Matilda Joslyn Gage

Marquette

The minds of people having been corrupted through centuries by the doctrines of the Church in regard to woman, it became an easy step for the State to aid in her degradation. The system of feudalism arising from the theory that warfare was the normal condition of man, still oppressed woman by bringing into power a class of men accustomed to deeds of violence, who found their chief pleasure in the sufferings of others. To be a woman appealed to no instinct of tenderness in this class. To be a woman was not to be protected unless such woman held power in her own right, or acted in place of some feudal lord. The whole body of villeins and serfs were under absolute dominion of the feudal lords. They were regarded as possessing no rights of their own; the priests had control of their souls, the lord, of their bodies. But it was not upon the male serfs that the greatest oppression fell. Although the tillage of the soil, the care of swine and cattle was theirs, the masters claiming half or more of everything, even to one-half of the wool shorn from the flock,[1] and all exactions upon them were great while their sense of security was slight, it was upon their wives and daughters that the greatest outrages were inflicted. It was a pastime of the castle retainers to fall upon peaceful villages, to the consternation of the women, who were struck, tortured, and made the sport of ribald soldiers.[2] “Serfs of the body,” they had no protection. The vilest outrages were perpetrated by the feudal lords under the name of “rights.” Women were taught by church and state alike that the feudal lord or seigneur had a right to them not only as against themselves, but as against any claim of husband or father. The custom known by a variety of names, but more modernly as “marchetta,” or “marquette,” compelled newly married women to a most dishonorable servitude. They were regarded as the rightful prey of the feudal lord for from one to three days after their marriage,[3] and from this custom, the oldest son of the serf was held as the son of the lord, “as perchance it was he who begot him.”

From this nefarious degradation of woman the custom of Borough-English arose, the youngest son becoming the heir.[4] The original signification of the word borough, being to make secure, the peasant through Borough-English made secure the right of his own son to what inheritance he might leave, thus cutting off his property from the possible son of his hated lord. France, Germany, Prussia, England, Scotland, and all christian countries in which feudalism existed, held to the enforcement of marquette. The lord deemed this right his, as fully as he did his claim to half the crops of the land, or half the wool shorn from the sheep. More than one reign of terror arose in France from the enforcement of this law, and the uprisings of the peasants over Europe during the twelfth century and the fierce Jacquerie, or Peasants War, of the fourteenth century in France, owed their origin among other causes to the enforcement of these claims by the lords upon the newly married wife. The Edicts of Marley securing the seigneural tenure in Lower Canada transplanted that claim to America when Canada was under the control of France.[5]

During the feudal period when chivalry held highest rank in the duties of the knight, women of the lower classes were absolutely unprotected. Both Church and State were their most bitter enemies; the lords even in holy orders did not lessen their claims upon the bride. Most of the bishops and chanonies were also temporal lords. The Bishop of Amiens possessed this right against the women of his vassals and the peasants of his fiefs, of which he was dispossessed at the commencement of the fifteenth century, by an arreet, rendered at the solicitation of husbands.[6] Although the clergy, largely drawn from the nobility, whose portionless younger sons were thus easily provided for, sustained the corruptions of the lords temporal yet having connected themselves with the church, they did not fail to preserve their own power even over the nobility.

The canons of the Cathedral of Lyons, bore title of Counts of Lyons; sixteen quarters of nobility, eight on side of the father; eight on side of the mother. The marchetta or cuissage was still practiced by them in the fourteenth century at the time Lyons was reunited to the crown of France. It was but slowly, after a great number of complaints and arrests of judgment that the canons of Lyons consented to forego this custom. In several cantons of Piccardy, the curÉs imitated the bishops and anciently took the right of cuissage, but ultimately the peasants of this region refused to marry, and the priests gave up this practice which they had usurped when the bishop had become too old to take his right.[7] The resolution not to marry, surprised and confounded the lord “suzerains,” who perceived it would cause the depopulation of their fiefs. During the feudal period, bearing children was the duty pre-eminently taught women. Serf children increased the power and possessions of the lord, they also added to the power of the church, and the strangest sermons in regard to woman’s duty in this respect fell from the lips of celibate monks and priests. She was taught that sensual submission to man, and the bearing of children, were the two reasons for her having been created, and that the woman who failed in either had no excuse for longer encumbering the earth. The language used from the pulpit for the enforcement of these duties, will not bear reproduction.[8] The villeins were not entirely submissive under such great wrongs, frequently protesting against this right of their suzerains. At one time a number of Piedmont villages rose in united powers. Although[9] the concessions gained were but small, not putting an end to the lord’s claim to the bride but merely lessening the time of his spoliation, the results were great in establishing the principle of serf rights.

