poverty as the responsible support of a large company of
dependent pensioners. It must also be remembered that if the ancient
father, as head of the family, held the permission of society to
discipline wife and child even to severity of corporal punishment he
was also charged with the task of insuring their obedience to whatever
social laws were in force and was himself legally liable to punishment
if he did not keep his family law-abiding. That moral responsibility
for the behavior of his family, early outlined in detail, was
increasingly eased by the growth of personal relationship of women and
youth to society. That was shown in the laws that defined the extent
of punishment allowed the father-head. Although he might be secure in
his legal right and duty to bestow on wife or apprentice "moderate
castigation," an old Welsh law limited him to "three blows only with
a broomstick on any part of the person except the head;" and another
ancient law allowed the use only of "a stick no longer than the
husband's arm and no thicker than his middle finger" in the case of
the wife; while Blackstone's well-remembered restriction was to "a
stick no bigger than his thumb."

The moral responsibility of the father for his children, carrying with
it as it did the liability of prison or even death for the misbehavior
of sons, was governed by various statutes which show in the Middle
Ages a growth toward freeing children from parental control and
placing upon them when "of age" a definite and personal legal bond and
penalty.

For example, we read that the Anglo-Saxon law held many children at
the age of ten responsible for some acts which were forbidden, but
that most youth were legally minors until the age of fifteen. Until
the early period of the eighteenth century it was still possible for a
parent to legally sell his children, "a girl up to fourteen, a boy
under seven." And after that period a wayward or troublesome son or
daughter, or any of the offspring, when the parents could be proved
financially incapable of their care, could be sent to convent or
monastery.

The ability to bear arms seems to have been the criterion for legal
coming of age. The Romans, with their heavy weapons, held the son in
tutelage until the age of fifteen. The Germans, with their use of
light darts, gave their sons power of self-control at the age of
twelve. In the heyday of feudalism "a knight's son became of age when
he could swing his father's swor