648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



order. The common law " merged the married woman's whole legal 

 being in that of her husband." She might be heir to untold wealth ; 

 marriage made her husband legal owner of it all, with unchecked power 

 over it, as well as over her expenses. She might be a Minerva of wisdom, 

 but her every action must be obedient to her husband, though he were 

 little above tlie idiot. She might be mother of a score of children, but 

 her husband could will them all away from her control, even the unborn 

 babe he should never behold. In short, she might be or do anything ; 

 her husband still had full power over her body, her actions, her prop- 

 erty, her earnings, and her children. But, on the other hand, he was 

 responsible for her crimes, her debts, her support, her protection from 

 violence, and the support and protection of her children. If he could 

 legally " correct her with a stick no bigger than his thumb," and that 

 not with " cruelty," he must also answer by his own payment, or im- 

 prisonment, for her misdeeds, as for a minor child's. Thus was the 

 monogamic unity of the family secured by the strong domestic control 

 of a father-head, just as the organic unity of society was secured by 

 the strong political control of an unlimited monarchy. And no doubt 

 both forms of despotism have been necessary in the appropriate stages 

 of human development. But, at the time our republic was born, it 

 had become apparent to the dullest, as it had long been to prophetic 

 minds, that the hour had arrived when political control must concern 

 itself not only with its first great task, viz., the development of social 

 order, but must set itself at work also on its second great effort, viz., 

 the definition and defense of personal rights inside of this social order. 

 Not only this, but it became apparent that the domestic order also 

 contained within itself necessities for like definition and defense of 

 personal rights. The tendency thus inaugurated naturally took shape 

 first, in its relation to married women, in an increase of secured inde- 

 pendence of personal action, and of parental control, to women cruelly 

 abused or divorced or deserted by their husbands. It began to be seen 

 that the wives of had or incompetent men should not be the domestic 

 slaves of those men. It began to be seen that the children of bad or 

 incompetent fathers should have the pi'otection and support he failed 

 to give them provided by the other parent, who to that end should be 

 endowed with certain powers of ownership of property and person. 

 And, as legislators had their attention drawn to these truths by con- 

 crete illustrations of abuses, by husbands and fathers, of the law which 

 gave them absolute power over wife and children, they tried to alter 

 the law in one and another particular. Hence we find the old " com- 

 mon law," in the different States of our Union, with its darker spots 

 torn out and patched over with new readings to such a degree that, in 

 many cases, the, original fabric is hardly distinguishable. A brief 

 summary of these tearings out and patchings over will enable us to 

 see the drift of legal changes respecting the matter in hand. 



The common law recognized no legal right as inhering in the mar- 



