of Queen Anne were probably not averse to exercising their old-time prerogative.  Says Sir Richard Steele (Spectator, 479):  “I can not deny but there are Perverse Jades that fall to Men’s Lots, with whom it requires more than common Proficiency in Philosophy to be able to live.  When these are joined to men of warm Spirits, without Temper or Learning, they are frequently corrected with Stripes; but one of our famous Lawyers is of opinion, That this ought to be used sparingly.”  The law was, indeed, even worse than might appear from the words of Blackstone.  The wife who feared unreasonable violence could, to be sure, bind her husband to keep the peace; but she had no action against him.  A husband who killed his wife was guilty of murder, but the wife who slew her husband was adjudged guilty of petty treason; and whereas the man would be merely drawn and hanged, the woman, until the reign of George III, was drawn and burnt alive.[397]

The right of a husband to restrain a wife’s liberty may not be said to have become completely obsolete until the case of Reg. v.  Jackson in 1891.[398] Wife-beating is still a flagrantly common offence in England.

[Sidenote:  Wife’s property in marriage.]

Turning now to the question of the wife’s property in marriage, we shall be forced to believe that Blackstone was an optimist of unusual magnitude when he wrote that the female sex was “so great a favourite of the laws of England.”  Not to weary the reader by minute details, I cannot do better than give Messrs. Pollock and Maitland’s excellent summary of the final shape taken by the common law—­a glaring piece of injustice, worthy of careful reading, and in complete accord with Apostolic injunctions:  “I.  In the lands of which the wife is tenant in fee, whether they belonged to her at the date of the marriage or came to her during the marriage, the husband has an estate which will endure during the marriage, and this he can alienate without her concurrence.  If a child is born of the marriage, thenceforth the husband as ’tenant by courtesy’ has an estate which will endure for the whole of his life, and this he can alienate without the wife’s concurrence.  The husband by himself has no greater power of alienation than is here stated; he cannot confer an estate which will endure after the end of the marriage or (as the case may be) after his own death.  The wife has during the marriage no power to alienate her land without her husband’s concurrence.  The only process by which the fee can be alienated is a fine to which both husband and wife are parties and to which she gives her assent after a separate examination.