Marquette began to be abolished in France towards the end of the sixteenth century.[10] But an authority upon this question says that without doubt the usage still continued in certain countries, farther asserting that even in this century it existed in the county of Auvergne, and several vassals plead to their lords against the continuance of this custom because of the great unhappiness it caused them. The lower orders of the clergy were very unwilling to relinquish this usage, vigorously protesting to their archbishops against the deprivation of the right, declaring they could not be dispossessed.[11] Boems states that he was present at a spiritual council of the metropolitane of Bourges, and heard a priest claim the right upon ground of immemorial usage.[12]

Although feudalism is generally considered the parent of this most infamous custom, some writers attribute its origin to an evangelical council, or to precepts directly inculcated by the church,[13] whose very highest dignitaries did not hesitate to avail themselves of the usage. In 1471, quite the latter part of the fifteenth century, Pope Sixtus IV[14] sought admission to the very illustrious Piedmont family, Della Rovere, which possessed the right of cuissage, allowing the lord absolute control of his vassals’ newly wedded bride for three days and nights; a cardinal of the family having secured the patent by which this outrageous and abominable right was granted them. The rights of the Lords spiritual in the jus primae noctis, at first, perchance, confined to those temporal lords who holding this right entered the church, at last extended to the common priesthood, and the confessional became the great fount of debauchery. Woman herself was powerless; the church, the state, the family, all possessed authority over her as against herself. Although eventually redemption through the payment of money, or property, was possible, yet a husband too poor or penurious to save her, aided in this debasement of his wife.[15] This inexpressible abuse and degradation of woman went under the name of pastime, nor were the courts to be depended upon for defense.[16] Their sympathies and decisions were with the lord. Few except manorial courts existed. Even when freedom had been purchased for the bride, all feudal customs rendered it imperative upon her to bear the “wedding dish” to the castle. Accompanied by her husband, this ceremony ever drew upon the newly married couple a profusion of jeers and ribald jests from which they were powerless to protect themselves. While in ancient Babylon woman secured immunity by one service and payment to the temple, the claim of the lord to the peasant wife was not always confined to the marriage day, and refusal of the loan of his wife at later date brought most severe punishment upon the husband.[17]

Blessing the nuptial bed by the priest, often late at night, was also common, and accompanied by many abuses, until advancing civilization overpowered the darkness of the church and brought it to an end. When too poor to purchase the freedom of his bride, the husband was in one breath assailed by the most opprobrious names,[18] and in the next he was congratulated upon the honor to be done him in that perchance his oldest child would be the son of a baron.[19] So great finally became the reproach and infamy connected with the droit de cuissage, as this right was generally called in France,[20] and so recalcitrant became the peasants over its nefarious exactions, that ultimately both lords spiritual and lords temporal fearing for their own safety, commenced to lessen their demands.[21] This custom had its origin at the time the great body of the people were slaves bound either to the person or land of some lord. At this period personal rights no more existed for the lower classes than for the blacks of our own country during the time of slavery. Under feudalism, the property, family ties, and even the lives of the serfs were under control of the suzerain. It was a system of slavery without the name; the right of the lord to all first fruits was universally admitted;[22] the best in possession of the serf, by feudal custom belonged to the lord. The feudal period was especially notable for the wrongs of women. War, the pastime of nobles and kings, brought an immense number of men into enforced idleness. Its rapine and carnage were regarded as occupations superior to the tillage of the soil or the arts of peace. Large numbers of men, retainers of every kind, hung about the castle dependent upon its lord, obedient to his commands.[23] At an age when books were few and reading an accomplishment of still greater rarity, these men, apart from their families, or totally unbound by marriage, were in readiness for the grossest amusement. At an age when human life was valueless, and suffering of every kind was disregarded, we can readily surmise the fate likely to overtake unprotected peasant women. They were constantly ridiculed and insulted; deeds of violence were common and passed unreproved. For a woman of this class to be self-respecting was to become a target for the vilest abuse. Morality was scoffed at; to drag the wives and daughters of villeins and serfs into the mire of lechery was deemed a proper retribution for their attempted pure lives; they possessed no rights of person or morality against the feudal lord and his wild retainers. All christian Europe was plunged into the grossest morality.[24] A mistress was looked upon as a necessary part of a monarch’s state.[25] Popes, cardinals, and priests of lesser degrees, down to the present century, still continued the unsavory reputation of their predecessors;[26] “nephews,” “nieces,” and “sacrilegious” children are yet supported by the revenues of the Church, or left to poverty, starvation and crime. It was long the custom of christian municipalities to welcome visiting kings by deputations of naked women,[27] and as late as the eighteenth century, a mistress whose support was drawn from the revenues of the kingdom, was recognized as part of the pageantry of the kingdom.

