ed her to them as
their thing, to be used at their pleasure, and that they are not
expected to practise the consideration towards her which is required
from them towards everybody else. The law, which till lately left
even these atrocious extremes of domestic oppression practically
unpunished, has within these few years made some feeble attempts to
repress them. But its attempts have done little, and cannot be
expected to do much, because it is contrary to reason and experience
to suppose that there can be any real check to brutality, consistent
with leaving the victim still in the power of the executioner. Until
a conviction for personal violence, or at all events a repetition of
it after a first conviction, entitles the woman _ipso facto_ to a
divorce, or at least to a judicial separation, the attempt to repress
these "aggravated assaults" by legal penalties will break down for
want of a prosecutor, or for want of a witness.

When we consider how vast is the number of men, in any great country,
who are little higher than brutes, and that this never prevents them
from being able, through the law of marriage, to obtain a victim, the
breadth and depth of human misery caused in this shape alone by the
abuse of the institution swells to something appalling. Yet these are
only the extreme cases. They are the lowest abysses, but there is a
sad succession of depth after depth before reaching them. In domestic
as in political tyranny, the case of absolute monsters chiefly
illustrates the institution by showing that there is scarcely any
horror which may not occur under it if the despot pleases, and thus
setting in a strong light what must be the terrible frequency of
things only a little less atrocious. Absolute fiends are as rare as
angels, perhaps rarer: ferocious savages, with occasional touches of
humanity, are however very frequent: and in the wide interval which
separates these from any worthy representatives of the human species,
how many are the forms and gradations of animalism and selfishness,
often under an outward varnish of civilization and even cultivation,
living at peace with the law, maintaining a creditable appearance to
all who are not under their power, yet sufficient often to make the
lives of all who are so, a torment and a burthen to them! It would be
tiresome to repeat the commonplaces about the unfitness of men in
general for power, which, after the political discussions of
centuries, every one knows