setting on the School Board officers, sani-
tary inspectors, and police to hunt these outcasts down,
or by making a general clearance of the dens in which
they take refuge, and erecting in their places model build-
ings for people of a more respectable class. Society would
gain no advantage by merely transplanting St. Giles's to
another part of London, even if it could be done. Nor
will mere Board School education, admirable as it is in
many respects, ever be found to be an effectual remedy for
the evils we deplore. One of the most hopeless gamins
I know — a boy who, if he did not look so young, might
well personate the * Artful Dodger' — has passed the fifth
standard, and snaps his fvtv^ets ^\\.\\ vKv^\m\t«f at the School

§ i8i.] THE ENGLISH LABOURERS, 267

Board officers. And there are many like him. These
boys have a literature of their own^ — a literature which is
becoming more and more bold in its advocacy of the
doctrines of communism."

^ 181. These outcasts, it is true, are only one
section of the young ; but I doubt if they are much
or at all worse off morally and physically than the
children who are brought up in those abominable
homes. No wonder, for there is need of it, that
there is a society with the tell-tale title, " For the Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Children." No wonder, for there
is need of it, that Christians have set up a multitude
of " Homes " to receive the After-Christian children
rescued from the streets or from the worse custody of
unnatural parents and kindred. But for one rescued
a hundred remain. And they grow up many of them,
not stupid in their vice and illiterate, but with only
too much adroitness and knowledge. We have just
been told that their literature is communistic. But
this is a trifle, and can be unlearnt. Not so the tales
they can buy for twopence or a penny, tales the best
of which are frivolous, deceiving, and unwholesome,
and which descend from bad to worse, from tales
wherein successful theft and profligacy are held up to
admiration, to books the very titles of which cannot be
named in decent society — an appalling, greedily devoured
literature of profanity and filth.^ And so they grow

^ See chap, vilof Panfomime ^ai/^, on"CVvt2i^\^ov«-C\a.^%\A\&x'a^Ni:^^'

^^

268 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 182.

up to be men and women, and live, God knows
how.

In brief, to quote once more The Bitter Cry — " Incest
is common, and no form of vice and sensuality causes
surprise or attracts attention " (p. 7). " No respectable
printer would print, and certainly no decent family
would admit, even the driest statement of the horrors
and infamies discovered in one brief visitation from
house to house " (pp. 2, 3).

§ 182. We have seen enough; and let us hasten
and flee away from the abodes of abomination. But
let us take heed lest we be followed. I am not
speaking of the thieves and prostitutes, but of those
known as " roughs." At present indeed the poorer
classes suffer rather than the rich and respectable.
Thus Eliza Newland, fifty-six years of age, died in
Bethnal Green Workhouse from having been " deliber-
ately knocked down and kicked by a gang of youths
in Church Street** (The Times, 7th August 1882). And
a little before we are told {Ibid., ist June) — "Bank
Holiday was celebrated on the River Lea in such a
manner that the police books for the district teem
with cases of robbery, assault, and death. Gangs of
roughs patrolled the banks, or, seated in boats, went
up and down the river, molesting every one with whom
they came into contact." But is there anything in
the nature of things to keep these exploits within the
narrow limits of Bethnal Green and the River Lea ?

§ 1 82.] THE ENGLISH LABOURERS. 269

Or will infatuation lead any one even now to look
for a remedy in ** undenominational " schools ? or to
imagine that these ruffianly youths are without ele-
mentary learning ? Nay, as knowledge is power,
they already know too much. Look at Australia
once more, and read the writer to whom I have pre-
viously referred (§ 169). In Victoria, he tells us —
Victoria, remember, with "free, compulsory, and secu-
lar education " in thorough After-Christian fashion —
there is a new social danger, for which the new term
Larrikintsm has had to be invented. The " larrikins "
— we must not call them " roughs," for they are " edu-
cated " — move about in gangs with whom the police
cannot cope. They insult and rob, break into hotels
and have free drinks ; in their younger stage frighten
women and kick Chinamen. They sympathise with
criminals, and cannot be dealt with by severe punish-
ments, because their votes turn the scale at the
elections.^ True, in Adelaide, the capital of the neigh-
bouring colony of South Australia, the police have still
the upper hand. But precisely this colony has been
a Puritan centre, and in Adelaide we are told that
Philistinism and narrow-mindedness still prevail, and
that the churches are so numerous as to excite the
ridicule of the Victorians.^ Religion, in fact, is still a
power in South Australia; ungraceful, perhaps, and
prejudiced, but still religion.

^ Twopeny, Tcnvn Life in Ausfra/ia, pp. 98- loo.
2 /did,, pp. 120, 122, 123.

270 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 183.

Conclusion.

§ 183. The foregoing studies of families, Fore-
Christian, Christian, and After-Christian, seem to
point to a notable conclusion. And it is this, that
if Christianity is abandoned by any large body of
men, they cannot, as far as our experience goes,,
revert to the highest forms of family life seen among
Fore-Christians, much less evolve a happier, healthier
family life of their own, but revert to the lower forms
among Fore-Christian families. Individuals, no doubt,
may quit Christianity, and retain domestic affection,
purity, and peace ; but not masses of men ; and it is
with masses, not with individuals, that social science
is concerned. Any one can see for himself how
striking are the resemblances in home life between
the After-Christians among the modern European
races we have just been examining, and the classical
Romans and Greeks, described in the first part of
this volume. The other great branch of After-Chris-
tians, namely the Mohammadans, though very different
in many externals from the classical and the modem
rationalists, are very like them in the main thing, in
their moral depravity and wretched home life. More-
over, those who cared to examine would find the
worst abominations of degraded and outcast races
repeated in our midst and in Islam ; so'little do these
matters depend on whether a society is civilised,

§ i84.] CONCLUSION, 271

semi- civilised, or uncivilised ; so much on whether
God is rightly worshipped (cf. supra, §§ 90, 98).
Irreligion and misreligion bear the same fruit, and
both fall under our anathema.

