Chapter X. 
THE PARENTAL AUTHORITY, ANI) OBLIGATIONS OF 
THE VARIOUS MEMBERS OF A FAMILY TO 
EACH OTHER. 
The lawjgives a wide scope to the paternal authority, restraining 
it only within those limits which have been established by the general 
sense of the community. The parent has ot course the power of 
correcting his children within reasonable bounds, and may even if 
pressed by want sell them before they have arrived at years of dis¬ 
cretion, or, which amounts to the same thing in most instances, dis¬ 
pose of their services for money. When children reach the age of 
five or six years, they are clothed for the first time; and after this, as 
observed by la Loubere, they are not uncovered for chastisement. 
The Siamese are much attached to their children, and rarely part 
with them unless compelled by some pressing calamity or necessity. 
The children, on the other hand, are taught becoming gravity at an 
early age, and they both love and venerate then parents. 
Where the civil and criminal codes are deficient on the subject of 
reciprocity of duties in families, and in other relations of Society, the 
Bali moral code is sufficiently explicit. A husband may, agreeably 
to custom, not law , give his wife as a slave debtor to another, that is 
sell her services. Loubere advanced a strange assertion, which, accor¬ 
ding to my researches, is not born out either by custom oi by the ci¬ 
vil or moral codes. It is that the Siamese, when offended with their 
daughters, sell them to a person w ho has a legal right to make them 
courtezans. The dregs of the people of any country may be guilty 
of this enormity, but sweeping charges against the whole of a com¬ 
munity ought to be avoided, nor can I find any law countenancing it 
in Siam. 
The reciprocal duties of parents and children, as extracted from 
the Bali Milint.hara or Milinda Raja, are obvious. 
The parent must warn his child against vice, and instruct him in 
religious duties and observances; he ought to afford him such means 