The heads of the Greek and Protestant Churches, no less than of the Catholic, appear before the world as men of scandalous lives. The history of the popes is familiar to all students. No less is that of the English Eighth Henry, the real father of the Reformation, in England, and founder of the Anglican Church, whose adulteries and murders make him a historic Blue Beard. The heads of the Greek Church figure in a double sense as fathers of their people. The renowned Peter the Great amused himself by numberless liaisons, filling Russia with descendants whose inherited tendencies are those of discontent and turmoil. When he visited the Court of Prussia, 1717, he was accompanied by his czarina, son, daughter, and four hundred ladies in waiting, women of low condition, each of whom carried an elegantly dressed infant upon her arms. If asked in regard to the paternity of the child they invariably replied “my lord has done me the honor to make me its mother.”[28]

In no country has a temporal monarch under guise of a spiritual ruler been more revered than in Russia. Even amidst nihilism a belief that the czar can do no wrong is the prevailing conviction among the Slavic peoples. This is both a great cause of, and a result of Russian degradation. If we except the proportionately few liberal thinkers, that conviction is as strong as it was in the time of Ivan the Terrible. In no civilized or half-civilized nation is ignorance as dense as among the peasantry of that vast empire embracing one-sixth of the habitable globe. Nor to the czar alone was such disregard of woman’s right of person confined. The system of serfdom which existed until within the last half of the present century, was a system of feudalism in its oppression of women, although if possible even more gross. The sale of young peasant girls regularly took place, and the blood of the nobility of that country runs in the veins of its most degraded and ignorant population.[29] Although Italy the seat of the papal power is noted for the ignorance, squalor, and superstition of its people, we no less find such a condition of affairs existing in Russia. Amid the starvation of its people, accompanied by “hunger-typhus,” that form of disease which in the Irish famine of 1848 was known as “ship-fever,” the peasants will not accept aid from Count Tolstoi, whom they have been taught to regard as Anti-Christ, fearing that by so doing they will condemn themselves to eternal torment.[30] While the peasantry are thus suffering wrongs of every nature, the priesthood and churches are as thriving as before.

Having shown the results of power in the hands of a controlling class, upon women of low degree in both the Catholic and Greek divisions of christendom, we have but to look at our own country to find like condition under Protestantism. The state of the slave women of the South was that of serfs of the body under feudalism, or of the serf peasant women of Russia. Nor is other proof of this statement required than the hue of this race, no longer spoken of as the blacks, but as colored people. Let the condition of woman as to her rights of person, under the three great divisions of Christianity, be answer to all who without examination of history, or the customs of ancient and modern times, and with eyes closed to these most patent facts, so falsely assert that woman has been elevated by christianity, and is now holding a position never before in the world accorded her. But what has already been shown of her degradation under christian teachings and laws is but a small portion of the wrongs woman has suffered during the christian centuries.

Under theory of the divine rights of man, society has everywhere been permeated with disregard for woman’s rights of person. Monarchs not posing as spiritual heads of their people have yet equally made use of their place and power for woman’s degradation, and an indefinite fatherhood outside of marriage. Augustus of Saxony, King of Poland, is chiefly renowned in history as the father of three hundred illegitimate children.[31] Of Charles II not alone King of England, but also head of the Anglican Church, one of his subjects declared him to be the father of many of his people in the literal as well as in the spiritual sense. Four English dukes of the present day trace their lineage to this monarch, who left no legitimate descendants.[32]

H.R.H. the present heir-apparent to the English throne bears an equally unsavory record.[33] To him and his aristocratic companions in guilt is due the support and protection of England’s notorious and infamous purchase and sale, outrage, and exploitation of helpless young girls. An English clergyman writing the New York Sun, at the time of the disclosures made by the Pall Mall Gazette, declared he had in his possession a list of the names of the royal princes, dukes, nobles, and leading men who had been the principal patrons and supporters of the “gilded hells” devoted to the ruin of the merest children, girls from the ages of nine to thirteen.[34] The reputation of the male members of the Hanoverian dynasty has ever been bad. Trace as you will the path of either ecclesiastical or temporal rulers claiming authority by “divine right,” and you will find the way marked with the remains of women and children whose life has been wrecked by man under plea of created superiority. While Italy within the last forty years has escaped from the temporal control of the pope, its kings have no less copied the immorality of the “Vicar of God”; the predecessor of the late king of Italy having left thirty-three illegitimate children. An instance of the survival of the feudal idea as to the right of the lord to the person of his vassal women occurred in Ireland within the past few years, graphically described in a letter upon landlords, from Mr. D. R. Locke (Nasby), December, 1891, in which he says;

One was shot a few years ago and a great ado was made about it. In this case as in most of the others it was not a question of rent. My Lord had visited his estates to see how much more money could be taken out of his tenants and his lecherous eye happened to rest upon a very beautiful girl, the eldest daughter of a widow with seven children. Now this beautiful girl was betrothed to a nice sort of a boy, who, having been in America, knew a thing or two. My Lord, through his agent, who is always a pimp as well as a brigand, ordered Kitty to come to the castle. Kitty knowing very well what that meant, refused.

“Very well,” says the agent, “yer mother is in arrears for rent, and you had better see My Lord, or I shall be compelled to evict her.”

Kitty knew what that meant also. It meant that her gray haired mother, her six helpless brothers and sisters would be pitched out by the roadside to die of starvation and exposure, and so Kitty without saying a word to her mother or any one else, went to the castle and was kept there three days, till My Lord was tired of her, when she was permitted to go.

