Principles of Political Economy Part 38

[Footnote 250-1: This expression is applicable only in times of higher civilization where individual disposition of self is considered the most essential want. During the middle ages, when the family tie is yet so strong, the contract of marriage was generally formed by the family; but this was not, as a rule, felt a restraint. In France, at the present time, of 1,000 men who marry before their 20th year, 30.8 marry women from 35 to 50 years of age, and 4.8 who marry women over 50 years of age. (_Wappaus_, A. Bevolkerung.

Stat. II, 291.)]

[Footnote 250-2: _Propertius_ bitterly complains of the corruption prevalent in love affairs in his time. (III, 12.) In the h.e.l.lenic world, also, among the successors of Alexander the Great, there was a revoltingly large number of _marriages de convenance_, so that even the old Seleucos took to wife the grand-daughter of his compet.i.tor Antegonos, Lysimachos the daughter of Ptolemy etc. _Dante's_ lament over the anxiety of fathers to whom daughters are born concerning their future dowry: Paradiso, XV, 103. Florentine law of 1509, against large dowries: _Machiavelli_, Lett.

fam., 60. In the United States, marriage dowries are of little importance. (_Graf Gortz_, Reise um die Welt, 116.)

[Footnote 250-3: _Seneca_, de Benef., III, 16--a frightful chapter. Also, I, 9. _Juvenal_ speaks of ladies who in five years had married eight men (IV, 229, seq.), and _Jerome_ saw a woman buried by her 23d husband, who himself had had 21 wives, one after another, (ad. Ageruch, I, 908.) The first instance of a formal divorce _diffareatio_ is said to have occurred in the year 523, after the building of the city (_Gellius_, IV, 3), a clear proof that the Romulian description of marriage, as ???????a ?p??t?? ?e??? ?a?

????t?? (Dionys., A. R. II., 25), was long a true one. The old ma.n.u.s-marriage certainly supposes great confidence of the wife and her parents in the fidelity of the husband, while the marriage law of the time of the emperors relating to estates never lost sight of the possibility of divorce.

The facility of obtaining amicable divorces (the most dangerous of all) appears from the gifts allowed, _divorti causa_, in L., 11, 12, 13, 60, 61, 62; Dig., XXIV, 1. In Greece, we meet with the characteristic contrast, that, in earlier times, wives were bought, but that later, large dowries had to be insured to them or the risk of divorce at pleasure be a.s.sumed. (_Hermann_, Privataltherthumer, -- 30.) How women themselves married again, even on the day of their divorce, see _Demosth._, adv. Onet., 873; adv. Eubul., 1311.

On Palestine, see Gospel of _John_, 4, 17 ff. Concerning present Egypt, where prost.i.tution is carried on especially by cast-off wives, see _Wachenhusen_, vom agypt, armen Mann, II, 139. During the great French revolution, divorces were so easily obtained that but little was wanted to make a community of wives. (Vierzig Bucher, IV, 205; Handbuch des franzosischen Civilrechts, -- 450.) The more divorces there are in a Prussian province, the more illegitimate births also. Thus, for instance, Brandenburg, 1860-64, had 1,721 divorces, and one illegitimate birth for every 7.8 legitimate (max.). Rhenish Prussia, four divorces and one illegitimate birth for every 25.4 legitimate (min.). In the cities of Saxony, it is estimated there are, for every 10,000 inhabitants, 36 divorced persons; in the country, only 19 (_Haushofer_, Statistik, 487 seq.); in Wurttemberg, 20; Thuringia, 33; all Prussia, 19; Berlin, 83. (_Schwabe_, Volkszahlung von, 1867 p. XLV.)]

[Footnote 250-4: _Cicero_, in his speech for Cluentius, gives us a picture of the depth to which families in his time had fallen through avarice, l.u.s.t, etc., which it makes one shudder to contemplate. Moreover, of the numerous families mentioned in _Drumann's_ history, there are exceedingly few which, either actively or pa.s.sively had not had some share in some odious scandal. Concerning even Cato, see _Plutarch_, Cato, II, 25. Messalina's systematic patronage of adultery: _Dio Ca.s.s._, LX, 18.]

