Warris.— Savage and Barbaric “ Survivals" in Marriage. 257 
penalties on the female infidel than on the male. We have seen also that 
law and publie opinion allow greater liberty to the male than to the female 
of being licentious with impunity. From this it obviously follows that we 
recognise one moral code for women, and another, and laxer, code for men ; 
or that men are not bound by the same rule of moral purity as women. 
The things I have just now spoken of,—the injustice of the marriage part- 
nership; the uni-lateral character of conjugal unfaithfulness; and the 
different moral codes imposed on men and women—seem to me to be sur- 
vivals and outgrowths of slavery and polygamy. If you do not adopt my 
views of their genealogical descent, I am sure you will acknowledge it 
would be hard to find worse principles and practices among barbarians and 
savages; and that in the midst of our modern civilization it would be pre- 
mature as yet to thank Heaven for our being much wiser or better than 
the generations which preceded us. 
We have another barbarous survival in connection with the legal 
relation in which married women now-a-days stand to the guardianship of 
their children. In the view of common sense, father and mother have an 
equal right and interest in their children. But British law proceeds on the 
assumption that they are the father’s children exclusively. “He alone," 
says Mill, * has any legal rights over them. No one act can she do towards 
or in relation to them, except by delegation from him. Even after he is 
dead she is not their legal guardian, unless he by will has made her so. 
He could even send them away from her, and deprive her of the means of 
seeing or corresponding with them, until this power was in some degree 
restricted by Sergeant Talfourd's Act." In treating this part of the subject 
I feel I am getting out of my depth. Help, however, is at hand, for last 
year there was published a work on the ** Rights of Women," apparently 
by a very able lawyer. Amongst other matters this author details the laws 
bearing on the guardianship of children at present in force in England, 
Scotland, France, etc. The book is reviewed in the last April number of 
the * Westminster." ‘‘ By the English law of guardianship,” says the re- 
viewer, “the father alone can dispose by will or deed of the custody and 
tuition of his children ; that is, of the management of their property and the 
control of their persons. The mother, who until the year 1873 had no legal 
power whatever over her children after they were seven, can never appoint 
& guardian by deed or will, though in default of such appointment by her 
husband, and on condition of remaining unmarried, she becomes guardian 
herself. The Scotch law is very similar. The father has the custody of 
the ehildren during his life, and may remove them where he likes. He can 
recover them from any one who detains them, and, after infancy, even from 
their mother. He alone can nominate tutors by his will; the mother 
cl. 