She went to her lover, like an honest girl as she was, and told him she would not marry him, but refused to give any reason.

Finally the truth was wrenched out of her, and Mike went and found a shot gun that had escaped the eye of the royal constabulary, and he got powder and shot and old nails, and he lay behind a hedge under a tree for several days. Finally one day My Lord came riding by all so gay and that gun went off, and ‘subsequent proceedings interested him no more.’ There was a hole, a blessed hole, clear through him, and he never was so good a man as before because there was less of him.

Then Mike went and told Kitty to be of good cheer and not be cast down, that the little difference between him and My Lord had been happily settled, and that they would be married as soon as possible. And they were married, and I had the pleasure of taking in my hand the very hand that fired the blessed shot and of seeing the wife, to avenge whose cruel wrongs the shot was fired.

Nor is this the only instance in modern Ireland. A certain lord Leitram was noted a few years since for his attempts to dishonor the wives and daughters of the peasantry upon his vast estate comprising 90,000 acres. His character was that of the worst feudal barons, and like those he used his power as magistrate and noble, in addition to that of landlord, to accomplish his purpose. After an assault upon a beautiful and intelligent girl, by a brutal retainer of his lordship, her character assailed, his tenantry finally declared it necessary to resort to the last means in their power to preserve the honor of their wives and daughters. Six men were chosen as the instruments of their rude justice, and among them the brother of this girl upon whom the leadership fell. They took oath to be true to the end, in life or death, raised a sum of money, purchased arms, and seeking a convenient opportunity shot him to death. Nor were the perpetrators ever discovered; yet it is now known that two of them died in Australia, two in the Boer war in South Africa, and the leader who came to the United States, changing his name, passed away in the summer of 1892 in the State of Pennsylvania.

Under head of “A Story of To-day,” another tale is related of woman’s oppression in Ireland aided by the Petty Sessions Bench in 1880.

These iniquities have taken place in christian lands[35] and these nefarious outrages upon women have been enforced by the christian laws of both church and state. The degradation and unhappiness of the husband at the infringement of the lord’s spiritual and temporal upon his marital rights, has been depicted by many writers but history has been quite silent upon the despair and shame of the wife.[36] No hope appeared for woman anywhere. The Church which should have been the great conserver of morals dragged her to the lowest depths through the vileness of its teachings and its priestly customs. The State which should have defended her civil rights followed the example of the church in crushing her to the earth. Christian laws were detrimental to woman in every relation of life.

The brilliant French author, Legouve,[37] gives from among the popular songs of Brittany during the fourteenth century, a pathetic ballad, “The Baron of Jauioz,” which vividly depicts the condition of the peasant women of France at that date. In the power of the male members of her family over her, we also find an exact parallel in the condition of English women of the same era. The moral disease thus represented being due to the same religious teaching, the change of country and language but more fully serves to depict the condition of woman everywhere in christendom at this period.

BRETON BALLAD OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. THE BARON OF JAUIOZ.

This ballad founded upon historic facts represents the social life of christendom during the fourteenth century. The authority of the son, the licentiousness of the lord, the powerlessness of the mother, the despair of the daughter, the indifference of society, are vividly depicted in this pathetic ballad. It shows the young girl regarded as a piece of merchandise, to be bought and sold at the whim of her masters who are the men of her own household and the lord of the manor. During the feudal period the power of the son was nearly absolute. For his own aggrandisement he did not hesitate to rob his sisters, or sell them into lechery.[38] Hopelessly despairing in tone, this ballad gives us a clear picture of feudal times when chivalry was at its height, and the church had reached its ultimate of power. Woman’s attitude today is the echo of that despair. At this period the condition of a woman was not even tolerable unless she was an heiress, with fiefs in possession.[39] Even then she was deprived of her property in case of loss of chastity, of which it was the constant aim to deprive her. Guardians, next of kin, and if none such existed, the church threw constant temptations in her way. Ruffians were hired, or reckless profligates induced to betray her under plea of love and sympathy, well paid by the next heir for their treachery.

