the last dozen years. Lawyers admit that the fundamental theory of
English and Oriental law is the same on this point: Man and wife are
one, and that one is the husband. It is the oldest of legal traditions.
When Blackstone declares that "the very being and existence of the woman
is suspended during the marriage," and American Kent echoes that "her
legal existence and authority are in a manner lost,"--when Petersdorff
asserts that "the husband has the right of imposing such corporeal
restraints as he may deem necessary," and Bacon that "the husband hath,
by law, power and dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force
within the bounds of duty, and may beat her, but not in a violent or
cruel manner,"[A]--when Mr. Justice Coleridge rules that the husband,
in certain cases, "has a right to confine his wife in his own
dwelling-house and restrain her from liberty for an indefinite time,"
and Baron Alderson sums it all up tersely, "The wife is only the
_servant_ of her husband,"--these high authorities simply reaffirm the
dogma of the Gentoo code, four thousand years old and more:--"A man,
both day and night, must keep his wife so much in subjection that she by
no means be mistress of her own actions. If the wife have her own free
will, notwithstanding she be of a superior caste, she will behave
amiss."

[Footnote A: It may be well to fortify this point by a racy extract from
that rare and amusing old book, the pioneer of its class, entitled "The
Lawes Resolutions of Women's Rights, or the Lawes Provision for Woman.
A Methodicall Collection of such Statutes and Customes, with the Cases,
Opinions, Arguments, and Points of Learning in the Law as doe properly
concern Women." London: A.D. 1632. pp. 404. 4to. The pithy sentences
lose immeasurably, however, by being removed from their original
black-letter setting.