The sale is the same, the payment alone of different character. An African girl in case of a wealthy wooer, bringing even more than was ordinarily received during the middle ages for an English christian maiden. The patriarchal spirit wherever cropping out exhibiting the same characteristics, whether among Jews, Christians, or African savages. This is the more notable as among civilized or savage races yet governed by the principles of the Matriarchate, the position of woman is very high. In Samoa, no woman is compelled to work, all labor of whatever character being performed by the men. The celebrated traveler, Prof. Carl Lumholz, in his work “Among the Cannibals,” makes some interesting statements in regard to the course adopted by the natives of Georgia River, Australia, to save women from giving birth to undesired children, and to prevent the needless suffering and infant mortality so common in christian lands.
Among the methods adopted in christian countries for a continuance of the crimes common in the marriage relation, have been more or less stringent laws against divorce, ever falling with heaviest force upon her whom christian marriage laws have made a slave. The “Christian Union” declares as a significant act of evil import, that “in Wyoming, where the power of woman in affairs of government is greatest, one divorce takes place in every six marriages, the proportion being greater than in any other state.” But if this assertion of the “Christian Union” is true, it is proof that a share in making the laws which govern her is wisely used by the women of that state; and it marks a new era in civilization, when woman holding political power in her own hands, refuses longer to degrade herself by living in a relation that has lost the binding power of love. The laws of church and of state during the christian ages originated with man, and it is a promising sign of woman’s growth in self-reliance, independent thought, and purity of character, that she thus protests against the bondage of a relation which virtually holds the wife as slave of the husband; for despite the changes of the last four and a half decades, we still find the general tone of legislation in line with the church teaching of woman’s created inferiority to man. We still find belief in the wife’s duty of obedience to the husband; we still discover the church, the state, the world, all regarding the exercise of her own judgment even upon the questions most closely related to herself as woman’s greatest sin. As free as woman is called today, she has not yet as daughter secured perfect liberty of choice in marriage, the power of the family too often compelling her into a hated relation. Money still leads parents to prefer one suitor above another, even in the United States; while in many European countries, marriages are arranged by friends, or through a broker, entirely without the girl’s consent, who is frequently taken from a convent or school to be thus sold to some wealthy and perhaps octogenarian wooer, who covets the youth or beauty of the victim.[28]
The burning of twenty missionaries in a portion of savage Africa, a few years since, filled the civilized world with horror. But for several hundred years after the introduction of christianity into Great Britain, the penalty for simple theft by a woman slave was burning alive, and all the other women slaves were compelled to assist her auto-de-fe. Upon such an occasion mentioned by Pike, eighty other women each brought a log of wood for the burning.[29] By the old Roman Code, burning alive as a punishment was forbidden because of its barbarity, but christianity reintroduced it, and for long centuries after the destruction of the Roman Empire, that other land aspiring to control of the sea, which proudly boasts that the sun never sets on her possessions, kept it in her criminal code for the punishment of helpless women.[30] So rigorous was woman’s slavery that the friendships of women with each other, or with men, were strictly prohibited; yet the deep affection of one man for another to whom he consecrated his life and fortune, and of whom he spoke with that deep tenderness, was highly commended.[31] The despotic, irresponsible power of husbands in christian England at this period is shown by the diverse manner in which the murder of a wife by a husband, or a husband by a wife, was regarded. For husband to murder a wife either by his own hands or those of a hired assassin, was of frequent occurrence, but as she was his slave over whom he had power of life and death, this was looked upon as a trivial affair. But under the laws of both church and state, the murder of a husband by a wife was regarded as petty treason, to be punished with the utmost severity, burning alive being a not uncommon form.[32]
Under christian legislation not alone the wife’s person but her property so fully became her husband’s that her use of any portion of it thereafter without his consent was regarded as theft; and such is still the law in the majority of christian countries; it is less than sixty years since a change in this respect took place in any part of the christian world. While a wife may steal from her husband it is still the law that a husband cannot steal from his wife. If she allows him to transact business for her, or in any way obtain possession of her property even for a moment, he has acquired its legal ownership. Since the passage of the Married Woman’s Property Act, the courts of England have decided that a husband cannot steal from his wife while she is living with him. A case before Baron Huddleston, 1888, commented upon by the Pall Mall Gazette, under head of “Stealing from a Wife,” called attention to the superior position of the mistress in respect to property rights over that of the wife.
Can a husband rob his wife? Baron Huddleston yesterday answered this by saying he can not rob her at all under the common law, which regards all the wife’s property as the husband’s; and, theft is only robbery under the Married Women’s Property Act, when the wife is living apart from her husband, or when he is preparing to desert her. It is really quite amazing how many advantages a mistress has over a wife in all matters relating to property and to person. It almost seems as if the object of the law was to inflict such disabilities on wives in order to induce the fair sex to prefer concubinage to matrimony.
