If she were assaulted and beaten, or if she were subjected to the greatest indignity that it is possible to inflict upon her, she had no redress. She could not complain. The law gave her no protection whatever. Her father or husband could, if he saw fit, bring suit to recover damages for the loss of her services as a servant and wholly upon the ground that it was an injury to him and to his feelings. She was no more recognized as a "person" in the matter, nor was she more highly considered than if she were an inmate of a zoological garden to which some mischievous visitor had fed too many bonbons. The owner was damaged because the brute might die or be injured in the sight of the patrons, but aside from that view of the case no harm was done and no account taken of so trivial a matter.

No matter what the injury she sustained, whether it crippled her physically or blighted her mentally and made life to her the worst curse that could be inflicted, she had no appeal. The wounded feelings of one of her male relations received due consideration, and he could recover the money-value he might set upon the injury to his lacerated mind. This is still the letter and the practice of the law in many places, even in America.

If she had no male relations, the injury did not count, and no "person" being injured everything was lovely, and prayers went right on to the God who, being no respecter of persons (provided they were free, white, adult males), enjoyed the incense from altars whereon burning "witches" writhed in agony and helpless young girls plead for mercy under the loathed and loathsome touch of the "St." Augustines* and "St." Pelayos,** whose praises are chanted and whose divine goodness is recounted by Christendom to-day.

* "To Augustine, whose early life was spent in company with
the most degraded of womankind, is Christianity indebted for
the full development of the doctrine of Original sin."
—Gage.
"All or at least the greater part of the fathers of the
Greek Church before Augustine, denied any real original
sin."—Emerson. "The doctrine had a gradual growth, and was
fully developed by Augustine."
—Waite.
** "The abbot elect of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, in
1171, was found on investigation to have seventeen
illegitimate children in a single village. An abbot of St.
Pelayo in Spain, in 1180, was proved to have kept no less
than seventy mistresses. Henry III, Bishop of Liege, was
deposed in 1274 for having sixty-five illegitimate
children."
—Leeky, "Hist, of European Morals."
"This same bishop boasted, at a public banquet, that in
twenty-two months fourteen children had been born to him. A
license to the clergy to keep concubines was during several
centuries levied by princes."—Ibid.
"It was openly attested that 100,000 women in England alone
were made dissolute by the clergy."
—Draper, "Intellectual Development of Europe."

Such was the "elevation" and civilization offered by the Church to woman. These are among her debts to the Church, and the men who fought and contended against the incorporation of such infamy into the common law were branded as infidels. It was said they denied their Lord. They were pronounced most dangerous, and the clergy held up their hands in holy horror and whispered that such men "as much as denied the Bible, blasphemed their God, and sold their souls to the Devil." And the women, poor dupes, believed it.

One method the Church took to benefit woman and show its respect for her was this: any married man was prohibited from being a priest. Women were so unholy, so unclean, and so inferior, that to have one as a wife degraded a man to such an extent that he was unfit to be a minister or to touch holy things. The Catholic Church still prohibits either party who is so unholy as to marry from profaning its pulpit'; but the Protestant Churches divide up, giving women the disabilities and mon the offices. The unselfishness of such a course is quite touching. It says to women: "You support us and we will damn you; there is nothing mean or niggardly about us."

As to Blackstone's second count—"the right to personal liberty"—I can perhaps do no better than give a few bald facts.

Under Pagan rule the personal liberty of woman had become very considerable, as well as her proprietary liberty; but Christianity began her degradation at once.

Christianity was introduced into England in the fourth century, and the sale of women began in the fifth; and it was not until the eleventh that a girl could refuse to marry any suitor her father chose for her. In a word, she always had a guardian; she had no personal liberty whatever; she could neither buy nor own property as her brothers could; she could not marry when and whom she preferred, live where she wished, eat, drink, or wear what she liked, or refuse any of these provisions when they were offered by her male relatives. If they decided that she had too many back teeth they simply pulled them out, and she had nothing to say on the subject. She could be sold outright by her father, or leased or bound out as he preferred. She never got so old but that her earnings belonged to him, and a mother never arrived at an age sufficiently advanced to be entitled to the earnings of her children.

Sharswood says, "A father is entitled to the benefits of his children's labor." "An infant [any one not of age] owes reverence and respect to his mother; but she has no right to his services."*