aking a real advance in woman's legal status, arose out
of the predatory tendencies of the age.

When a child was born in an Anglo-Saxon household in the earliest
days, the first thought was not, what shall it be named, but, shall it
be put to death? In those rude times, the custom of exposure applied
to the young and to the very old. Life was a continual hardship, and
food was often extremely difficult to procure. Care for the feeble
implies a solicitude for life that was foreign to the experiences
of the men of that day. The weak and the sickly were regarded as
superfluous members of society. If the infant were deformed, or not
wanted for any reason, it was either killed outright, exposed, or sold
into slavery. We like to believe that when the Anglo-Saxons settled
in Britain and found themselves under more comfortable conditions
of living than those to which they had been accustomed in the
inhospitable clime whence they came, with its constant threat of
famine, they discarded this dreadful practice; but customs die slowly,
and, as the parent had absolute rights in the person of his child,
sentiment against the practice required time to become general. The
rugged Teuton, teeming with an overflowing vitality, had not adopted
the modern method of birth restriction as a solution of the problem
of sustenance. There was no Malthus in the forests of Germany to
discourse on the economic effect of an overplus of population and to
awaken inquiry as to the best way to limit the human family within
the bounds of possible sustenance. It was a condition and not a theory
that faced the Teuton, and he met the situation in the only way known
to him. As the problem passed away, the practice went also, though
isolated cases of exposure of infants continued down to the tenth
century.

In the form of exposing children of clouded birth, the practice of
infanticide grew with the lowering of morals; but in the case of
legitimate offspring the custom declined. The Church imposed heavy
penalties on those found guilty of the practice. Fortunately for the
infants so treated, there was a prevailing superstition that to adopt
one of these foundlings brought good luck. The great prevalence of the
crime at some periods is shown by the rewards offered by the different
monarchs to those who would adopt foundlings. All rights in the child
passed to the one who adopted it. The general willingness to adopt
such children led to many abuses. Mothers thus