Although Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries said that he discovered no traces of marquette in England, a reminiscence of that custom is to be found in the “fine” or “permit” known in that country as Redemption of Blood, and designated as Merchetum Sanguinis, by Fleta.[40] This was a customary payment made by a tenant to his lord for license to give his daughter in marriage. Such redemption was considered a special mark of tenure in villeinage.[41] It was not exacted from a free man, which is corroborative proof of its origin in the Jus Primae Noctis, of the feudal lord. Of the free man this fine was not permissible, because of the privilege of free blood. Raepsaet, M. Hoffman, Dr. Karl Schmidt, and other authors writing in the interest of the church and finding it impossible to deny the existence of some power over the bride, have questioned its character, declaring it not to be feudal, but a spiritual authority, to guard the bride by enforcing a penitence of marital abstinence of one to three days after the nuptials. It is not to be doubted that under the peculiar teachings of the church in regard to the uncleanliness of marriage, such continence was a certain period part of church law.[42] Nevertheless this does not invalidate the fact that a widespread contrary custom existed in feudal times and at a still later period. The present usages of society point back to an age when right to the peasant’s bride was enforced by the lord. A reminiscence[43] of this period is to be found in charivari and the buying off of a party of this character with refreshments from the house, or with money for the purchase of cigars and liquor. Such occurrences constantly fall within our knowledge, personally or through the press.[44] The very fact of such persecution of the bridal pair is a symbol of that custom under which the retainers of the feudal lord jeered and flouted the bridegroom, throwing him into foul water,[45] and other most unseemly practices. To others outside of the charivari party this practice still affords amusement, few persons inclining to interfere or prohibit such pastimes. Society no longer as sharply defined as in the feudal period, yet has preserved in this practice a symbol of the times when even the highborn dames in the castle equally as degraded as its lord, amused themselves while the bride was in the company of the lord by ridiculing and torturing the husband who in anxiety for his wife ventured too near the castle. The present nearly universal custom of a wedding journey must be referred in its origin to the same period, arising from an inherited tendency in the bride and groom to escape the jeers and ill treatment that in past ages invariably accompanied entrance into the married state.

In some European countries redemption was demanded from all women, not alone the daughters of villeins and serfs, but also of those of noble birth who were freed by payment of a ransom in silver known as the “Maiden Rents.” Lands were even held under Maiden Redemption.[46] In Scotland this ransom became known as “Marquette”; Margaret wife of Malcolm Canmore, generally spoken of for her goodness as Saint Margaret,[47] exercising her royal influence in 1057 against this degradation of her sex. Numberless seditions having arisen from this claim upon the bride, the king more willingly established a release upon the payment of a piece of silver, a demi-marc, called marquette (whence the name), and a certain number of cows. The piece of silver went to the king, the cows to the queen, and from that period cuissage was known as the droit de marquette. But this nefarious custom possessed such strength, appealing directly to man’s basest passions, his love of power, his profligacy—the human beast within him—that it continued in existence nearly seven hundred years after the royal edict in Scotland against its practice.[48] This vile power extended over all ranks of women; the king holding it over the daughters of the grand seigneur, the suzerain over the daughters of his vassals; the seigneur over the daughters of his serfs, even the judge or bailie enforcing this right upon all women who passed upon his road.[49]

The Church has ever been the bulwark of this base claim. Holding the powers of penance and of excommunication, such custom could neither have originated nor been sustained without the sanction of the church.[50] At this date the privileges of the lower clergy were extraordinary. Even in England they were not amenable to the common law; they ruled the laity with iron hand, but the laity possessed no power over the priesthood.[51] All appointments were in priestly hands, the union of church and state complete.

God himself seemed to have forsaken woman, and the peasantry lost all belief in the justice of earth or heaven. The customs of feudalism which were akin to the customs of power wherever existing throughout christendom did more to create what the church terms “infidelity” than all the reason of the philosophers. No human being is so degraded as not to possess an innate sense of justice; a wrong is as keenly felt by the most humble and ignorant as by the educated and refined, its effect more lasting because of the impossibility of redress. The power of the seigneur was nearly equal to that of the king himself. Manorial courts entirely local aided the seigneur in the enforcement of his traditional privileges[52] at the expense of the villeins. The crown possessed no jurisdiction over these courts. The lord held the right to make laws, render justice, lay imposts, declare war, coin money, dispose of the goods and lives of his subjects, and other prerogatives still more closely touching their personal rights, especially of the women living in his dominion.[53]

To persons not conversant with the history of feudalism and the church it will seem impossible that such foulness could ever have been part of christian civilization. That the vices they have been taught to consider the outgrowth of paganism, and as the worst heathendom could have existed in Christian Europe upheld many hundred years by both church and state will strike most people with incredulity. Such however is the truth; we are compelled to admit well attested facts of history, however severe a blow they strike our preconceived beliefs.

The seigneural tenure of the feudal period was a law of Christian Europe more dishonorable than the worship of Astarte at Babylon.[54] In order to fully comprehend the vileness of marquette, we must remember that it did not originate in a pagan country, many thousand years since; that it was not a heathen custom transplanted to Europe with many others adopted by the church,[55] but that it arose in christian countries a thousand years after the origin of that religion, continuing in existence until within the last century.

The attempt made by some modern authors to deny that the claim of the feudal lord to the person of his female serf upon her marriage ever existed, on the ground that statutes sustaining such a right have not been discovered, is extremely weak.[56] The authority of a custom or “unwritten law” is still almost absolute. A second objection that such customs are unchristian has been answered. The third plea in opposition, namely that those so outraged, so oppressed, left no record of resistance is false. Aside from the fact that education was everywhere limited, no peasant and but few of the nobility knowing how to read or write, and within the church learning very rare, we have indisputable evidence of strong character in the revolt of serfs at different periods, through which concessions were gained; the final refusal of the serfs to marry, and in the travesty upon religion known as the “Black Mass.”

