toilers are bound to become impossible at no very distant date, the mass of men will have to regard the country they are born in as their home for life, and will be attached to it by interest as well as by sentiment. It seems not quite visionary to suppose that a day will come when service of some sort will be exacted from every man under pain of social discredit, or legal liabilities, as military service is now exacted from every able-bodied man on the Continent; when the immigration of aliens will be restrained within reasonable limits, when wealthy men will be forced by public opinion to give money for national endowments as freely as they did in the Middle Ages; and when the doctrine that men can divest themselves of obligations to their country by leaving it will seem extravagant. In that case, the spirit of uncalculating devotion to the common cause, which even in our own days has changed the face of half Europe and rescued society from dissolution in North America, will become a steady principle of action, deserving to be accounted a faith, and lifting all who feel it into a higher life.

CHAPTER V

THE DECLINE OF THE FAMILY

The religion of the family will gradually die out as the religion of the State becomes more and more absorbing. The power of the head of the family was anciently autocratic over the lives, property, and self-respect of the members.-The right of private war or of the blood-feud has been abolished.-The rights of fathers and husbands over the lives of children and wives have been abolished, or nearly so. The ancient rule of secular legislation, which the Churches have copied, was that marriage was indissoluble.-The State has done its best to maintain this principle down to quite recent times.— Christianity, however, has made this important change, that it does not tolerate the libertinage which was the old compensation for the restrictions of marriage.—The old marriage of suitability was not more mercenary in its essence than the marriage of inclination. The essential difference between the two is, that the one makes family considerations the matter of vital importance, and the other only desires to satisfy individual caprice.-Nevertheless, changes in modern society have made the indissoluble marriage bear so heavily upon women that it is impossible to maintain it. That the tie between husband and wife should come to be easily variable, instead of permanent, is bound to make the tie between parents and children weaker.-Moreover, the right of parents to use their children's labour has been found to work so badly, that the State is interposing everywhere to limit work and make education compulsory.— As parents are losing their rights over children, children are losing the sense of duty and obligation to their parents.-These changes in the conjugal and parental relations are working in the direction of individualism, and may be for good as well as for evil.-The family, however, is the natural provision for the conservation of character, and the consequences may be undesirable if we destroy pride in the past, responsibility for the present, and care for the future. The changed relations of master and servant are also taking away a small and occasional but efficient safeguard of family feeling. The tradition of a fixed family home has been destroyed.

In

IT has been argued that the religion of the country is likely to become a deeper and more serious feeling as the sphere of State action increases, as the State shows itself more beneficent in its aims than a good king, more effectively moral than the Churches, and more comprehensive and human than King or Church, aristocratic caste or guild of associated workmen. On the other hand, it seems possible that not only loyalty and faith and class or clan feeling will be merged in the new power, but that what we may call the religion of the family will gradually die out. a certain sense, of course, the family must always remain the unit of the State. The union of men and women, even if we leave children out of the question, is so important in its effects upon character, that on its influence for good or evil must the condition of society very largely depend. When, however, we bear in mind that for many centuries the head of the family has exercised more or less autocratic powers under his own roof, and that infinitely various forms of virtue and vice, strength and foible, have been developed in consequence, the importance of any great changes that tend to exalt the State and emancipate the individual at the expense of the family will become apparent. What is perhaps most curious is, that the State has always been tender of family rights; and that in all its encroachments upon parental or conjugal authority, or upon family feeling, it has simply obeyed an irresistible necessity.

The powers of the family or its members have, of course, varied enormously in different ages. The right of the parents to deal as they would with the newly-born babe has been recognised more or less

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in all but Christian and Mahommedan communities.1 Children were as freely exposed in the old Greek and Roman world and among the Norsemen as they are in modern China.2 There was no limitation to this right, which belonged absolutely to the head of the family. In the case of the wife, or of children who had been acknowledged, the father had the rights of the magistrate; that is, he could not legitimately put to death, except for a grave and appropriate cause; but there was no recognised tribunal to which an appeal from his sentence would lie. These excessive powers over life imply an absolute authority over the person and property. The husband could lend his wife to a friend, or choose a husband for his daughter and a wife for his son. He could make his children labour as he chose, and might neglect their education as he would. Neither wife nor children could possess property. He could adopt a stranger to share his children's inheritance. This, of course, is the extreme type of the family as it existed in the laws of Athens and Rome.4 Extreme as it is, it has coloured all 1 Muir's Life of Mahomet, vol. i. p. cclxi. note, and iv. 228, 221; The Koran, Sura xvii. 31; vi. 137, 141. Compare 81, 8. 2 Coulanges, Cité Antique, p. 101. Compare Grimm, "Das erste und aelteste Recht des Vaters aeussert sich gleich bei der Geburt des Kindes; er kann es aufnehmen oder aussetzen."-Deutsche RechtsAlterthümer, S. 455.

3 See the remarkable story in Plutarch, that Quintus Hortensius applied to Cato the Younger for the loan of his daughter, who was already married to Bibulus, and was finally gratified with the loan of Cato's wife, Martia, her father having been consulted. The loan, however, took the form of a gift for life, Martia being formally married to Hortensius, though, being left a widow, she married Cato again. Hortensius, it is said, had no object but to be connected with Cato's family.

4 See generally on this subject the chapter on "L'Autorité dans la famille," in the Cité Antique, by Coulanges, and Hearn's Aryan Household, chap. iv. § 3.

but the most modern legislation, except in the parts relating to life and death. So completely are we at variance with ancient morality on that score, that Rousseau is considered infamous for having allowed the State to care for his children; and Philip II. and Peter the Great are generally reprobated for having, as is supposed, ordered the death of sons whom they not unreasonably regarded as a menace to the highest good of the country.1 On the other hand, as late as the thirteenth century the Church Courts in England ruled that a husband could transfer his wife to another man for a period determinable at the recipient's pleasure.2 The right of selling a ward's marriage was among the most profitable incidents of feudal tenure; and the ward was so far better off than the natural child, that a guardian was bound to choose the husband in her own rank. In England it is probably correct to say that the consent of the parties has always been the first thing considered, and the consent of the parents nothing more than a necessary

1 Motley seems to incline to the belief that Philip contrived his son's death (Rise of Dutch Republic, p. 403). Ranke and Sir W. StirlingMaxwell describe the death as natural, but mention the charges against Philip (Spanish Empire, p. 34, and Life of Don John, i. pp. 74, 75). The essential point is, that Philip has generally been believed guilty. As regards Peter the Great, Coxe decides against Peter (Northern Tour, vol. ii. pp. 308-315). Kelly takes it as proved (History of Russia, chap. xxvii.). Oustrialoff, of course, accepts the official story, that the Tsarevitch died of apoplexy (Hist. of Russia, ii. p. 84); and Schuyler apparently thinks that he died of the consequences of torture, while it was still doubtful if Peter would carry the sentence of death into execution (Peter the Great, vol. ii. pp. 431-433).

2 See John Comoy's grant of his wife : Noveritis me tradidisse et dimisisse spontaneâ voluntate meâ domino Gul. Paynell militi Margaretam uxorem meam. . . et concedo quod praedicta Margareta sit et maneat cum praedicto Gulielmo pro voluntate ipsius Gulielmi."Rot. Parl, vol. i. p. 146,