[Footnote 250-5: _Gellius_, I, 6. In Greece, the same symptoms appear clearly enough, even in _Aristophanes_: compare especially his Thesmophoriazusae. The frequently cited woman-hatred of Euripides is part and parcel hereof; also the fact that since Socrates' time, the most celebrated Grecian scholars lived in celibacy. (_Athen._, XIII, 6 seq.; _Plin._, H. N., x.x.xV, 10.) Compare Theophrast in Hieronym.

adv. Jovin, I, 47, and _Antipater_, in _Stobaeus_, Serm., LXVII, 25.]

[Footnote 250-6: In modern Italy, the monstrosity known as cicisbeism had not a.s.sumed any great proportions before the 17th century, in consequence of the bad custom which permitted no woman to appear in public without such attendant, and ridiculed the husband for accompanying his own. In the time of the republics, the conventual seclusion of girls and the duenna system were not yet customary.

(_Sismondi_, Gesch. der Italiennischen Republiken, XVI, 251, ff., 498, ff.) Adultery punished with death in many cities of medieval Italy: for instance, the Jus Munic.i.p.ale Vicentinum, 135. Concerning the Spanish cicisbeos, who evince as much shamelessness as fidelity, see _Townsend_, Journey, II, 142, ff. _Bourgoing_, Tableau, II, 308, ff. The so-called _cortejos_ are generally young clerics or young officers.]

[Footnote 250-7: A young American woman says to Mrs. Butler: "We enjoy ourselves before marriage, but in your country girls marry to obtain a greater degree of freedom, and indulge in the pleasures and dissipations of society." While the young girls are always to be met with in the streets, wives are to be found always in the kitchen. (_Mrs. Butler_, American Journal, II, 183.) Compare _Beaumont_, Marie ou l'Esclavage aux etats-Unis, I, 25 ff. 349. The opposite extreme in Italy, where, therefore, too favorable an inference should not be drawn from the small number of illegitimate births. Morally considered, one act of adultery outweighs 10 _stupra!_ Even in the age of the renaissance, the free intercourse of young girls in England and the Netherlands made a favorable impression on Italian travelers; _Bandello_, Nov., II, 42; IV, 27.

Similar contrast in antiquity between Ionian and Dorian women. Wives were more rigidly excluded from entering gymnasia for males in Sparta than young girls. (_Pausan._, V, 6, 5; VI, 20, 6; _Plato_, De Legg., VII, 805; _Xenoph._, De Rep. Laced., I.) Compare _K. O. Muller_, Dorier, II, 276 ff.]

[Footnote 250-8: _Plato_, De Legg., VI, 774, and _Aristotle_, Polit., II, 6; V, 9, 6; VI, 2, 12, complain of the too great supremacy of women in their day. Colossal land ownership of Lacedemonian women. (_Aristot._, Polit., II, 6, 11.) And yet even Plato advises that women be allowed to partic.i.p.ate in the gymnasia, in the a.s.semblies and to hold public office, etc. They were indeed different from men, but not as regards those qualities which fit for ruling. (De Rep., V, 451 ff.; De Legg., VI, 780; VII, 806.) That the Roman courtesans wore the male toga and were therefore called togatae. _Horat._, Serm., I, 2, 63 ff., 80 ff.; _Martial_, VI, 64, recalls certain caricatures of very recent times; for instance, Bakunius' demand that both s.e.xes should wear the same kind of dress. (_R. Meyer_, Emanc.i.p.ationskampf des 4 Standes, I, 43.) Later, concerning wifish men, see _Apuleius_, Metam., VIII; _Salvian_, Gubern.

Dei VII. We are led to a related subject in noticing that in England of persons charged with serious crimes there were 10 women to 30 men; in Russia only 10 women to 81 men. (_v.

Oettingen_, 758.) As _Riehl_ remarks, Famille 15, the undeniable _consensus gentium_, that the costume of men should differ from that of women, is an equally undeniable protest against this species of emanc.i.p.ation. I would add that, as among ourselves in the earliest years of childhood, so also among lowly civilized peoples, the difference in costumes of the s.e.xes is least apparent. (_Tacit._, Germ., 17; Plan. Carpin., Voyage en Tartarie; Add. ed., Bergeron, art. 2.) Even the physical difference is smaller there (_Waitz_, Anthropologie der Naturvolker, I, 76), especially in the size of the pelvis. (_Peschel_, Volkerkunde, 81, 86.)]