§ 184. Nay further, for it is a time to speak
plainly, we say that Hght, and wisdom, and power, in
all matters of morals, and therefore, what now concerns
us, in all matters of family life, belong to the Church
of Christ, and that everywhere without there are the
signs of darkness, or weakness, or folly. We see in
one place the honour due to parents exaggerated into
idolatry, their power exaggerated into the right to
take the life of their children in infancy, or to pro-
hibit, as they grow older, their marriage or religious
profession. We see in another place a miserable
deficiency in parental power, a disobedient youth,
precocious independence, a desolate and dishonoured
old age. Again, instead of reasonable union and
mutual support and affection among kindred, we see,
now a superstitious attachment that puts kindred first
and God second ; now a melancholy deficiency of the
fraternal bond, that allows each family to be quickly
dissolved and brethren to be to each other as strangers.
Again, in the relations of men and women, we see
outside the Christian Church a region of darkness
and passion. The subordination of the wife to the
husband is distorted, and she is made a plaything or
a drudge. The equality of men and women is dis-

272 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ 185.

torted, and the two sexes are treated as though they
were not merely equal, but alike. The bonds of
marriage are found too burdensome for passion, and
have to be enlarged by polygamy or divorce, and
even then are found too narrow. Whereas the Chris-
tian religion preserves in family life, as in other
matters, the golden mean between excess and defect,
and tells us the plain truth about human nature and
our position as created beings, and will not suffer us
to reason as though we were our own masters and
had made ourselves ; but tells us that this is unreason-
able, like silly children who argue when they should
listen and learn ; nor again will suffer us to live in a
fool's paradise, and sustain our domestic virtue or our
patriotism by sentiments, impulses, prejudices, super-
stitions ; but dissipates these mists, and gives us a
reasonable ground for our conduct, being the only
reasonable religion, equally remote from the cynic
and the fanatic.

§ 165. Finally — and this is a very practical matter,
and the issue of this book — we say that the highest
and best family life possible for man is reached by
Christianity, and that there is no evolution beyond,
unless we call evolution a descent into an abyss. And
we say, and this will hardly be denied, that for the
great bulk of mankind, who must toil for their daily
bread, there is in this world no source of happiness,
no recreation from their toil, to be compared to that

§ 1 85] CONCLUSION. 273

afforded them by a good family life, that is, by a home
where, between husband and wife, parents and chil-
dren, brothers and sisters, there is union, affection, and
peace. The cultivated and wealthy few may make up
in some sort of way for the lack of these by an abun-
dance of sensual and intellectual enjoyments. But
these substitutes — they are but sorry substitutes — for
a happy home, cannot be got by the great multitude.
Hence it follows that those who would overthrow the
Christian family are the arch-enemies of the happiness
of the great multitude, and this in spite of all their
protestations, all their professions of benevolence.

It has often been pointed out that by taking away
from the poorer classes the sure hope of a future life,
with its rewards and punishments, you have taken
away the chief reason for their patience under the
trials, and submission under the inequalities, of the
present life, and that you prepare the way for out-
breaks of Communism. This is quite true ; but there
is something more. The teachers of irreligion have
not merely robbed the poor of their prospective inheri-
tance, of the hope of goods to come ; they have done
more, and robbed them of the chief of their present
goods, their Christian home life. It is an incompar-
able loss, for which all the devices of Socialists, and
State Socialists, and Philanthropy, all the panaceas
of State insurance, free schools, free libraries, free
museums, free entertainments, free land, all grants,
and subsidies, and franchises, and flattery, are worth

274 AFTER-CHRISTIAN FAMILIES. [§ i86.

nothing as a compensation. How can you compen-
sate for freezing up men's hearts, for putting discord
instead of peace, for putting indifference or dislike,
instead of filial piety and brotherly love ?

^ 1 86. Let us not, therefore, deceive ourselves about
the choice that lies before us. We cannot alter the
past, or be as though England (and the case is the
same for America) had never been a Christian country,
never had the light. We must of necessity be either
Christian or After-Christian. We may follow if we
like the new doctrines and leaders, and clothe our-
selves with the shreds and tatters which they have
ingeniously manufactured into a kind of shoddy reli-
gion of literature, humanity, or science. Only let us
not think this make-belief creed will be any refuge in
sorrow, any restraint upon passion. We shall get no
more help from it than they got in rationalistic Athens
and Rome from the worship of Pallas Athene and the
Capitoline Jove. It is not a mere accident that so
many of the After-Christian heroes like Rousseau and
Goethe, Shelley and Schopenhauer, appear so shock-
ing in their private life. It is not a mere accident
that the popular writers of After-Christian France, in
the writings they miscall naturalism, have surpassed in
filth the writings which the later Greeks were plain-
spoken enough to call pornography. These are signs
of the times ; and the Daniel we met a little way
back (supra, § 172), with his philosophy of much hate

§ 1 86.] CONCLUSION. 275

and no love, is also a sign of the times. Belief in
man will go when we have given up belief in God,
and affection will be as little at home among us as
chastity. Nor let any one flatter himself with dreams
of philanthropy. For we must not hide from ourselves
the truth, as a wise man has put it, that worship is
the only real incompatibility with self. But our new
teachers forbid all genuine worship. Thus to seem
not to seek ourselves is only more elaborate self-seek-
ing; and philanthropy without God appears at best
but self-delusion and folly.

The Christian home likewise partakes of the nature
of the Christian religion ; and drawing all its virtue
from on high, appears as an image and an earnest of
what is to come. The union of husband and wife,
the authority of the parents, the obedience of the
children, the order and affection, are fore-gleams of
the eternal peace and indissoluble love in the home of
the heavenly Father.

These doctrines indeed of the Christians we may
disbelieve, and their mode of living we may dislike,
and may follow other ideals and aims. We may
choose or we may reject the Christian faith and rule
of life; and so far we are free, so far we have a
choice. But the consequences we cannot choose.

INDEX.

INDEX.

-♦♦■

( The figures refer to paragraphs^ and not to pages.)

