its of his children's
labor." "An infant [any one not of age] owes reverence and respect to
his mother; but she has no right to his services."*

* Blackstone. Sharswood.

This is upon the theory, doubtless, that starvation is wholesome for a
widowed mother, but that it does not agree with a father's digestion at
any time.

Sir Henry Maine in his "Ancient Law." says, that from the Pagan laws all
this inequality and oppressiveness of guardianship and restriction
of the personal liberty of women had disappeared, and he adds: "The
consequence was that the situation of the Roman female, whether married
or unmarried, became one of great personal and proprietary independence.
_But Christianity tended somewhat from the very first to narrow this
remarkable liberty...._ The great jurisconsult himself [Gaius] scouts
the popular Christian apology offered for it in the mental inferiority
of the female sex.... Led by their theory of Natural Law, the Roman
[Pagan] jurisconsults had evidently at this time assumed the equality of
the sexes as a principle of their code of equity."

Of the Christians, led by their theory of a revealed divine law which
treated women as inferior beings and useful only as prey, Lecky says
("European Morals," vol. 1, page 358): "But in the whole feudal
[Christian and chiefly Canon] legislation women were placed in a much
lower legal position than in the Pagan empire. The complete inferiority
of the sex was continually maintained by the law; and that generous
public opinion which in Pagan Rome had frequently revolted against the
injustice done to girls, in depriving them of the greater part of the
inheritance of their fathers, totally disappeared. _Wherever the canon
law has been the basis of legislation, we find laws of succession
sacrificing the Merest of daughters and of wives_, and a state of public
opinion which has been formed and regulated by these laws; nor was
any serious attempt made to abolish them _till the close of the last
century_. The French revolutionists, though rejecting the proposal of
Sieyes and Condorcet [both infidels] to accord political emancipation to
women, established at least an equal succession of sons and daughters,
and thus initiated a great reformation of both law and opinion which
sooner or later must traverse the world."

How soon or how late this will happen will depend very greatly upon the
amount of power retained by the Church. Pagans, Infidels, and Scientists