We can not measure the serf’s power of resistance by the same standard as our own. The degradation of man with but a few exceptions was as great as that of woman. Civilly and educationally the peasant man was on a par with the peasant woman. No more than she had he a voice in making the laws; the serf was virtually a slave under the absolute dominion of his lord. No power existed for him higher than that of his feudal superior. It is nearly impossible to realize the hopeless degraded condition of the peasant serf of the middle ages. It has had no parallel in the present century, except in the slavery of the southern states. Free action, free speech, free thought was impossible. But our respect for humanity is increased when we know that these vassals, although under the life and death power of their lords, did not tamely submit to the indignities enforced upon their wives and daughters.

It must also be remembered that the historians of that period were generally priests by whom the fact of such usage or custom would pass unmentioned, especially as the church taught that woman was created to meet the special demands of man. Other important historical facts have been as lightly touched upon, or passed over entirely. The deification of Julius Caesar while Emperor of Rome, is scarcely referred to in the more familiar literary sources of Roman history. And yet his worship was almost universal in the provinces, where he was adored as a god. The records of this worship are only to be found in scattered monuments and inscriptions but recently brought to light, and deciphered within the last few years. Through these it is proven that there was an organized worship of this emperor, and an order of consecrated priests devoted to him.[57] Higgins refers to this deification of Caesar.[58] It is not alone proof of the low condition of morality at this period, but also of the universal disbelief in woman’s authority over, or right to herself, that so few writers upon feudal subjects have treated of the libidinous powers of the lord over his female serfs. Even those presenting the evils of feudalism in other respects, have merely expressed a mild surprise that christian people should have admitted that right of the lord over his feminine vassals. The various names under which this right was known as jus primae noctis,[59] droit de seigneur,[60] droit de jambage,[61] droit de cuissage,[62] droit d’ afforage,[63] droit de marquette,[64] and many other terms too indelicate for repetition, indicating this right of the lord over all the women in his domain, is still another incontestable proof of the universality of the custom.

The Mosaic teaching as to sacredness of “first fruits,” under Judaism, dedicated to the Lord of Heaven, doubtless was in part the origin of the claim of the feudal lord. The law of primogeniture, or precedence of the first born son as the beginning of “his father’s strength” is also a translation from Judaism into the customs of many nations, but nowhere under the law of primogeniture at the present day does even a first born daughter receive as high consideration as a first born son. This is especially noticeable in royal families. It is not therefore singular that men who took the literal sense of the bible in science, who believed that the world had been created in six days, this work having so greatly fatigued the Lord Almighty as to make rest of the seventh day necessary for him, should under example of that lord, claim the first fruits in all their possessions. No Christians of the present day, except the Mormons, so fully base their lives upon the teachings of the bible as the Catholics of the middle ages. If we accord divine authority to this book, accepting the literal word as infallible and sacred, we must admit that both Church and State were at this period in unison with its teachings, and even during the nineteenth century have not freed themselves from the stigma of sustaining woman’s degradation; the theory of the feudal ages remains the same, although the practice is somewhat different. Legal bigamy or polygamy, non-marital unions, are common in every large city of christendom. Government license has created a class in many European countries devoted to the most degraded lives under government sanction, protection, and control; in England known as “Queen’s Women,” “Government Women.” Thus the State places itself before the world as a trafficker in women’s bodies for the vilest purposes. The culmination of nearly two thousand years of christian teaching is the legalization of vice for women and the creation of a new crime. Previous to the enactment of this law the rules of modern jurisprudence held an accused person as innocent until proven guilty. Under this legalization of vice all women within a certain radius of recruiting, or other army stations, are “suspects,” looked upon as immoral, and liable to arrest, examination, and registration upon government books as government women. It required seventeen years of arduous work to repeal this law in England. This legalization of prostitution in the nineteenth century by the State is its open approval of that doctrine of the Church that woman was created for man. It is an acknowledgment by men that vice is an inherent quality of their natures. It is in accord with man’s repeated assertion that only through means of a class of women pursuing immorality as a business, is any woman safe from violence.

In a letter to the National Woman Suffrage Convention at St. Louis, May, 1879, Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, Honorable Secretary of the Federation and of the Ladies National Association for the Protection of Women, wrote:

Although a long and active work through seventeen years eventually brought about the repeal of this law in England, it still continues in the British colonies, being forced upon the people in opposition to their own action. After the Cape Parliament of the Colony of Good Hope had repealed the law, Sir Bartle Frere re-introduced it by means of an edict.[65] When in London, 1882, Sir John Pope Hennessey, Governor and Commander in Chief of British China, was waited upon by an influential deputation of members of parliament and others to whom he made known the practical workings of governmental regulation of prostitution introduced by England into that colony. He did not hesitate to characterize it as a system of slavery for the registered women and girls. He also declared that they detested the life they are thus compelled to enter having both a dread and an abhorrence of foreigners, especially foreign sailors and soldiers. He said such Chinese girls are the real slaves of Hong Kong.

