[199] No marriage could take place after 12 m., which is even now the rule of the established Church of England.
[200] Science of Law.
[201] Gerard say the doctrines of the Canon Law most favorable to the power of the clergy, are founded on ignorance, or supported by fraud and forgery.
[202] Whoever wishes to gain insight into that great institution, Canon Law, can do so most effectively by studying Common Law, in regard to woman.—Blackstone..
I have arrived at conclusions which I keep to myself as yet, and only utter as Greek φωναντα, συνετοτσι, the principle of which is that there will never be a good world for woman till the last monk, and therewith the last remnant of the monastic idea of, and legislation for, woman, i.e., the Canon Law, is civilized off the face of the earth. Meanwhile all the most pure and high-minded women in England and in Europe, have been brought up under the shadow of the Canon Law, and have accepted it with the usual divine self-sacrifice, as their destiny by law of God and nature, and consider their own womanhood outraged when it, their tyrant, is meddled with.—Charles Kingsley, Life and Letters. Letter to John Stuart Mill, of June 17, 1849.
[203] Wives in England were bought from the fifth to the eleventh century (Descriptive Sociology, Herbert Spencer). By an ancient law of India, a father was forbidden to sell his daughter in marriage. Keshub Chunder Sen, who recently spent a few years in England, objected, after his return home, to the introduction of English customs in regard to woman into India, on account of their degradation of the female sex.
[204] Our laws are based on the all-sufficiency of man's rights; society exists for men only; for women, merely in so far as they are represented by some man, are in the mundt, or keeping of some man (Descriptive Sociology, England, Herbert Spencer). In England, as late as the seventeenth century, husbands of decent station were not ashamed to beat their wives. Gentlemen arranged parties of pleasure to Bridewell, for the purpose of seeing the wretched women who beat hemp there whipped. It was not until 1817 that the public whipping of woman was abolished in England.—Ibid.
[205] Wives in Russia.—A peasant in the village of Zelova Baltia, having reason to doubt the fidelity of his spouse, deliberately harnessed her to a cart in company with a mare—a species of double harness for which the lady was probably unprepared when she took the nuptial vow. He then got into the cart in company with a friend, and drove the ill-assorted team some sixteen versts (nearly eleven English miles), without sparing the whip-cord. When he returned from his excursion he shaved the unlucky woman's head, tarred and feathered her, and turned her out of doors. She naturally sought refuge and consolation from her parish priest; but he sent her back to her lord and master, prescribing further flagellation. An appeal to justice by the poor woman and her relatives resulted in a non-suit, and any recourse to a higher court will probably terminate in the same manner.
Woman's Lot in Russia.—Here and there the popular songs hear traces of the griefs which in the rough furrows of daily life the Russian woman finds it prudent to conceal. "Ages have rolled away," says the poet Nekrasof; "the whole face of the earth has brightened; only the sombre lot of mowjik's wife God forgets to change." And the same poet makes one of his village heroines say, apropos of the enfranchisement of the serfs, "God has forgotten the nook where He hid the keys of woman's emancipation."
[206] One of the powerful German Electors, who formerly made choice of the Emperor of Germany