rs, in his
recent book, _Marriage_, a true and terrible indictment of women.

"If there was one thing in which you might think woman would
show a sense of some divine purpose in life it is in the matter
of children, and they show about as much care in the matter--oh,
as rabbits! Yes, rabbits. I stick to it. Look at the things a
nice girl will marry; look at the men's children she'll submit
to bring into the world. Cheerfully! Proudly! For the sake of
the home and the clothes!"

The fact is our marriage in its present legal form is primarily an
arrangement for securing the rights of property. This in itself is not
necessarily evil. Economic necessities cannot be ignored in any form
of the sexual relationship; it is rather a readjustment that is called
for here. We have seen how admirably a marriage system based upon
property in the form of free contracts worked in Egypt, and how happy
were the family relationships under this system of equal partnership
between the wife and husband. I would again recommend the careful
study of these marriage contracts to all those interested in marriage
reform. The contracts were never fixed in one form; all that was
required being that the interests of the woman and the children were
in all cases protected. Take again the Roman marriage which, in its
latest fine developments, has special interest, as the history of
modern marriage systems may be traced back to it. The Romans came,
like the Egyptians, to regard marriage as a contract rather than a
legal form. In the custom of _usus_, which supplanted the earlier and
sacred _confarreatio_, there was no ceremony at all. I would recall to
the memory of my readers the significant fact that in both these great
countries this freedom in marriage was associated with the freedom of
woman. It must be recognised that these two forces act together.

Traditional customs in marriage, as in all other departments of life,
tend to become worn out, and whenever any form presses too heavily on
a sufficient number of individuals acting against, instead of for, the
interests of those concerned, there arises a movement towards reform.
This happened in Rome, and led to the establishment of marriage by
_usus_, which was further modified by the practice known as _conventio
in manus_, whereby the wife by passing three nights in the year from
her husband was able to break through the terrible right of the
husband's _manus_. It is pos