The relation of Christianity to this treatment of Chinese women, and the contempt with which this religion is regarded by these heathen, is most fully shown by Sir John’s conversation with the leading Chinese merchant of Canton, as given by himself, upon the material progress of the colony. To this merchant Sir Pope said: “Your people are making a large fortune here. Why not send down your second son to enter the house of the Chinese merchant and learn the business there?” The merchant replied, “I can not for this reason; Hong Kong is a sink of iniquity.” Sir Pope Hennessey answered. “This is a Christian colony; we have been here now for forty years, we are supposed to be doing the best we can to spread civilization and christianity.” The Chinaman repeated: “It is a sink of iniquity in my mind. As Chinamen we think of domestic and family life—we reverence such things—but how do I see the poor Chinese treated in this colony?” And he related stories of the abuses to which his countrywomen were subjected.

In repeating this conversation to Her Majesty’s government, Sir Pope Hennessey declared the words that the merchant of Canton who called Hong Kong a “sink of iniquity” have a wide application, because the British colony at Hong Kong is geographically a part of a great Empire, an empire where you have missionaries of various churches. “I have been asked to explain the curious and distressing fact that christianity is declining in China. I think it is declining mainly on account of the treaties we have forced upon the Chinese; but I will frankly tell you, it is declining also because they see these girls registered in such houses for ‘Europeans’ and made practically slaves under our flag.”[66]

Nor are the Cape of Good Hope, and China, the sole foreign countries in which this system of the legalized moral degradation of women has been carried by England, nearly one hundred places in India showing the same vice under license from the British Government, even to bearing the same name.[67] Nor have innumerable petitions and protests from native and foreign ladies, from zenana workers, from missionaries, and even from all ranks of the resident English civil service for immediate repeal of this vilest of all laws, been of the least effect. So thoroughly imbued are English legislators with contempt for womanhood, as not only to maintain these outrageous laws but also to cause fear in the minds of those women who for twenty years wrought for the repeal of these acts in Great Britain and Ireland, of their again being introduced under more insidious and dangerous form.[68] A memorial signed by a number of native born and English ladies was presented to the Viceroy praying that the age of protection for young girls be raised. While in India a man’s dog, horse, elephant, and even the plants of his garden are under the protection of English law, his daughter of ten years is outside this protection.[69] The penal code punishes with imprisonment or a fine, or both, the man who injures an animal valued at ten rupees; if the animal be worth fifty rupees his imprisonment may be for five years, while for dishonestly coaxing his neighbor’s dog to follow him, the punishment is three years imprisonment, or a fine or both; while the man who induces “consent” from a girl-child of ten years escapes all punishment.

In deference to the bitter opposition these acts created, it was declared that legalized prostitution was abolished in British India, June 5th, 1888. A statement was made in the House of Commons that the contagious disease acts had been suspended in Bombay. But an investigation of these statements by the English Social Purity Society, proved them false, the Sentinel, its organ, stating, June 1890, that upon inquiry it was found that the licensing of prostitution systematically prevails in British India, and is always attended with results most disastrous to health of body as well as morals of the community. The most extraordinary course is taken towards the accomplishment of their ends, by the advocates of legalizing vice. In 1888 having failed to secure an act of the legislature of the state of New York, in its favor, a society to this end was formed in the city of New York, incorporated as a “Voluntary Association”; borrowing the name used in England at the time its women were most degraded by the state.[70] This society grants certificates to women presenting themselves for examination. And thus step by step under many forms more extended than even under feudal law, is woman’s moral degradation made the effort of christian civilization of today.

The “ten thousand licensed women of the town” of the City of Hamburg, are required by the State to show certificates that they regularly attended Church, and also partake of the sacrament. And even in Protestant Berlin, the capital of Protestant Prussia, the Church upon demand of the State furnished certificates of their having partaken of holy communion to those women securing license to lead vicious lives; the very symbol and body of him, whom the christian world worships as its saviour, thus becoming the key to unlock the doors of woman’s moral degradation.[71]

The fact of governments lending their official aid to demoralization of woman by the registration system, shows an utter debasement of law. This system is directly opposed to the fundamental principle of right, that of holding of the accused innocent until proven guilty, which until now has been recognized as a part of modern law. Under the registration or license system, all women within the radius of its action are under suspicion; all women are held as morally guilty until they prove themselves innocent. Where this law is in force, all women are under an irresponsible police surveillance, liable to accusation, arrest, examination, imprisonment, and the entrance of their names upon the list of the lewd women of the town. Upon this frightful infraction of justice, we have the sentiments of the late Sheldon Amos, when Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law College of London University. In “The Science of Law,” he says, in reference to this very wrong:

Great effort has been made to introduce this system into the United States, and a National Board of Health, created by Congress in 1879, is carefully watched lest its irresponsible powers lead to its encroachment upon the liberties and personal rights of women. A resolution adopted March 5, 1881, at a meeting of the New York committee appointed to thwart the effort to license vice in this country, shows the need of its watchful care.