[Footnote 250-9: Even _Plato_ complains of the unnatural relations of the s.e.xes to one another, and would instead have the unions of couples of short duration introduced, and complete community of children under the direction of the state. (De Rep., V.) The Stoic Chrysippos approves the procreation of children by parent and child, brother and sister. (_Diog. Laert._, VII. 188.) In the time of Epictetus (Fr. 53, ed. Duebner), the Roman women liked to read Plato's republic, because in his community of wives they found an excuse for their own course. The Anabaptists appealed to Christ's saying that he who would not lose what he loved could not be his disciple. Thus the women should sacrifice their honor and suffer shame for Christ's sake. Publicans and prost.i.tutes were fitter for heaven than honorable wives, etc. (_Hagen_, Deutschlands Verhaltnisse im Reformationszeitalter, III, 221.)

In our days, the theory inimical to the family is based rather on misconceived ideas of freedom and science. The Christian mortification of the flesh is, it is said, one-sidedness; and that the flesh no less than the spirit is of G.o.d. Hence it is that Saint Simonism would reconcile the two, and "emanc.i.p.ate" the flesh. (_Enfantin_, Economie politique, 2d ed., 1832.) _Fourier_, in his Harmonie, allows each woman to have one _epoux_ and two children by him; one _geniteur_ and one child by him; one _favori_ and as many _amants_ with no legal rights as she wishes. His "harmonic"

world he would protect against over-population by four organic measures: the _regime gastrosophique_, the object of which is by first-cla.s.s food to oppose fecundity; _la vigeur des femmes_, because sickly women have most children; _l'exercise integral_, since by the exercise of all the organs of the body the organs of generation are latest developed; lastly the _murs phanerogames_, the minuter description of which _Fourier's_ disciples omitted in the later editions. (_N. Monde_, 377, ff.) _Fourier_ was of opinion that only one-eighth of the mothers should be occupied with the bringing up of the children, and that a child's own parents were least adapted to bringing it up, as is proved by the natural aversion of the child to mind the advice or obey the injunctions of its own parents. (186 ff.) If all were left free to choose their employment, two-thirds of all men would devote themselves to the sciences, and one-third of all women; the fine arts would be cultivated by one-third of the men and two-thirds of the women. In agriculture, two-thirds of the men and one-third of the women would take to large farming, and to small farming one-third of the men and two-thirds of the women.

The Communistic Journal, L'Humanitaire, is in favor of a community of wives proper, while _Cabet_ leaves the question an open one. Compare, besides, _G.o.dwin_ on Political Justice, 1793, VIII, ch. 8. In beautiful contrast to this are _J. G. Fichte's_ (compare, _supra_, -- 2) views on marriage and the family in the appendix to his Naturrecht, although he, too, would largely facilitate divorce.]

[Footnote 250-10: _J. Bentham_, Traite de Legislation, II, 237, seq., says that it is scarcely decent for men to engage in the toy trade, the millinery business, in the making of ladies' dresses, shoes, etc. Compare _M. Wolstoncraft_, Rettung der Rechte des Weibes, translated by Salzmann, 1793; _v. Hippel_, uber die burgerliche Verbesserung der Weiber, 1792. Rich in remarks on the woman question are _K. Marlo_, System der Weltokonomie, and _Schaffle_, Kapitalismus und Socialismus, 444 ff., who, for the most part, supports him.

Compare _Josephine Butler_, Woman's Work and Woman's Culture: a Series of Essays, 1792; _Leroy-Beaulieu_, Le Travail des Femmes au. 19, siecle, 1873. Between 1867 and 1871, the number of men dependent on their own action in Berlin, increased 22.9 per cent.; of women dependent on their own labor, 36.6 per cent. (_Schwabe_, Volkszahlung, 1871, 84.)]

