ce successfully contested with an
English prince the crown of France, his claim resting on that obscure
paragraph in the Salic code. The Hundred Years' War was fought on this
issue, and the final outcome of the war established the Salic Law
permanently in France, and with more or less rigor in most of the
European states.

At the time of the French Revolution, when the "Rights of Man" were
being declared with so much fervor and enthusiasm, when the old laws
were being revised in favor of greater freedom of the individual, the
"Rights of Woman" were actually revised downward. Up to this time the
application of the Salic Law was based on tradition and precedent. Now a
special statute was enacted forever barring women from the sovereignty
of France. "Founded on the pride of the French, who could not bear to be
ruled by their own women folk," as the records are careful to state.

The interpretation of the Salic Law did more, a great deal more, than
exclude women from the throne. It established the principle of the
inherent inferiority of women. The system of laws erected on that
principle were necessarily deeply tinged with contempt for women, and
with fear lest their influence in any way might affect the conduct of
state affairs. That explains why, at the present time, although in most
European countries women are allowed to practice medicine, they are not
allowed to practice law. Medicine may be as learned a profession, but it
affects only human beings. The law, on the other hand, affects the
state. A woman advocate, you can readily imagine, might so influence a
court of justice that the laws of the land might suffer feminization.
From the European point of view this would be most undesirable.

The apparently superior rights possessed by English women were also
bestowed upon them by a vanished system of laws. They have descended
from Feudalism, in which social order the _person_ did not exist. The
social order consisted of _property_ alone, and the claims of property,
that is to say, land, were paramount over the claims of the individual.
Those historic women sheriffs of counties, clerks of crown,
chamberlains, and high constables held their high offices because the
offices were hereditary property in certain titled families, and they
had to belong to the entail, even when a woman was in possession. The
offices were purely titular. No English woman ever acted as high
constable. No English woman ever attended a coronatio