44 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



bad language, as if it not only furnished an excuse 

 for outrage upon her, but made it qifite fit and 

 proper for the queen's peace to be broken and 

 the woman's bones along with it. 



This underlying public opinion is fortunately 

 no new thing. On the contrary, it is an idea of 

 immemorial antiquity which has been embodied 

 in the laws of many nations, and notably, as de- 

 rived from the old Roman Patria PoUstas, in our 

 own. It was only in 1829, in the 9th George IV., 

 that the act of Charles II., which embodied the 

 old common law, and authorized a man "to 

 chastise his wife with any reasonable instrument," 

 was erased from our statute-book. Our position 

 is not retrograde, but advancing, albeit too slowly. 

 It is not, as in the case of the vivisection of ani- 

 mals, that a new passion of cruelty is arising, but 

 only that an old one, having its origin in the re- 

 motest epochs of barbarian wife-capture and po- 

 lygamy, yet lingers in the dark places of the land. 

 By degrees, if our statesmen will but bring the 

 educational influence of law to bear upon the mat- 

 ter, it will surely die out and become a thing of 

 the past, like cannibalism — than which it is no 

 better fitted for a Christian nation. 



Of course the ideas of the suffering wives are 

 cast in the same mould as those of their compan- 

 ions. They take it for granted that a husband is 

 a beating-animal, and may be heard to remark, 

 when extraordinarily ill-treated by a stranger, 

 that they ''never were so badly used, no not by 

 their own 'usbands." Their wretched proverbial 

 similarity to spaniels and walnut-trees, the readi- 

 ness with which they sometimes turn round and 

 snap at a by-stander who has interfered on their 

 behalf, of course affords to cowardly people a wel- 

 come excuse for the "policy of non-intervention," 

 and forms the culminating proof of how far the iron 

 of their fetters has eaten into their souls. A special- 

 ly experienced gentleman writes from Liverpool : 

 "The women of Lancashire are awfully fond of 

 bad husbands. It has become quite a truism that 

 our women are like dogs, the more you beat them 

 the more they love you." Surely if a bruised and 

 trampled woman be a pitiful object, a woman who 

 has been brought down by fear, or by her own 

 gross passions, so low as to fawn on the beast who 

 strikes her, is one to make angels weep ! ' 



] And there are gentlemen who think there is some- 

 thing beautiful in this 1 The Rev. F. W. Harper, writ- 

 ing to the Spectator of January 26th. says, " I makehold 

 to believe that if ever I should turn into a wife I shall 

 choose to he beaten by my husband to any extent (short 

 of being slain outright), rather than it should be said 

 that a stranger came between us." After thus bringing 

 to our minds the beatings, and kickings, and Windings, 



To close this part of the subject, I conceive, 

 then, that the common idea of the inferiority of 

 women and the special notion of the rights of 

 husbands form the undercurrent of feeling which 

 induces a man, when for any reason he is infuri- 

 ated, to wreak his violence on his wife. She is, 

 in his opinion, his natural soitffre-douleur. 



It remains to be noted what are the principal 

 incitements to such outbursts of savage fury 

 among the classes wherein wife-beating prevails. 

 They are not far to seek. The first is undoubted- 

 ly drink — poisoned drink. The seas of brandy 

 and gin, and the oceans of beer, imbibed annually 

 in England, would be bad enough, if taken pure 

 and simple ; ' but it is the vile adulterations in- 

 troduced into them which make them the infuri- 

 ating poisons which they are — which literally sting 

 the wretched drinkers into cruelty perhaps quite 

 foreign to their natural temperaments. As an 

 experienced minister in these districts writes to 

 me, " I have known men almost as bad as those 

 you quote" (a dozen wife-murderers) "made into 

 most kind and considerate husbands by total ab- 

 stinence." If the English people will go on swal- 

 lowing millions' worth yearly of brain-poison, 

 what can we expect but brutality the most hide- 

 ous and grotesque ? Assuredly the makers and 

 venders of these devil's philters are responsible 

 for an amount of crime and ruin which some of 

 the worst tyrants in history might have trembled 

 to bear on their consciences ; nor can the nation- 

 al Legislature be absolved for suffering the great 

 drink-interest thus foully to tamper with the 

 health — nay, with the very souls of our country- 

 men. What is the occult influence which prevents 

 the excise from performing its duty as regards 

 these frauds on the revenue ? 



2. Next to drunkenness as a cause of violence 

 to women follows the other "great sin of great 



and burnings, and " cloggings," which sicken us, he 

 bids us remember that the true idea of marriage is 

 " the relation of Christ to his Church ! " It is not for 

 me to speak on this subject, but I should have expected 

 that a minister of the Christian religion would have 

 shuddered at the possibility of suggesting such a con- 

 nection of ideas as these notions involve. Heaven help 

 the poor women of Durham and Lancashire if their 

 clergy lead them to picture a Christ resembling their 

 husbands 1 



1 I doubt that, even if reduced to bestial helpless- 

 ness by these drinks in a pure state, men would ever 

 be goaded by them to the class of passions excited by 

 the adulterated ones. I have myself seen in Savoy 

 whole crowds of men returning from market, all more 

 or less tipsy from the free use of the excellent vin de 

 Seychelles; but, instead of quarreling or fighting, or 

 beating their horses and pigs, their demeanor was 

 ludicrously good-humored and affectionate. 



