ew witnesses examined by the commission declare that the moral
advance in Fiji is of a curiously patchy type. The abolition of
polygamy, for example, they say, has not told at every point in
favor of women. The woman is the toiler in Fiji; and when the
support of the husband was distributed over four wives, the
burden on each wife was less than it is now, when it has to be
carried by one. In heathen times female chastity was guarded by
the club; a faithless wife, an unmarried mother, was summarily
put to death. Christianity has abolished club-law, and purely
moral restraints, or the terror of the penalties of the next
world, do not, to the limited imagination of the Fijian, quite
take its place. So the standard of Fijian chastity is
distressingly low."

It must always be remembered that when the highly organized
primitive system of mixed spiritual and physical restraints is
removed, chastity becomes more delicately and unstably poised.
The controlling power of personal responsibility, valuable and
essential as it is, cannot permanently and unremittingly restrain
the volcanic forces of the passion of love even in high
civilizations. "No perfection of moral constitution in a woman,"
Hinlon has well said, "no power of will, no wish and resolution
to be 'good,' no force of religion or control of custom, can
secure what is called the virtue of woman. The emotion of
absolute devotion with which some man may inspire her will sweep
them all away. Society, in choosing to erect itself on that
basis, chooses inevitable disorder, and so long as it continues
to choose it will continue to have that result."

It is necessary to insist for a while on this personal responsibility in
matters of sexual morality, in the form in which it is making itself felt
among us, and to search out its implications. The most important of these
is undoubtedly economic independence. That is indeed so important that
moral responsibility in any fine sense can scarcely be said to have any
existence in its absence. Moral responsibility and economic independence
are indeed really identical; they are but two sides of the same social
fact. The responsible person is the person who is able to answer for his
actions and, if need be, to pay for them. The economically dependent
person can accept a criminal responsibility; he can, with an empty purse,
go to priso