[Footnote 250-11: _J. S. Mill_, on the other hand, rejoices over the great economic independence of women, and expects from it especially a decrease in the number of thoughtless marriages. (Principles, IV, ch. 7, 3. Compare by the same author, The Subjection of Women, 1869.) I need only mention the dramatic art and the factory proletariat, where the independence in question obtains and indeed with very different results! It is very characteristic of the time, that _Homer_(Il., XII, 433) considered the spinning for wages as despicable, while _Socrates_, in the mournful period following the Peloponnesian war, earnestly counsels that free women without fortune should employ themselves with home industries. (_Xenoph._, Memor., II, 7.) It is in keeping with this that during the time of scarcity after the Peloponnesian war even female citizens hired themselves out as nurses. (_Demosth._, adv. Eubul., 1309, 1313.) The frequency of such engagements has, in many respects, causes related to these which produce a frequency of illegitimate births.]

SECTION CCLI.

POLYANDRY.--EXPOSURE OF CHILDREN.

In some of the countries of farther Asia, the immoral tendencies counter to over-population which with us take the direction of illegitimate births and acts of adultery, a.s.sume the guise of formal inst.i.tutions established by law. I need only cite the polyandry of East India, Thibet and other mountainous regions of Asia, which is indeed modified somewhat by the fact that, as a rule, only several brothers have one wife in common.[251-1]

That unnatural inst.i.tution is, in many localities, based on this, that a great many of the newly born female children are killed or at least sold in foreign parts after they have grown.[251-2] In addition to this, we have the very great encouragement given to celibacy in the Himalayas, so that only monks can attain to a higher education and to the higher honors.[251-3] In many parts of the East Indies, we find a legally recognized community of wives, which is but slightly modified[251-4] by the difference of caste; and almost everywhere, that looseness of general morality which usually characterizes declining nations.[251-5]

China is, as a rule, considered the cla.s.sic land of child-exposure. And a writer of the country, who is considered one of the princ.i.p.al authorities against the exposure of children, actually claims that it is reprehensible only when one has property enough to support them. The murder of daughters he especially reprobates as "a struggle against the harmony of nature; the more a father performs this act, the more daughters are born to him; and no one has ever heard that the birth of sons was promoted in this way."[251-6] Moreover, the exposure of children in the later periods of antiquity played an important part. In Athens, the right of a father to expose his child was recognized by law.

Even a Socrates accounts it one of the occasional duties of midwives to expose children.[251-7] Considered from a moral point of view, Aristotle has nothing to say against abortion.[251-8] In Rome, a very ancient law, which was still in existence in 475 before Christ, made it the duty of every citizen to have and to bring up children.[251-9] It was very different in the time of the emperors,[251-10] and until Christianity, made the religion of the state, caused a legal prohibition against the exposure of children to be pa.s.sed.[251-11] [251-12]

[Footnote 251-1: _Turner_, Emba.s.sy to Thibet, II, 349, tells of five brothers who lived satisfied thus under one roof.

(_Jacquemont_, Voyage en Inde, 402.) In Ladakh, all the children are ascribed to the eldest brother, to whom also the property belongs; all the younger brothers are his servants and may be expelled the house by him. (_Neumann_, Ausland, 1866, No. 16 seq.) In Bissahir, on the other hand, the eldest child belongs to the eldest brother, the second to the second, etc. Here the wife is bought by all the brothers together and treated precisely as a slave.

(_Ritter_, Erdkunde, III, 752.) In Bhutan, the men move into the house of the woman, who is frequently old, and who before marriage, and up to her 25th or 30th year, has generally lived very lawlessly. (_Ritter_, IV, 195.) Among the Garos, the wife may leave the man at pleasure and not lose her property or her children, while her husband by her rejection of him loses both. (_Ritter_, V, 403.) Even in Mahabarata, polyandry occurs among the Northern Indians.

Similarly, among the Indo-Germanic tribes in Middle Asia (_Ritter_, VII, 608); according to Chinese sources in ancient Tokharestan (_Ritter_, VII, 699), and among the Sabaeans (_Strabo_, XVI, 768). Even in ancient Sparta.

(_Polyb._, XII, 6.)]

[Footnote 251-2: In lower Nerbudda, the poisoning of new born female children was very common about the beginning of this century. In Kutch, people prefer to marry persons from foreign countries, and murder their own daughters.

