452 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



became highly developed among the Japanese, similarly goes great 

 filial subjection. Mitford, qualifying previous statements, admits tliat 

 needy people " sell their children to be waitresses, singers, or prosti- 

 tutes; " and Sir Rutherford Alcock says that "parents, too, have 

 undoubtedly in some cases, if not in all, the power to sell their chil- 

 dren." It may be added that the subordination of young to old, ii-re- 

 spective of sex, is greater than the subordination of females to males; 

 for abject as is the slavery of wife to husband, yet, after his death, 

 the widow's power "over the son restores the balance and redresses 

 the wrong, by placing woman, as the mother, far above man, as the 

 son, whatever his age or rank." And the like holds among the Chinese. 



How among the primitive Semites the father exercised capital 

 jurisdiction, and how along with this there went a lower status of 

 girls than of boys, needs no proof. But, as further indicating the 

 parental and filial relation, I may name the fact that children were 

 considered so much the property of the father, that they were seized 

 for his debts (2 Kings iv. 1 ; Job xxiv. 9) ; also the fact that selling of 

 daughters was authorized (Exodus xxi. 7) ; also the fact that injunc- 

 tions respecting the treatment of children referred exclusively to 

 paternal benefit : as instance the reasons given in Ecclesiasticus, chap- 

 ter XXX., for chastisement of sons; and the further fact that in Deu- 

 teronomy, xxi. 18, stoning to death is the appointed punishment of a 

 rebellious son. Though some qualification of paternal absolutism 

 arose during the later settled stages of the Hebrews, yet along with 

 persistence of the militant type of government there continued ex- 

 treme filial subordination. 



Already in the chapter on the Family, when treating of the Ro- 

 mans as illustrating both the social and domestic oi-ganization pos- 

 sessed by the conquering Aryans during their spread into Europe, some- 

 thing has been implied respecting the status of children among them. 

 In the words of Mommsen, relatively to the father, " all in the house- 

 hold were destitute of legal rights the wife and child no less than 

 the bullock or the slave." He might expose his children : the religious 

 prohibition which forbade it " so far as concerned all the sons de- 

 formed births excepted and at least the first daughter," was without 

 civil sanction. He " had the right and duty of exercising over them 

 judicial powers, and of punishing them as he deemed fit, in life and 

 limb." He might also sell his child. It remains to say that the same 

 implied development of industrialness which we saw went along with 

 improvement in the position of women during the growth of the Ro- 

 man Empire, went along with improvement in the position of children. 

 I may add that in Greece there Avere allied manifestations of paternal 

 absolutism : a man could bequeath his daughter, as he could also his 

 wife. 



If, again, we compare the early states of existing European peo- 



