subject, in the main, from a
different point of view from the one taken in this article;
but that his position (in regard to the causes of woman's
advancement being due to the Church) is not wholly unlike my
own, will, I think, be readily seen. He places more stress
on the results of war than I have done (and in this the
corroborating evidence furnished by the Holy wars would
sustain the position of both), I having included this phase
of action under the term occupation, since I have dealt
almost wholly with nations more advanced and freer from the
fortunes of the Militant type than Mr. Spencer has done.

** See Appendix D.

*** See Appendix E.

WOMEN AS PERSONS.

Blackstone enumerates three "absolute rights of persons." First, "The
right of personal _security_, in the legal enjoyment of life,
limb, body, health, and reputation." Second, "The right of personal
liberty--free power of locomotion without legal restraint." Third, "The
right of private property--the free use and disposal of his own lawful
acquisitions."

None of these three primary and essential rights of persons were
conceded to women, and Church law did not rank her as a person deprived
of these rights, but held that she was _not a person at all_, but only a
function; therefore she possessed no rights of person in this world and
no hope of safety in the next.

As to the first of these "absolute rights of persons," any one of her
male relations, or her husband after she passed from one to the other,
had absolute power over her, even to the extent of bodily injury,*
bargain and sale of her person, and death. Nor did even this limit the
number of her masters. By both Church and Common Law the Lords temporal
(barons and other peers) and the Lords spiritual (Archbishops, Bishops,
and Abbots) possessed and exercised the right to dispose of her purity,
either for a money consideration or as a bribe or present as they saw
fit.**

* "Although England was christianized in the fourth century,
it was not until the tenth that a daughter had a right to
reject a husband selected for her by her father; and it was
not until the same century that a Christian wife of a
Christian husband acquired the right of eating at the table
with him. For many hundred years the law bound out to
servile labor all unmarried women between the ages of eleven
and forty."--M. J.