Adoption, in China, 7 ; in regalJRome, 21 ; in classical Rome, 29 ;
in Homeric Greece, 34, 36 ; in classical Athens, 41, 42 ; in India,
60, 61 pnot allowed in ancient Egypt, 75 ; common in Mongolia,
87,88

After-Christian, meaning of the term. Preface ; main varieties of After-
Christians, 128 ; examples of family life among, in the East, 129
seq. ; in France, 147 seq. ; in America, 157 seq. ; in Australia,
169 ; in South Africa, 169 ; in Switzerland, 170 ; in Germany,
170; in England, 171 seq.; incomplete Christians quite distinct
from, 124 ; various causes of the After-Christian family, 157, 168 ;
consequences of After- Christian doctrine, 183, 185, i86

Agassiz, Professor, on American public schools, 159 note

Albigenses, 128

Alienation of family property, restrictions of, in China, 6 ; among the
Jews, 14 ; in regal Rome, 20 ; in classical Rome, 28 ; in Homeric
Greece, 36; by Hindu law, 59; by American laws, 118; little
by Moslem law, 142 ; Modern French law on, 148, 149

Allard, Paul, on Roman family life, 25

Ambrose, St., on Eve and the Blessed Virgin, 105 ; on women's cul-
ture, 109

America, United States of, honiestead exemption laws in, 118; Old
Puritan family in, 157 ; growth of the After- Christian family in,
157 ; description of the After-Christian family in, 158^167 ; good
elements in, 168

Anabaptists, 128

28o INDEX.

Ancestor-fjrorship, see Necrolatry

Apprenticeship, form amoDg the regal Romans, 19 ; conditions of, in

mediaeval Christendom, 127 ; among Moslems, 137
Arabs {s^e also Mohammadan family), high place of ancient Arab

women, 140; decline through Mohammadan religion, 140;

Beduin Arabs not After-Christians, 129 ; far more moral than

genuine Mohammadans, 139 note; careful genealogies among,

145
Argyll, Duke of, on civilisation, 90 note; on moral decline, 99 note ;

on brutes and savages, loi note
Aristophanes, the undutiful son in his play of the Wasps, 43
Aristotle, a master of the present, not of the past, 47
ArrogatiOf form of adoption in Rome, 21
Aryans, alleged early customs of, 41 note; whether at any time

"matriarchal," 100
Athens, classical, family life in, 39 seq. ; a source of corruption, 45
Augustine, St., on women's culture, 109; on the religious office of

fathers, 112 note
Australia, After- Christian family life in, 169 ; " Larrikinism " in, 182

BacHofen on primitive man, loi

Balearic Islands, joint-families in, 116

Barlee, Miss, on children in theatres, 1 79

Bashkirs, trousseau of bride among, Z^ note

Basques, eldest daughter privileged among, 78, 93 ; Christian family

life among, 123
Bastardy not recognised by old Egyptian law, 75 ; nor by Moslem

law, 145
Berbers, see Tawirek

Bitter Cry of Outcast London, reference to, 176, 177, 179, 181
Birth-rate, very low in France, 152 ; statistics of, in various countries,

152 note ; in America, 167 ; in Switzerland, 170
Bondservants, among the Romans, 19 ; Burmese, 71, 72, 73
Bossier, Gaston, a criticism on, 27 note
Brahmans, occupations and intermarriage among, 51 ; payments to, for

the sake of the dead, 52
Bretons, Christian family life among, 123

INDEX. 281

Bridal outfit (or trousseau), in China, 2 ; not incompatible with bride-
money, 17 note ; in Homeric Greece, 34 ; among Mongols, 83,
84; among Bulgarians, 125 note; among Mohammadans, 131,

133

Bride-money, in China, 2; in regal Rome, 17 ; in Homeric Greece,

33» 34 ; ^ fof"^ of» i^ Burma, 67 ; prevalent among Mongols, 82,

84 ; among Bulgarians, 125 note
Bride-price, misleading to use this term for bride-money, 33
Buddhism, its doctrine of merits and effects on family property, 70, 86
Buddhist monasteries seats of education and art, 69, 70 note, 74
Buddhist view of marriage, 66, 102
Bulgarians, Christian family life among, 125 ; position of women and

women's property among, 125 note
Burmese, family life among, 66 seq. ; ** liberty, fraternity, and

equality " among, 66, 70, 74

Caillemer, his view on Plutarch and Manu criticised, 41 note

Canada, laws against celibacy in, 96

Canon Law, favoured widow's dower, 107 ; opposed separate property
of women, 107

Caracalla, assimilation of Greek and Roman family law in his reign, 33

Castes, among modem Hindus, 51 ; some allow re-marriage of widows,
55 ; among ancient Egyptians, 75, 78

Celibacy, rare in China, i ; prevalent among upper classes in classical
Rome, 25 ; legislation of Augustus against, 26 ; not held right in
Homeric Greece, 34 ; laws for and against in later Greece, 48 ;
compulsory for Hindu widows, 55 ; among Buddhist monks in
Burma, 66^ 73 ; idem in Mongolia, 85, 86, 87 ; simplifies succes-
sions there, 89 ; laws against, in general, 96 ; among Teutonic
knights and in early Canada, 96 ; Christian doctrine on, 102 ;
traces of honour to, outside Christianity, 102 note; compulsory,
forbidden by Christianity, 106, 108, 113; fashionable in parts of
America, 163 ; among English navvies, 175

Ceylon, polyandry in, 99 note

Chieftains, Mongolian, rights and powers of, 87, 88 ; marry Chinese
princesses, 95 note

Chinese, family life among, described, i seq.