(_Ritter_, VI, 623, 1054.) Similarly, even in the Indian Arcadia, the land of the Nilgherrys (V, 1035 seq.). In Cashmir, all the beautiful girls are sold in the Punjab and in India from their eighth year upwards. (VII, 78.) Similarly in the Caucasus and in the mountainous region of Badakschan. (VII, 798 ff.) _v. Haxthausen_, Transkaukasia, 1856, I, ch. 1, tells how the Russians captured a vessel carrying Circa.s.sian slaves into Turkey. They left them their choice, to go back home, marry in Russia, or to continue their journey to Constantinople. They all unhesitatingly chose the last! There is an echo of something a.n.a.logous even in the Semiramis saga.]

[Footnote 251-3: In many parts of Thibet and Rhutan the fourth son, and in some places the half of the young men, become lamas. (_Ritter_, Erdkunde, IV, 149, 206.)]

[Footnote 251-4: Among the Garos and Nairs, as well as among the Cossyahs, in Northwestern Farther India, the children have no father, but consider their brothers on the mother's side their nearest male relatives. Inheritance also takes this direction. (_J. Mill_, History of British India, I, 395 seq. _Buchanan_, Journey through Mysore, II, 411 seq.

_Ritter_, V, 390 seq., 753.) Similarly, among the Lycians: _Herodot._, I, 173. Whether the peculiar custom of many old German people, of which _Tacitus_, Germ., 20, makes mention, does not point to an original community of wives, _quaere_.]

[Footnote 251-5: Even the most debauched European is a pattern of modesty compared with the Indians themselves.

(Edinb. Rev., XX, 484.) On the frightful development of unnatural as well as natural crimes against chast.i.ty among the Chinese, see _G. Schlegel_, in the memoirs of the Genoostchap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen in Batavia, Band.

x.x.xII, and Ausland, Januar., 1868.]

[Footnote 251-6: According to _J. Bowring's_ official report: Athenaeum, 17 Nov., 1855. That the exposure of children is allowed by law in China, and that many poor couples marry with the intention of exposing them, is unquestionable. But the reports concerning the extent of the evil differ materially. The Jesuits estimated that in Pekin alone from 2,000 to 3,000 children were exposed in the streets. To this must be added the many thrown into the water or smothered in a bath-tub immediately after birth.

Compare Lettres edif., XVI, 394 ff.; _Barrow_, 166 ff. The street-foundlings were picked up by the police and placed in wagons, living and dead together, and cast into one pit in a part of the city. Other accounts are much more favorable: thus that of _Ellis_, Voyage, ch. 7, who was there in 1816, and of _Timkowski_, Reise, II, 359. Compare the quotations in _Klemm_, Kulturgeschichte, VI, 212.]

[Footnote 251-7: _Pet.i.t_, Legg. Att., 144. Compare _Becker_, Charicles, I, 21 ff.; _Plato_, Theaet., 150 ff. In Plato's state, a system of exposure on a large scale is one of the most essential foundations of the whole. (De Re., V, 461.)]

[Footnote 251-8: Aristotle advised that males should not marry before their 37th year, and that at least after their 55th year they should bring no more children into the world.

No family was allowed to have more than a definite number of children. (Polit., VII, 14.) There are even yet pictures of Venus trampling an embryo under foot. (_R. O. Muller_, Denkmaler der alten Kunst, II, No. 265.) Compare, _per contra_, _Stobaeus_, Serm., LXXIV, 91; LXXI, 15.]

[Footnote 251-9: _Dionys. Hal._, Ant. Rom., IX, 22.]

[Footnote 251-10: _Plutarch_, De Amore Prol., 2, Minut.

Felix Octav., 30. That it seemed entirely right, when persons had "enough" children, to put the others to death, is proved by the catastrophe in _Longus'_ idyllic romance, IV, 24, 35. Even men like _Seneca_ (Contr., IX, 26; X, 33) and _Tacitus_ (Ann., III, 25 ff.) were actually in favor of the right of exposing children. On the frequency of artificial abortion, see _Juvenal_, VI, 594. Semi-castration of young slaves for libidinous women who did not want to bear children. (_Juvenal_, VI, 371 ff.; _Martial_, I, V67.)]

