52 History of the English Landed Interest. 



The family stage, in which the elevated status of the woman 

 is a main factor, also depends on outside influences accidental 

 to the ethnic instinct. A religious polity frequently regulates 

 man's behaviour to the weaker sex. With the Germans, 

 female purity was a sacred tradition principally derived from 

 their peculiarities of religion. With the Romans the female 

 element entered largely into their mythological worship. To 

 Christianity the family was one of the most fundamental of 

 moral institutions, and the influence of this religion was 

 spreading in Britain long before the arrival of the Teutonic 

 element. Occasionally we find political agencies at work, 

 sometimes antagonistic to those of religion. Thus, at so late 

 a period of English history as the Conquest, the feudal sj'^stem 

 introduced the ju8 prlmcn noctis, entirely inimical to Teutonic 

 and Christian ideas of family sacredness, but no more an 

 ethnic idiosyncrasy than it was a connecting link between 

 the Norman and Eskimo, amongst whom a similar polity 

 prevails. 



Without then extending the patriarchal system to all racial 

 phenomena of an Aryan or Iberian origin, we may with reason 

 apply it to those peoples about which we are more directly 

 concerned. Speaking generally, the history of England before 

 the Conquest is mainly occupied with the decentralisation of 

 national authority ; after that event its pages are filled with 

 the details of the prolonged struggle between the central 

 powers and the local seigneurs. Early French histor}^ still 

 more vividly illustrates the same course of events. 



Bearing in mind the possibility of exceptions, it may be 

 stated that the stages of man's general relationship with the 

 soil have been also very similar in the history of all civilised 

 races. 



Though from a very early period there were primitive agri- 

 culturalists like Cain, yet the majority of mankind was at first 

 pastoral, like Abel. And while it was to the advantage of the 

 agriculturalist to keep, as long as its lessening fertility would 

 allow, on the same soil, on the other hand it was advantageous 

 to the shepherd to change ground as often as he could. 



While the world was thinly populated, the occupation of the 



