The gens was able to carry mankind through to the opening ages of civilization, at which time the council of chiefs was transformed into a senate, and the Assembly of the People assumed the form of the popular assembly, from which have been derived our present Congress and the two houses of the English Parliament.
By a careful study of the growth of government, it is discerned that liberty, fraternity, and equality were the original and natural inheritance of the human family, and that tyranny, injustice, and oppression are excrescences which subsequently fastened themselves upon human institutions through the gradual rise of the egoistic principle developed in human nature. We have seen that until the beginning of the Latter Status of barbarism, the gens constituted a sovereign power in the tribe; women controlled the gens, and sachem and chief were alike invested with the authority necessary for leadership because they could trace their descent to some female ancestor who was the acknowledged head of the people, and whose influence and patronage must have extended over all the individuals included within the recognized bond of kinship.
With the deposing power in the hands of women, and with the precautions which were taken by them against injustice or usurpation of rights, it is plain that unless some unusual or unprecedented circumstances had come into play, they never could have lost that supremacy which, as the natural result of their development, had been maintained by females since the separation of the sexes.
[CHAPTER IV]
THE ORIGIN OF MARRIAGE
I will be master of what is mine own;
She is my goods, my chattels; she’s my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my everything.
The Taming of the Shrew.