No doubt, the progress of events is slow, like the working of the laws of gravitation generally.  Certainly, there has been but little change in the legal position of woman since China was in its prime, until within the last dozen years.  Lawyers admit that the fundamental theory of English and Oriental law is the same on this point:  Man and wife are one, and that one is the husband.  It is the oldest of legal traditions.  When Blackstone declares that “the very being and existence of the woman is suspended during the marriage,” and American Kent echoes that “her legal existence and authority are in a manner lost,”—­when Petersdorff asserts that “the husband has the right of imposing such corporeal restraints as he may deem necessary,” and Bacon that “the husband hath, by law, power and dominion over his wife, and may keep her by force within the bounds of duty, and may beat her, but not in a violent or cruel manner,"[A]—­when Mr. Justice Coleridge rules that the husband, in certain cases, “has a right to confine his wife in his own dwelling-house and restrain her from liberty for an indefinite time,” and Baron Alderson sums it all up tersely, “The wife is only the servant of her husband,”—­these high authorities simply reaffirm the dogma of the Gentoo code, four thousand years old and more:—­“A man, both day and night, must keep his wife so much in subjection that she by no means be mistress of her own actions.  If the wife have her own free will, notwithstanding she be of a superior caste, she will behave amiss.”

[Footnote A:  It may be well to fortify this point by a racy extract from that rare and amusing old book, the pioneer of its class, entitled “The Lawes Resolutions of Women’s Rights, or the Lawes Provision for Woman.  A Methodicall Collection of such Statutes and Customes, with the Cases, Opinions, Arguments, and Points of Learning in the Law as doe properly concern Women.”  London:  A.D. 1632. pp. 404. 4to.  The pithy sentences lose immeasurably, however, by being removed from their original black-letter setting.

“Lib.  III Sect.  VII, The Baron may beate his Wife.

“The rest followeth, Justice Brooke 12.  H. 8. fo. 1. affirmeth plainly, that if a man beat an out-law, a traitor, a Pagan, his villein, or his wife, it is dispunishable, because by the Law Common these persons can haue no action:  God send Gentle women better sport, or better companie.

“But it seemeth to be very true, that there is some kind of castigation which Law permits a Husband to vse; for if a woman be threatned by her husband to bee beaten, mischieued, or slaine, Fitzherbert sets donne a Writ which she may sve out of Chancery to compell him to finde surety of honest behauiour toward her, and that he shall neither doe nor procure to be done to her (marke I pray you) any bodily damage, otherwise then appertaines to the office of a Husband for lawfull and reasonable correction.  See for this the new Nat. bre. fo. 80 f. & fo. 23S f.