he strongest supports of
that institution, as necessary to Christianity as to civilization. We
Americans have improved on the morality of Jesus, of the early and later
Church, and of the great nations of modern Europe; and in many of our
States persons are allowed to slip out of the marriage tie about as
easily as they get into it.

Nothing is more remarkable in the Roman laws than the extent of
paternal power. It was unjust, and bears the image of a barbarous age.
Moreover, it seems to have been coeval with the foundation of the city.
A father could chastise his children by stripes, by imprisonment, by
exile, by sending them to the country with chains on their feet. He was
even armed with the power of life and death. "Neither age nor rank,"
says Gibbon, "nor the consular office, could exempt the most illustrious
citizen from the bonds of filial subjection. Without fear, though not
without danger of abuse, the Roman legislators had reposed unbounded
confidence in the sentiments of paternal love, and the oppression was
tempered by the assurance that each generation must succeed in its turn
to the awful dignity of parent and master." By an express law of the
Twelve Tables a father could sell his children as slaves. But the abuse
of paternal power was checked in the republic by the censors, and
afterward by emperors. Alexander Severus limited the right of the father
to simple correction, and Constantine declared the father who should
kill his son to be guilty of murder. The rigor of parents in reference
to the disposition of the property of children was also gradually
relaxed. Under Augustus, the son could keep absolute possession of what
he had acquired in war; under Constantine, he could retain any property
acquired in the civil service, and all property inherited from the
mother could also be retained. In later times, a father could not give
his son or daughter to another by adoption without their consent. Thus
this _patria potestas_ was gradually relaxed as civilization advanced,
though it remained a peculiarity of Roman law to the latest times, and
was severer than is ever seen in the modern world. Fathers were bound to
maintain their children when they had no separate means to supply their
wants, and children were also bound to maintain their parents if in
want. These reciprocal duties, creditable to the Roman lawgivers, are
recognized in the French Code, but not in the English, which also
recognizes the right of a f