THE LOWER RACES OF MAN. 64zd 



inflicted by ancient laws on manifest and non-manifest thieves, that is, 

 on offenders caught in the act, and those only detected after delay. 

 Thus, in the old Eoman law the manifest thief, who was caught in the 

 act, or with the goods still upon him, became the slave of the person 

 robbed; while the non-manifest thief was only compelled to pay twice 

 the value of what he had stolen. 



The same principle occurs in the German and in the IN'orth American 

 Indian laws, thus following the rule of private vengeance, and the pro- 

 portion of revenge likely to be taken by an aggrieved person under such 

 circumstances. 



The severity of early codes, and the uniformity of punishment which 

 characterizes them, is probably due to the same cause. An individual 

 who felt himself aggrieved would not weigh very closely the amount of 

 vengeance he was entitled to inflict ; and as it would be the object of 

 early lawgivers to encourage resort to the public tribunals, and to dis- 

 courage private vengeance, they would naturally feel it undesirable that 

 the penalty imposed by law should at first be much less than that which 

 custom allowed the party aggrieved to take for himself. 



MARRIAGE AND RELATIONSHIPS. 



Another subject on which savages entertain notions very different from 

 ours is that of relationships. All our ideas of relationship are founded 

 on marriage and on the family. We regard a child as related equally 

 to its father and its mother ; we make no difference between a father's 

 brother and a mother's brother on the one hand, a father's sister and a 

 mother's sister on the other. They are respectively uncles and aunts. 

 But among savages it is not so. The relationship to the clan almost 

 supersedes that to the family. The position of the women is very unfor- 

 tunate. They are treated like slaves, or almost like domestic animals. 

 Thus, in Australia, little real affection exists between husband and wife, 

 and young men value a wife principally for her services as a slave ; in 

 fact, when asked why they are anxious to obtain wives, their usual reply 

 is, that they may get wood, water, and food for them, and carry what- 

 ever property they possess. 



The position of women in that country seems, indeed, to be wretched 

 in the extreme. 



"Few women," says Eyre, ''will be found upon examination to be free 

 from frightful scars upon the head, or the marks of spear wounds about 

 the body. I have seen a young woman who, from the number of these 

 marks, appeared to have been almost riddled with spear wounds." And 

 it seems that, if they are at all good-looking, their i)osition is, if possible, 

 even worse than otherwise. 



Even in marriage, there is, among the lowest races of men, little 

 feeling of love ; manj^ of the lower languages are sadly deficient in terms 

 of affection. Pure love-songs are almost unknown, or very rare, among 

 the lowest races of men. From the nature of their dwellings, there is 

 much less i:>rivacy than among ourselves ; the clan feeling is strong, 

 and the tribe generally has an interest in the produce of the chase or 

 fishery of each. These and other circumstances strengthen the feeling 

 for the tribe as against that for the family. 



Many instances, indeed, are recorded among the lower races of men 

 where marriage may be said to be unknown, and where children must, 

 therefore, be regarded as related by tribal rather than family connections. 

 Traces of this state of things exist in some cases long after the actual 

 condition has ceased to exist. 



Thus, even in o«r own language, words which now indicate relation- 