[Footnote 251-11: Under Constantine the Great, 315 after Christ. _Theod._, Cod., XI, 27, 1]

[Footnote 251-12: It is an unfortunate fact that many modern nations approximate more closely to this abomination of the ancients than is generally supposed. The infrequency of illegitimate children in Romanic southern nations is offset by the enormous number of exposures almost after the manner of the Chinese. See the tables in _v. Oettingen_, Anhang, 95. In Milan, between 1780 and 1789, there were, in the aggregate, 9,954 children abandoned; between 1840 and 1849, 39,436. (_v. Oettingen_, 587.) On abortion in North America, and the numberless bold advertis.e.m.e.nts of doctors there that they are ready to remove all impediments to menstruation "from whatever cause," see _v. Oettingen_, 523, and Allg.

Zeitung, 1867, No. 309. It would be a very mournful sign of the times if the work: Principles of Social Science, or physical, s.e.xual and natural Religion; an Exposition of the real Cause and Cure of the three great Evils of Society, Pauperism, Prost.i.tution and Celibacy, by a Doctor of Medicine (Berlin, 1871), were really a translation of an alleged English original. It is throughout atheistic, materialistic and immoral, concerned only with one fundamental idea: to instruct women how to prevent conception!]

SECTION CCLII.

POSITIVE DECREASE OF POPULATION.

The way of vice is steep. Where the aversion to the sacrifices and to the limitations of liberty imposed by marriage, has permeated the great body of the people; where, indeed, the immoral tendencies counter to population described in -- 249 ff. have been largely developed, they very readily cease to be mere checks, and population may positively decline.

While in the case of fresh and vigorous nations, the mere loss of men caused by wars, pestilence, etc., is very easily made up;[252-1] that reproductive power may here be too much enfeebled to fill up the gap again. It has happened more than once that the decline of a period has been frightfully promoted by great plagues, which have swept away in whole ma.s.ses the remnants of a former and better generation.[252-2] The return of the relatively small population of its childhood to a nation in its senility cannot be ascribed exclusively to a decrease in its means of subsistence and to a less advantageous distribution of them.[252-3] [252-4] The depopulation, however, of Greece and Rome in their decline might be hard to understand were it not for the slavery of the lower cla.s.s.[252-5]

[Footnote 252-1: It is said that the plague which, in 1709 and 1710, decimated Prussia and Lithuanian, carried away one-third of the inhabitants, and even one-half of those at Dantzig. While previously the number of marriages annually was, on an average, 6,082, it rose in 1711 to 12,028. In 1712 it was 6,267, and sank some years afterwards on account of the decrease in population, to 5,000. (_Sussmilch_, Gottl. Ordnung, I, Tab. 21.) Similar effects of the plague at Ma.r.s.eilles, 1720. (_Messance_, Recherches sur la Population, 766.) In Russia, too, it was observed after the devastation produced by the black death in 1347 and the succeeding years, that the population again increased at an extraordinarily rapid rate; and that an unusual number of twins and triplets were born (?). (_Karamsin_, Russ. Gesch., IV, 230.) Compare _Dalin_ Schwed. Gesch., 11,384; _Montfaucon_, Monuments de la Monarchie Francaise, I, 282.]

[Footnote 252-2: I would mention the Athenian pestilence during the last years or Pericles; the Roman in the _orbis terrarum_, between 250 and 265 B.C., which is said to have destroyed one-half of the population of Alexandria.

(_Gibbon_, Hist. of the Roman Empire, ch. 10.) It also made frightful ravages, intellectually, on the nationality of the Romans. (_Niebuhr._) Thus, in England, the black death contributed very largely to cause the disappearance of the medieval spirit. (_Rogers._) Of great political importance was the pestilence of Bagdad, which, in 1831, carried off 2/3 of the inhabitants. All national bonds seemed dissolved, robbers ruled the country; the army of the powerful Doud Pascha was carried off entirely, and his whole political system, constructed after the model of that of Mehemet-Ali, fell into ruin. Compare _Anth. Groves_, Missionary Journal of a Residence at Bagdad, 1832.]