282 INDEX.

Christian Church, relation of, to civil laws on family life, io6, II2,
114, iiS

Christian doctrine, uprisings against, 119, 120, 128 ; the golden mean
and alone fully reasonable, 184 ; on nature, 102, 120 ; on celibacy,
102, 106, 108 ; on marriage as a holy state, 102, 103, and a
sacrament, 103, and indissoluble, 103, and to be freely chosen,
106, 108, 113 ; on position of women, 104, 105, 107-110^ 121 ;
on the nature of the subjection of the wife to the husband, 104 ;
on the duties of husbands, 107 ; on the origin of the soul, in ;
on the authority and duties of parents, iii, 112 ; on the obedience
and other duties of children, 113 ; on duties to the dead, I13 ; on
testation, 115 ; on duties of brothers and sisters, 116

Christian family, the, examples of, 121-127 ; requires support of Chris-
tian doctrine, 157, 186 ; the great source of terrestrial happiness for
the masses, 185 ; the incomplete Christian family, 124 ; examples
of, 125, 157

Christian practice, how far in conformity with Christian doctrine,
I19-121

Christian women, nature of their equality with men, 104 ; honoured in
the Church, 105 ; normal type of, 105 ; how far any rule about
their property, 107, and their work, 108 ,* their intellectual culture
favoured by the Church, 109, no

Church Quarterly Review^ on Hebrew land tenures, 15 note; on
American schools, 160 note

Civilisation, meaning of, 90 ; morality quite distinct from, 90, 98, 183

Clans, in China, 9; in regal Rome, 16, 21 ; in Homeric Greece, 37,
38 ; Highland unlike Greek, 38 ; no clan names in classical
Athens, 40; Hindu clans, 51 note; Mongolian, 81, 87, 88; relic
of, among Moslems, 130 note ; polygamy among chieftains of,
140 note

Coemption plebeian form of marriage, 17

Colonisation, by younger sons in China, 1 1 ; Greek, not the result of
voluntary emigration, 48 note

Compulsory marriage, reasons for, 96 [see also Celibacy)

Concubines, Roman law on, 28 ; in Homeric Greece, 35 ; in classical
Athens, 45 ; in India, 56 ; in Egypt, 7^ 80 note ; among Moham-
madans, 136, 137, 143 ; among agricultural labourers in England,
174 ; among town labourers, 177

INDEX. 283

ConfarreoHo, patrician form of marriage, 1 7

Courtship, in Homeric Greece, 34; in Vedic India, 57; in Burma,

66 ; relic of, among Moslems, 130 ; in America, 161
Cremation in Burma, 74
Cruelty to children in England, 179, 181
Cyprian, St., on Christian women, 109.

Dead, treatment of the [see also Necrolatry), their tombs a check to
alienating the family property, in regal Rome, 20, and in Greece,
36, 42 ; heavy funeral expenses in Burma, 72 ; disposal of dead
by Mongols, 86 ; honour to, by Christians, 113 ; Moslem doctrine
on dead infants, 146

Democratic nature of Moslem society, 134, 145

Divorce, common in China, 3 ; limited among the Jews, 12 ; rare in
regal Rome, 18 ; very common in classical Rome, 25 ; exceptional
in Homeric Greece, 35 ; common in classical Athens, 44 ; rare in
India, 56 ; easy and very common in Burma, 68, 73 ; very limited
in Demotic Egypt, 76 ; frequent among Mongols, 84, and in
Iceland , 92 ; effect of, in tracing kinship, 92 ; forbidden to Chris-
tians, 103; not practised by Dutch peasants, though allowed by
Calvinism, 125 ; habitual among Mohammadans, 133 ; connection
with polygamy, 134; rare among Puritan New Englanders, 157 ;
law of, and frequency in, modern America, 164, 165 ; identy in
Switzerland, 170 ; in Germany, 170 ; form of, among urban
labourers in England, 177

Dollinger, Dr., on Roman family life, 25 ; on Christian celibacy, 102

Dotage, action of, in Attic law, 36 note

Dower, of widow, in China, 2 ; in India, 55, 65 ; in Burma, 67 ; pro-
moted by Canon Law, 107 ; Mohammadan law of, 132

Dowry (or marriage portion), technical meaning of, 2 ; usual in classi
cal Rome, 24 ; exceptional in Homeric Greece, 34 ; the rule in clas
sical Athens, 40, 41 ; in Sparta, 46 ; among Hindus, 53, 54, 64
unknown or rare in Burma, 67 ; rare in Demotic Egypt, 79
mediaeval foundations for supplying poor girls with, 115, 126 ; dis
placing bride-money in Bulgaria, 125 note; expected in France,

Dupanloup, Bishop, on Christianity and the culture of women, 1 10 ;

284 INDEX.

on French law of children's property, 149 note ; on spoilt children
and insolent youth in France, 149 note
Dwellings, adapted in India for joint-families, 6j ; some, in America a
sign of disorganised family life, 162 ; miserable, in rural England,
172 ; in English towns, 178, 180.

Early marriages, in China, i, 5 ; prevalent in India, 52 ; among
Mongols, 81 ; among Mohammadans, 130

Education of children, training by the State and not by the family in
Sparta, 46 ; Buddhist monastery schools in Burma, 69, 70 note ;
suitable education of Mongols, 85 ; Christian view of duty of father
on, 112; Mohammadan, 139, 141; Rousseau's views on, 147;
frivolous among French gentry, 149 note ; miserable of French
peasantry, 150, 151, 154; religious character of, in old America,
157 ; irreligious character of the public schools of modern America,
and the results, 158-162, 168; idem in Victoria, 168; education
no hindrance to crime in England, 180

Egyptian family life, in the Demotic Period, 75 seq. ; different at an
earlier period, 80 ; possible origin of women's rule among Egyp-
tians, 95

Eldest daughter, preference in succession in Burma, 72, 73 ; in Egypt,
78 ; among the Basques, 78

Eldest son, position of, in China, 5, 10 ; among the Jews under the
Judges, 15 ; no pre-eminence at Rome, 21 ; the hearth-preserver
in Greece, 36, 37 ; pre-eminence in India, 63, 64 ; in Burma, 72,
73 ; in Egypt, 78 ; only political pre-eminence in Mongolia, 89 ;
special position of, by modem German laws, 115 note; Christian
view of his duties, 116

Emancipation of children {see also Paternal power, Separate property
of children. Youths insolent and precocious), meaning of, in regal
Rome, 22 note ; effects of, on succession at Rome, 30 ; self-acting
in Demotic Egypt, 77 ; bad modern French law of, 149 ; of
English agricultural labourers, 175 ; of English town boys, 180

Emancipation of women, see Women, emancipation of

Enclosures and the consequences in rural England, 173

England, the Poor-Law of, and some of its results, 114, 171 ; law and
practice on wills in, 115; law and practice on widows in, 116;

