Wauuts.—Savage and Barbarie ** Survivals " in Marriage. 255 
to the other. In reference to married women, despotic slavery, it may 
be said, is dead, and constitutional subordination reigns in its place. 
The old state of things, it may be supposed, has quite passed away. 
We read that among the Romans the word familia, from which comes 
our family, meant a man’s slaves, and that his wife and children, as 
part of his family, were literally slaves. Or, we are told that in China 
women have always been so ill-treated and oppressed that the poor 
creatures often spend their hours of leisure or rest in religious services and 
prayers that they may be born men and not women in the next state of 
being. Or, we learn that it is still the custom in Canada to place a strap, a 
kettle, and a faggot in an Indian bride’s cabin. The strap to indicate that 
she must carry burdens; the kettle, that she must dress food; and the 
faggot, that she must procure wood for her husband. Or we learn that in 
some provinces of Russia the bride on her marriage presents her lord with 
a rod, which symbolizes the chastisement she expects for any misconduct. 
Or we learn that among our own chivalrous ancestors in the middle ages 
women in general were serfs or property. Shakspeare, the great delineator 
of life and manners in those ages, puts into Petruchio’s mouth the popular 
opinion and the common law of the wife's relation to her husband. Allud- 
ing to his exquisite Catherine, Petruchio says :— 
*T will be master of what is mine own; 
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, 
My household stuff, my field, my barn, 
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything." 
Learning thus the savage and barbarous treatment of wives—of women 
generally—in former times, we should inquire if this state of slavery or 
servitude which so shoeks us, has passed away, or if it still lives on under 
the disguised name of lawful subordination, in the midst of our boasted 
civilization. Mr. Mill, referring to the legal and social position of wives 
now-a-days, says: ‘ The law of servitude in marriage is a monstrous con- 
tradiction to all the principles of the modern world. It is the sole case, 
now that negro slavery has been abolished, in which a human being in the 
plenitude of every faculty is delivered up to the tender mercies of another 
human being, in the hope, forsooth, that this other will use the power solely 
for the good of the person subjected to it. Marriage is the only actual 
bondage known to our law. There remain no legal slaves, except the 
mistress of every house." In confirmation of Mills opinion, I will now 
give a few examples of the wrongs which wives and women suffered of old, 
still flourishing vigourously in our midst. In those old times there was one 
law for women and another for men in reference to chastity ; and in those 
old times the children a woman bore belonged not to her but to her owner. 