Even the Latin races in their lowest degradation did not put the sanction of law upon the open sale of women to vice, says Mrs. Butler. This remained for the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races, under the highest christian civilization in a class of women licensed by the State, under protection and name of the head of the Anglican Church, as “Queen’s Women,” “Government Women,” both Church and State here uniting in the nefarious business of making women, by law, the slaves of man’s lowest nature. A system which openly declares “the necessity” for woman’s foulest degradation, in order to protect man in his departure from the moral law, a system that annually sends its tens of thousands down to a death from which christian society grants no resurrection. Similar religious beliefs beget similar results. Times change, and with them methods, but as long as the foundation of the christian church of every name, rests upon the belief in woman’s created inferiority to man, and that she brought sin into the world, so long will similar social, industrial, and moral results follow. The Catholic, Greek, and Protestant divisions, all degrade women but under different forms. That the woman of every christian land fears to meet a man in a secluded place by day or by night, is of itself sufficient proof of the low state of christian morality. Several states have at different times attempted the enactment of similar laws through bills introduced into their legislatures; requiring constant watchfulness on part of the friends of social purity lest this great wrong be consummated, a wrong primarily against woman. In certain cities, as St. Louis, where such registration and license was for some time demanded, the foulest injuries were perpetrated upon entirely innocent and reputable women, injuries for which they had no redress.[72] Under the legalized vice system, women are slaves, not possessing even the right of repudiating this kind of life.

A gentleman traveling in France, 1866, relates a most pathetic instance of the attempted escape and the forcible return to the house of infamy, of a young girl whose person there was at the command of every brute who chose to pay the price of her master. The tram car in which this gentleman was riding, crowded with ladies and girls of refined appearance, was suddenly stopped on one of the principal streets of Havre, by a dense crowd swaying back and forth across the track. He said:

“I was powerless to help.” In many christian countries a traffic in girls exists under government protection and license.

Criminal vice chiefly finds its feminine prey among the poorest and most helpless class who are the victims of this new commercial business, its customers scattered in every christian land, and accepting their spoil only upon the certificate of some reputable physician as to their innocence and previous uncontamination. Crime, vice, and cruelty, were never before so closely united in one infamous system; the purchase of young innocence by old iniquity under protection of law.[73] A bill was introduced into the English parliament to check this business of girl destruction, accompanied by proof so direct, and proof of the necessity of immediate action so great, that it was not doubted that the bill would pass at once. Yet it encountered secret[74] and powerful opposition, was finally referred to a committee already so overburdened with work and so far behindhand that it was manifest that the bill could not be reached in years. Gilded vice laughed at this result, and the iniquitous business proceeded as before. At that period the Pall Mall Gazette entered into an investigation whose results roused the whole civilized world. Even clergymen, ignoring the fact that christian teaching had brought this vice into being, joined the press in scathing reproof of patrician London iniquity.[75] Societies were formed for the protection of young girls from the vice of men who used the power of wealth and station to corrupt the daughters of the poor.[76]

Under English christian law it has never been a crime to morally destroy a girl of thirteen, because under that law she is held responsible for her own undoing. Girls of this tender age, infants, in all that pertains to the control of property, incapable of making a legal contract, because of immaturity of understanding, are yet held by that law as of age to protect themselves from a seducer; held to possess sufficient judgment to thwart all the wiles of men old in years and crime—of men protected in their iniquities by laws of their own making—men shielded by the legislation of their own sex—men who escape all punishment because men alone enact the laws. It is not alone the waifs of society who fall a prey to the seducer, but the children of reputable parents and good homes are waylaid on their way to and from school and lured to ruin.[77] To the modern ghoul it is of no moment upon whom he preys, provided his victim be but young and innocent. Lecky has portrayed the standard of morals of the present day as far higher than in pagan Rome, but we must be allowed to doubt this. Immoral sentiment is more deftly hidden, and law more dependent upon public opinion. As soon as the general consensus of public opinion rises in opposition to girl destruction, the law will regulate itself in accordance with this standard.

Lord Shaftesbury, upon this point, said:

The Pall Mall Gazette has published to the world disclosures of a most horrible, and many would think of an incredible character. Not even the questionings of peace or war or most intricate foreign policy, ought to interfere with energetic measures to suppress these evils. But before we can make any great advance, there must be a considerable move of public opinion. It must be vigorous and determined, and I will tell you why. You may depend upon it that no government undertakes a question of a really important and social character until it has been forced upon it by the voice of public opinion. Consequently it is our duty to bring the voice of that public opinion to bear on this question. Law can be evaded in every possible way. The only thing that defies evasion is a wide spread and universally extended public opinion. I hope that we shall be able to create such a public opinion throughout the country that persons will be induced to come forward voluntarily and give evidence. The plague spot is too deep, too wide, and there are too many persons interested in the continuance of it, to enable us easily to wipe it out. Uncommon energy will be necessary; and I hope we shall raise such an amount of popular indignation that the effect will be irresistable.