INDEX. 285

Christian family life in, 125 ; mediaeval guilds of, 127 ; After-
Christian family life in, 171 seq.
Eunuchs, at the Chinese court, 3 ; among Mohammadans, 137
Evolution in family life, unsatisfactory theories of, 32, 38, 41 «^/tf,

90-101 ; one conclusion from experience, 183
Expulsion of bad sons from the family, in China, 7 ; in Greece, 36 ; in
Burma, 70

Factories, may be injurious to family life, 108 ; Friedlander, criti-
cised, 27 nofe

Family books, among the Chinese, 1 1 ; among Mongols, 88 nofg ;
among old French, 126

Family discord, among the later Greeks, 50; in modern France, 156 ;
in America, 161 ; in England, 172

Family (or private) administration of justice, among the Homeric
Greeks, 38 ; its character explained, 38 ; among the Mongols, 88

Father, see Paternal power

Fenton, John, on early Hebrew life, criticised, 15 note

Foster-relationship among Mohammadans, 129

France {see also Basques, Bretons), bad laws of succession in, 1 14, 148,
149; joint families in, before the Revolution, 116; Christian
family life in (Proven9al), 123 ; idem in previous centuries, 126 ;
mediaeval guilds in, 127; family life among the After-Christian
peasantry in, 150-156 ; frivolous training of the young among the
rich in, 149 note; village recreations of the olden time in, 153, 154

Generation names, among the Chinese, 9 ; significance of, 97

Gens, gtntes, see Clans

Germany, laws of succession in, and recent reforms, 115 note ; examples

of Christian family life in, 123, 125 ; mediaeval German homes and

guilds, 127 ; divorce common now in parts of, 170
Gibbon on Mongol genealogies, 88
Gnostics, 128

GotraSy Hindu clans, 51 note
Greek family life {see also Athens, Sparta) in Homeric times, 33 seq. ;

diversity of different Greek states in classical times, 39 ; fearful

condition in later times, 47-50

286 INDEX.

Greek law, incoherence of, and the reason, 37
Grote, his history of Greece criticised, 45
Guestship, tie of, in Homeric Greece, 36

HarIm life, 138, 139

Heiresses, among the Jews, 13; laws on them at Rome, 31 ; in

Homeric Greece, 37 ; in classical Athens, 41 ; in Sparta, 46 ;

"appointed" daughter among the Hindus, 61 ; heiresses, among

Burmese, 67, 72, 73; among Egyptians, 78; advantage over

heirs, and effects on tracing kinship, 93 ; Mohammadan law on,

144 ; modern French law on, 149
Hertzberg, G. F., on Greek private life, 50
Hindus, modem family life of, 51 seq. ; ancient family life of, 56, 57, 61 j

polyandry among, in some cases, 98, 99
Holland, Christian family life in, 125

Homestead exemption laws in America, 118 ; in Servia, 118 note
Howorth, H. H., on the conversion of the Mongols to Buddhism, 86
Hue, the Abbe, on the Mongols, 81, 86
Hungary, Christian family life in, 123 ; disastrous break-up of the old

rural constitution in, 123 note

Iceland, divorce and re-marriage frequent in, 92

Immorality, in Chinese towns, 3 ; little, in regal Rome, 18 ; great, in
classical Rome, 25, 27 ; little, in Homeric Greece, 35 ; extreme, in
classical Athens, 45 ; tdgm in Sparta, 46, and in later Greece,
48-50 ; among Hindus, 57 ; among Burmese, 69 ; not much
among Mongols, 85 ; not to surprise us among Christians, 1 19-121 ;
bad among Moslems, 137, 139 ; little, among ancient Arabs, 140.;
great, among French peasantry, 152, 154 ; rare in Puritan New
England, 157; prevalent and precocious in North Eastern America,
158 ncU, 159, 162, 163, 166, 167; in rural England, 172, 174;
among navvies, 175; among town labourers, 177, 1 79-181

Infanticide, in China, 5 ; how far allowed in regal Rome, 19; in
Greece, 48 ; among the Rajputs, 53 ; causes of female infanticide,
gSnote

Inheritance, sf£ Successions

Intermarriage, rules of, in China, i ; among the Jews, 13 ; in Greece

INDEX. 287

37, 40, 41; among the Hindus, 51, 52; in Burma, 66; among

the Mongols 81 ; among Mohammadans, 129.
Ireland, Christian family life in, 121
Italy, mediaeval legacies in, 115; joint-families in, 116; Christian

family life in, 123

Jannet, Claudio, on later Greek family, 47, 48 ; on heiresses and kin-
ship through females, 93 nof£; on English widows in the middle
ages, n6 nofe ; his work on America, 157

Janssen, J., on mediaeval Germany, 127

Jerome, St., on the Christian equality of men and women, 104 ; on anti-
christian civil laws, 106 ; on the intellectual culture of women, 109

Jessopp, Dr., on the manners of the rural population of England,
172-174

Jews, family life of, under the judges, 12 seq., 97 ; patriarchal poly-
gamy of, 140

Joint families, common in China, 8 ; probably common among the
Jews, 15 ; presupposed by early Roman law, 22 ; dissolution of,
in classical Rome, 31 ; presupposed by early Greek law, 37 ; not
uncommon in classical Athens, 40 ; in India, 57, 62, 63 ; little
used in Burma, 73 ; influence of, on nomenclature, 97 ; how far
favoured by Christianity, 1 16, I17 ; in Mexico, Italy, and the
Balearic Islands, 116; in old France, 117; among the Russians
and South Sclavonians, and ill effects of their decay among, 117 ;
Moslem law unfavourable to, 146 ; prevalent in the Hauran (Syria),
146 ; French law and modern fraternal discord unfavourable to,
148, 156

Jubilee, significance of, 14

Kinship, held to be only through males, 100 no/e ; traced through
females in Demotic Egypt, 76, and in many societies, 91 ; this
alleged as a survival of savagery, 91 ; explanation of the real
causes of the practices, 92-95

Kirgjiese, bride-money among, 82 note ; bridal outfit among, 83 note;
judicial proceedings among, 88

Kremer, A. von, on decline of Arab family life, 140 ; on polygamy
among tribal chieftains, 140