The separate moral codes for man and woman in all christian lands, show their evil aspect in many ways. Adultery, in all christian countries is held to be less sinful for men than for women. In England, while the husband can easily obtain a divorce from the wife upon the ground of adultery, it is almost impossible for the wife to obtain a divorce from the husband upon the same ground. Nothing short of the husband’s bringing another woman into the house to sustain wifely relations to him, at all justifies her in proceedings for a separation; and even then, the husband retains a right to all the wife’s property of which he was in possession, or which may have fallen into his hands. Less than a dozen years since, an English husband willed his wife’s property to his mistress and her children of whom he was the father. The wife, (in what is known as “The Birchall Case”), contested the will, but the courts not only decided in its favor, but added insult to that legal robbery, by telling the wife that a part of her money was enough for her, and that she ought to be willing that her husband’s mistress and illegitimate children should share it with her.
Woman’s disobedience to man is regarded by both the church and the state as disobedience to God. As late as the first half of the present century it was held as constructive treason, in England, punishable by the state, for a wife to refuse obedience to her husband’s commands or in any way to question his authority. She was required to be under submission to him as the direct representative of the deity. For the woman who protested against this annihilation of her individuality, a flogging was the customary form of punishment and so common was the use of the whip that its size was regulated by law.[33] The punishment of petit treason[34] was more severe for woman than for man because her crime was regarded as of a more heinous character. She was dragged on the ground or pavement to the place of execution then burned alive; a man was drawn and hanged. It was long after the conquest before even a man convicted of treason secured the right of being carried to execution on a sledge or hurdle. Blackstone comments upon the extreme torment of being dragged on the ground or pavement. In case of a woman the wounds and lacerations thus received must have greatly added to her intensity of suffering, yet so blinded was he through those laws, that he calls her punishment of burning, a tribute to the “decency due to the sex.”[35]
During a portion of the christian era the wife has not been looked upon as related to her husband. The residuum of this disbelief in the relationship of husband and wife, occasionally shows itself to the present day.[36] She was his slave under both religious and civil law, holding the same relations to him as the subject did to the king, and liable to punishments similar to those inflicted upon unruly slaves, or disloyal subjects. Rebellion against the husband’s authority was treason punishable by law, similarly as treason to the king. The difference was but in name. Down to the end of the eighteenth century in England, the wife who had murdered her husband was burned alive; if the husband murdered his wife he suffered simple decapitation, “the same as if he had murdered any other stranger.” For the wife’s crime of petit treason the penalty was that of the slave who had killed her master. It is scarcely a hundred years since the punishment of burning the wife alive for the murder of her husband, or the female slave for the murder of her master, as petit treason, passed out of the English penal code; the last instance occurring in 1784, eight years after our declaration of independence. This same code was operative in the colonies; the last woman thus punished in this country, being a slave in 1755, who had murdered her master, America having twenty-nine years precedence in the abolition of this penalty.[37]
A cablegram from Europe, September 1892, proves the continued existence in this last decade of the nineteenth century of the crime of petit treason, and also the barbarous punishment still inflicted under christian law, upon the wife who murders her husband. This case, occurring in Finland, was carried up to the Court of Appeals, which not only affirmed the decision of the lower court but decreed additional punishment. Because the wife had also forged her husband’s name for small sums of money, having under law, first been robbed by him of her earnings, the judgment of having her right hand cut off, was added to the original sentence. She was then decapitated, her body fastened to a stake, covered with inflammable material and burned to ashes. Although this wife was not burned alive, the barbarity of her punishment was most atrocious, and took place under the christian laws of the church and the state, in a Protestant country in the “year of our Lord,” 1892. That the punishment was infinitely more severe than would have been inflicted upon the husband in case he had murdered his wife, was due to christian teaching of woman’s inferiority and subordination to man; thus making the wife’s crime that of petit treason, under law only a trifle less heinous than murdering a king, or attempting destruction of the government. Had the husband murdered the wife it would have been, according to legal prevision, the same as if he had killed “any other stranger.” The marriage ceremony robbed her of her property and earnings, but in equity the money she was accused of stealing from him belonged to her. Under the laws of most christian states, a woman is robbed of herself and all of her possessions by the simple fact of her marriage. Under christian laws the services of the wife in the marital relation are all due to the husband,[38] her earnings all belong to him; she is a slave owning nothing and with no rights in the property her husband calls his own. This wife’s crime was provoked by pre-existing criminal legislation of the christian church and state. Possessing no legal right to the control of her own person, property or conscience, the wife was held to have sinned against a divinely appointed master to whom she owed more than human allegiance: she was a criminal so great that the punishment of severing her hand and head were deemed entirely inadequate, and her body fastened to a stake was covered with inflammable material and burned to ashes.[39]
While the external government of Finland, as declarations of war, peace, treaties, etc., is under control of the Czar, or Grand Duke, yet in the internal administration of affairs this country is an Independent State, under a Constitution dating 1772, and confirmed by three successive czars. It became christianized in the twelfth century but is not under the Greek church; its established religion is Evangelical and Lutheran, under control of the archbishop of Abo, and the bishops of Bogia and Knopo; an ecclesiastical assembly meeting every ten years; and the Diet, composed of representatives of the clergy, nobility, citizens and peasants, every five years. Without consent of these bodies no laws are enacted or repealed; but woman possesses no representation either in ecclesiastical or civil affairs.