288 INDEX.

Land, accumulation of, prevented in Burma, 74

Land laws, see Alienations, Succession, Testation

Lane, E. W., on amount of Mohammadan marriage-money, 131 ; on

re-marriage of widows, 133 ; on attachment between husband and

wife, 139 ; on Beduin morals, 139
Lane-Poole, S., on decline of Arab family life and women, 140
Lenormant, F., on the oldest known freethinker, 80
Leo XIII., Encyclical Arcanum divina of, on Christian marriage,

102-104, 106, 107
Le Play, F., on Basque heiresses, 93 note ; on French law of succes-
sion, 114 note ; on English widows, 116 note ; his great book on

European workmen, 123 ; on Rousseau, 147
Levirate marriage, among the Jews, 13, 97 ; among some Hindus, 55 ;

unlike the Hindu Niyoga^ 61
Literature, popular, immoral, and sensational, of America, 159, 160;

of England, 180, 181 ; of France, 186
Literature, religion of, 186
Lollards, 128

Maine, Sir H., on Roman wills, 22 note ; on Athenian marriages,
40 note; on Greek wills, 42 note ; on Suttee, 55 note ; on political
imitation, 95 ; on difficulties of complex kinship, 97 ; on poly-
andry, 98 ; on Aryans, 100 note ; on a view of parentage, 100
note; his theory of the patriarchal family, loi note ; on Canon
Law, 107 ; on Mohammadans and fractions, 145 note

Maine, Sir H., French translator of, on compulsory marriage, 96

Manichseans, 128

Manu, laws of, 41 note

Marriage, see Celibacy, Concubines, Divorce, Early marriage. Heiresses,
Intermarriage, Levirate marriage. Polygamy, Separate property of
married women, Subwives, Widow, Women

Marriage contracts, extraordinary, in Demotic Egypt, 76

Marriage festivities, in China, 2 ; in India, 53, 98 note ; in Mongolia,
82 ; among Mohammadans, 132 note

Marriage-money, among the Jews, 13 ; among Hindus, 53 ; among
Burmese, 67 ; among Demotic Egyptians, 76 ; among Moham-
madans, 131, 133

INDEX. 289

Marriage regulated by parents, in China, 5 ; in regal Rome for
daughters, 17; among Hindus, 52, 57; among Mongols, 81;
how far lawful among Christians, 106, 108; among Moslems,
130 ; other extreme in America, 161

Matriarchal stage, so called, ipo {see also Savagery, Kinship traced
through females)

Max Miiller, Professor, on savages, 90 ; on Aryans, 100 twte

Ma3rne, J. D., on Hindu Stridhan^ 53 nott

Mexico, joint families in, 116, 122 ; Christian family life in, 122

Meyer, Rudolf, on homestead exemption and other laws, 118 note

MihTy Arabic term for marriage-money, 131

Mirii (or Miri\ land in Turkey, 142

Mohabaty Arabic legal term meaning half gifts, 143

Mohammadan (or Moslem) family, the, one great subdivision of After-
Christian families, 128 ; description of, in detail, 129 seq.

MohoTy marriage-money among the Jews, 13

Mongols, family life among, 81 seq. ; chiefs marry Chinese princesses,
95 note

MorcellemerU in parts of France, and its connection with family law,

156

Mormons, 128

Mother [see also Widow, Kinship through females), high position in

China, 4; among the Jews, 12; among Hindus, 54, 58, 63;

among Christians, iii ; dubious position among Moslems, 141 ;

little influence of, among After-Christian Americans, 161
Mother-in-law, effect of aversion to, 94, 130
Mummies, Egyptian, traffic in, 75
Mutterrechiy see Kinship traced through females

Names, Chinese surnames, l, 9, 11 ; Chinese generation names, 9 ;
Roman surnames, 16 ; Athenian, 40 ; Burmese with no surnames,
73 ; maternal name taken in Demotic Egypt, 76 ; explanation of
maternal name being taken, 92-95 ; explanation of generation
names, 97 ; surnames quite exceptional among Moslems, 145

Navvies, habits of English, 1 75

Necrolatry (or giving divine honours to the dead), in China, 5, 10 ; m
regal Rome, 16, 19, 20; enfeebled in classicsi Rome, 25, 31 ; in

T

290

INDEX.

Homeric Greece, 34-36 ; decayed in classical Athens, 40 ; impor-
tant among the Hindus, 52, 62 ; conspicaous in Demotic Egypt^

7S

Newman, Cardinal, on faith and works, 120

Newspapers, see Literature

Niyoga^ Hindu custom to meet the case of failure of ofispring, 61, 97

Nomad life, conditions of, 81

North American Review on the elementary schools, 158 note^ 160 note

Old age, honoured in China, 5 ; among the Jews, 12 ; position in
Homeric Greece, 36 ; at Athens, 43 ; religious retirement of the
old expected in India, 59 ; old age honoured in Burma, 70^ 74 ;
among Mongols, 89 ; Christian principles on, 1 13 ; old age honoured
in Mexico, 122; in Hungary and among other Christian popula-
tions, 123, 126 ; dishonoured and miserable in France, 155 ; little
thought of in America, t6i ; miserably abandoned among English
labourers, 171, 172

Oliganthropia, a significant Greek word, 49

Orphans {see also Heiresses), unfortunate position of, in modem France,

156

Ozanam on the Church and women's culture, 109

«

Paraphernal Roman name for separate goods of wife, 24

Partition of inheritances, law of, at Rome, 22, 31 ; among Hindus, 59 ;
in modern France, 148, 149, 156

Paternal power, in China, 5 ; among the Jews, 14, 140 ; in regal
Rome, 19 ; in classical- Rome, 23, 28 ; in Homeric Greece, 36 ;
in classical Athens, 43 ; among Hindus, 58, 59 ; among Burmese,
70, 71 ; very small in Demotic Egypt, 77 ; unlike ancient Egypt,
80} great among Mongols, 87; Christian doctrine of, 111-113;
among Moslems, 141 ; Rousseau on, 147 ; injurious effect of
French law on, 149 ; small in America, 161 ; soon over among
English labourers, 171 ; abuse of, among the town population, 179

Peculium^ see Separate property of children

Penitents, women, honoured in Christian Church, 104

Perfectionists, 128

Pius IX. on the family verms the State, 106

INDEX. 291

Political theories of classical Greece, 47

Polyandry, in Sparta, 46 ; among some Hindus in past times, 61 ;
alleged frequency in " early " times, 91 ; causes of, in general, 98 ;
connected with devil-worship in Southern India, 98 ; causes of, in
Ceylon, Sparta, and Venice, 99 ; among English town labourers,
177

Polybius on the Greek family, 49

Polygamy, how far existing in China, 3 ; among the Jews, 12 • absent
in regal Rome> 18 ; among modem, not ancient, Hindus, 56 ; in
Burma, 68^ in Egypt, 76, 80 twf^; among Mongols, 84; for-
bidden to Christians, 103 ; among Mohammadans, 129, 133-136 ;
effect on successions among, 145 ; among early Arab chieftains
and Scriptural patriarchs of quite another character to the Moham-
mad an, 140

Poor-Laws, English, effect of, on the family, 114, 171

Poor relations, help to, in China, 9 ; in India, 65

Prejevalski, N., his judgment of the Mongols criticised, 81 noU; his
aspersions of the Lamas, 85 note

Priesthood of the father in early Egypt, 80

Primogeniture, see Eldest son

Prodigals, under guardianship, in early Rome, 20 ; in classical Rome, 28

Prohibited degrees, see Intermarriage

Promiscuity, primitive, see Savagery

Publicans, the social authority in modem France, 153

Public-houses, the great places of recreation in modem France, 153,
154 ; frequented by children in Chicago, 160 ; besieged in 1874
by women reformers in America, 162 ; the great places of recrea-
tion in rural England, 173, and in the towns (gin palaces), 178

Puritan family in America, see America

Queens, Egyptian, wearing beards, 80

Rajputs, rules of intermarriage among, 51 nofe ; their marriage festivi-
ties and infanticide, 53, 98 ; their princesses given in marri^e, 95

Rationalism, in later Greece, and its effects on family life, 47-50 ; in
early Egypt, 80 ; among the French peasantry, 150 ; in America,
158, 163; in Australia and South Africa, 169, 182; in Switzerland,

J

292 INDEX.

170; among English agricultural labourers, 172; among town
labourers, 176 ; its effects in general on family life, 183

Recreation, in the villages of France in the old time and in the new,
153, 154; deficiency of all rational, in rural England, 173; the
public-house the great place of, in the country, 1 73 ; and in the
town, 178

Religion (s^e also Buddhism, Christian doctrine. Christian family,
Christian practice, Mohammadan family, Necrolatry, Rationalism),
worship of Lares and Penates hindering alienation at Rome, 20,
and in Greece, 36 ; false religion a source of corruption, among
the Greeks, 35, 45 ; among the Hindus, 87 ; in general, 98 ;
among Moslems, 137; 139, 140; fear of Genii adulterers affect-
, ing succession among Berbers, 94 ; religion of literature, 186

R^villout, E., on the origin of the Egyptian gyneocracy, 95 no^g

Ribbe, C. de, on old French family life, 126 ; on Rousseau, 147

Rice Joiies on the outcast children of London, 180

Roberts, W. H., on neglect of filial duty by English agricultural
labourers, 171 ^^

Roman family life, in the regal period, 16 seq. ; in the classical period,
23 seq. ; contrast to Chinese, 32 ; conflict of laws of, with Chris-
tianity, 106

Roscher, on Chinese civilisation, 32 ; on what raised the position of
women, 109 nois

Rousseau, the apostle of the After-Christian family of Europe, his
teaching, 147 ; his view of noble savages, loi nofe

Rumsey, Almaric, on Mohammadan fractional successions, 145 note

Ruskin on Greek women, 43 noie

Russians, joint family among, 117; Christian family among, 125

Sacrament of marriage among Christians, 103

Savage, no precise meaning of the term, 90 ; difficulties of raising up

modem savages, 100 ; Rousseau's fancy savage, loi no^e
Savagery, theory of primitive state of, 90 ; examined, 91-101
Scandals of Christian family, significance of the, 119-121
Separate goods of married women, in classical Rome, 24 ; in Sparta,

46 ; in India, 53, 54 ; in Burma, 67 ; in Demotic Egypt, 76, 77, 79 ;

Christian view of, 107; among Mohammadans, 132, 133, 142, 144

INDEX. 293

Separate property of children, in China, 7; in regal Rome, 19; in
classical* Rome, 28 ; in classical Athens, 43 ; an exceptional case
among Hindus, 62 ; only in one case among Burmese, 70 ; in
Demotic Egypt, 77 ; among Mongols, 83 ; no particular Christian
view of, 115; prevalent among Mohammadans, 142; by modern
French law, 149

Servia, homestead exemption law of, 118 note

Shakers, 128, 164

Sherring, M. A., on Hindu castes, 51

Simcox, Edith, on Mutterrechi^ 92 ; on Maine's Patriarchal theory,
loi note

Sims, G. R., on the London poor, 177, 178 note

Slavery, effects of, on family life, in classical Rome, 25, 27 ; in classical
Athens, 45 ; in later Greece, 50 ; among Mohammadans, 136, 137,

143

Slaves, marriages of, recognised by Christianity in spite of the law,

106; protected by Mohammadan law, 136
Slavs (or Sclavonians), South, joint families among, 117
South Africa, irreligion and insolent youth in, 169
South Australia, more religion in, than in Victoria, 182
Soul, origin of, importance of view of, for family life, in
Sparta, family life in, during the fourth century B.C., 46; polyandry

at, 99
Spectator i The, on housing the poor, 178
Stasis, a significant Greek word, 49
Sterility, wilful, in classical Rome, 25-27 ; in later Greece, 48-50 ;

among the Turks, 139 note; among French peasantry, 152 ; among

New Englanders, 162, 166, 167
Stoic philosophy, effort by, to effect a moral reformation at Rome, 27,

50

Stridkan, women's property in Hindu law, 53, 54

Subwives among the Chinese, 3

Succession, rules of {see also Heiresses, Testation), in China, 10 ; among
the Jews, 15 ; in regal Rome, 17, 21 ; in classical Rome, 26, 30 ;
in Homeric Greece, 37 ; in classical Athens, 40, 41 ; among
Hindus, 54, 64, 65 ; among Burmese, 72, 73 ; in Demotic Egypt,
78, 79 ; among the Mongols, 89 ; how far touched by any Christian
principles, 114, 115; bad modem French law of, 114, 148, 149,

294 INDEX.

156; excellent new German laws of, 11^ note; Gennan common

law of, 115 note; in America, 1 1 8, 157; complicated among

Mohammadans, 142, 144, 145
Superstition among the Berbers, and its effect on successions, 94; among

French After-Chnstian peasants, 150
Sweden, family life in, 125

Switzerland, irreligion and frequency of divorce in, 170
Syria, joint families on the frontier region of, and the reason, 146

TawXrek (or Touareg), Berbers of the Sahara, kinship through females
among, and the reason, 93 ; monogamy among, 93 ; superstition
of, affecting successions, 94

TertuUian on the position of women, 109

Testaments, abuse of, in classical Rome, 29

Testation, powers of, in China, 7 ; none among the Jews, 15 ; how far
existing in early Rome, 21 ; probable reason for increase of their
importance, 22 ; checked by the anti-celibacy laws of Augustus,
26 ; classical Roman law of testation, 29, 31 ; no testation in
Homeric Greece, 36; considerable powers in classical Greece,
42 ; in Sparta, 46 ; little, in genuine Hindu law, 59 ; little, in
Burma, 70 ; moderate powers of, favoured by Christian Church,
115 ; mediaeval Italian, 115 ; modern German, 115 note; extreme,
though not abused, in England, 115 ; American, 115, 118, 161 ;
by Mohammadan law, 143 ; restricted in modem France, 148,

149

Teutonic knights, compulsory marriage among, 96

Theatres, evil of children performing at, 179

Thucydides in the dark about early Greece, 47 note

Tithing, used to translate a Chinese term for a local division, 6 ; used
for the Latin curia and the Grttk phratre, 37 note

Trades, hereditary, in India, 51 ; in Egypt, 78

Tribe, not to be confused with clan, 37 note ; used to designate sub-
castes in India, 51 note

Turks, depravity of upper classes among, 137, 139 note

Uncivilised, meaning of the term, 90 note
Fiaiouf (or Wakfi) land in Turkey, 142

INDEX. 29 5

Vedas, the, H. Zimmer on, 51 note; Hindu family life there depicted,

56, 57, 61
Venice, polyandry at, 99
Victoria, the schools and the youth in, 169 ; phenomenon called

" Larrikinism ** in, 182
Village communities a check to alienation in India, 59

Wallace, D. M., on Russian joint families, 117 no^g

Widows, high position of, among Chinese, 2, 4; among the Jews, 12 ;
among the early Romans, 17 ; among the Homeric Greeks, 34 ;
in tutelage at Athens, 42 ; position in India sometimes good, 54 ;
but miserable for young and childless widows, 55 ; claims of, in
India to support, 64, and succession, 65 ; widows in Burma, 67 ;
respected among Mongols, 89 ; re-marriage of, among uncivilised
peoples, 92 ; widows favoured by Canon Law and Catholic practice,
107, 116 nofg ; modem English custom unfavourable to, 116;
not so in mediaeval England, 116 note; favoured by American
homestead exemption laws, Ii8 ; position of among Mohammadans,
132, 144; sentiment against re-marriage of, not wholly unknown
in Islam, 133 noU; feeble rights of, in modem France, 149 ;
miserable position of aged, in modem France, 155 ; neglected
by their children among the agricultural labourers in England,
171

Wills, se£ Testation

Women, emancipation of, in classical Rome, 23-25 ; in Sparta, 46 ;
in Burma, 67, 69 ; in Demotic Egypt, 76, 77, 79 ; unlike ancient
Egypt, 80 ; Christian view of, 109 ; emancipation of women in
America, 162, 163

Women, intellectual culture of, in China, 4 ; in Homeric Greece, 35 ;
in classical Athens, 42, 45 ; deficient in Burma, 69 ; in Mongolia,
85 ; principles and practice of Christianity concerning, 108-110 ;
intellectual degradation among Moslems, 138, 139 ; unlike ancient
culture of Arab women, 140 ; nature of, in North America, 158,
161, 162

Women, manual work by, in China, 2 ; in regal Rome, 17 ; in
Homeric Greece, 33 ; in classical Athens, 43 ; in Burma, 69 ;
among Mongols, 84; among Basques, 93 ; Christian view of, 108 ;

296 INDEX.

in a French reformatory, io8 no^ ; among Moslems, 138 ; among

French peasantry, 151 ; in America, 158 nofg
Women, seclusion of, in classical Athens, 44 ; in modem India, 59 ;

among Mohammadans, 130, 138, 139
Women, tutelage of, in early Rome, 17 ; in classical Rome, 23 ; in

classical Athens, 42 ; in India, 54 ; in Mongolia, 84

Xenophon, picture of a Greek matron in his (Economtcus, 43

Younger sons {see also Eldest son), migration of, in China, 11 ; fre-
quently celibate monks in Burma, 73

Youngest son occasionally privileged in India, 64

Youthful crime, in America, 160 ; in England, 179, 180 ; in Victoria,
182

Youthful literature, in America, 161 ; in England, 180, 181

Youths, insolent and precocious, in modem France, 149 nofe, 154 ; in
America, 161-163 ; in Australia, 169, 182 ; in South Africa, 169 ;
in rural England, 173 ; in English towns, 180, 181

J^.B. — The figures in the Index refer to paragraphs and not to pages.

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Baptism of the King : Considerations on the Sacred

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Christian Reformed in Mind and Manners, The. By
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Chronicles of St. Antony of Padua, the " Eldest Son
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English Carmelite, An. The Life of Catherine Burton,
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Gaston, de S^gur. A Biography. Condensed from
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History of the Sacred Passion. By Father Luis de la
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Life of Henrietta d'Osseville (in Religion, Mother Ste.
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Catholic Controversy : A Reply to Dr. Littledale's

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