heinousness assimilated to murder, idolatry, and sorcery.' Various mediæval law-books punished the seducer with death; whilst in Scotland notorious and manifest adultery was made capital as late as 1563.3 This extreme severity, however, has been followed by extreme leniency. In Scotland, though adultery kept its place in the statutebook as a heinous and in some cases a capital crime, prosecution for it had ceased for many years before the time of Baron Hume; and in England it is no crime at all in the eyes of the law, only an ecclesiastical offence. 4 6 The punishment of the seducer often varies according to his rank, or according to that of the husband, or according to the relative rank of both, or according to the rank of the adulteress. Among the Monbuttu, if the guilty woman belongs to the royal household, the adulterer is put to death, whereas otherwise he is only compelled to pay an indemnity to the offended husband. Among the Ewespeaking peoples of the Slave Coast the fine imposed for adultery depends on the rank of the injured husband; and the same principle is found in Anglo-Saxon law. Among the Bakongo, again, the penalties for adultery "vary from capital punishment to a trifling fine, according to the station of the offender or the district he lives in."s Drury tells us that in the country of Anterndroea in Madagascar, "if a man lies with another man's wife who is superior to him, he forfeits thirty head of cattle besides beads and shovels a great number," whereas "if the men are of an equal rank, then twenty beasts are the fine."" According to the Chinese Penal Code, a slave who is guilty of criminal intercourse with the wife or daughter of a freeman, shall be punished at the least one degree more 2 severely than a freeman would have been under the same circumstances.1 In India a man of one of the first three castes who committed adultery with a Sûdra woman was banished, but a Sûdra who committed adultery with a woman of one of the first three castes suffered capital punishment; and an opinion is also quoted that for a Brâhmana who once was guilty of adultery with a married woman of equal class, the penance was one-fourth of that prescribed for an outcast.3 In ancient Peru "an adulterer was punish'd with death, if the woman was of note, or else with the rack." 4 96 We find no difficulty in explaining all these facts. In early civilisation a husband has often extreme rights over his wife. The seducer encroaches upon a right of which he is most jealous, and with regard to which his passions are most easily inflamed. Adultery is regarded as an illegitimate appropriation of the exclusive claims which the husband has acquired by the purchase of his wife, as an offence against property." It is said in the Laws of Manu' that" seed must not be sown by any man on that which belongs to another.' How closely the seducer is associated with a thief is illustrated by the fact that among some peoples he is punished as such, having his hands, or one of them, cut off. Yet even among savages the offence is something more than a mere infringement of the right of ownership. The Kurile Islanders, says Krasheninnikoff, have an extraordinary way of punishing adultery the husband of the adulteress challenges the adulterer to a combat. The result is generally the death of both the combatants; but it is held to be "as great dishonour to refuse this combat as to refuse an invitation to a duel among the people of Europe."8 The passion of jealousy, the feeling of ownership, and the sense of honour, thus combine to make the seducer's act an offence, and often a heinous offence, in the eyes of custom or law; and for the same reasons as in other offences the magnitude of guilt is here also influenced by the rank of the parties concerned. Modern legislation, on the other hand, does not to the same extent as early law and custom allow a man to give free vent to his angry passion; it regards the dishonour of the aggrieved husband as a matter of too private a character to be publicly avenged; and the faithfulness which a wife owes her husband is no longer connected with any idea of ownership. Moreover, the severity of earlier European laws against adultery was closely connected with Christianity's abhorrence of all kinds of irregular sexual intercourse; and secular legislation has more and more freed itself from the bondage of religious doctrine. Among some savage peoples it is the seducer only who suffers, whilst the unfaithful wife escapes without punishment. Jealousy, in the first place, turns against the rival, and the seducer is the dishonourer and the thief. But, as a general rule, the unfaithful wife is also looked upon as an offender, and the punishment falls on both. She is discarded, beaten, or ill-treated in some way or other, and not infrequently she is killed. Often, too, she is disfigured by her enraged husband, so that no man may fall in love with her ever after. Indeed, so strong is the idea that a wife belongs exclusively to her husband, that among several peoples she has to die with him; and frequently a widow is prohibited from remarrying either for ever or for a certain period after the husband's death.* In ancient Peru widows generally continued to live single, as "this virtue was much commended in their laws 3 and ordinances." 5 Nor is it in China considered proper 1 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 122. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 133 (Kandhs). Batchelor, Ainu of Japan, p. 189 sq. Scaramucci and Giglioli, Notizie sui Danakil, in Archivio per l'antropologia ela etnologia, xiv. 26. 2 Westermarck, op. cit. p. 122. sqq. 4 Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 127 sqq. 5 Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 305. for a woman to contract a second marriage after her husband's death, and a lady of rank, by doing so, exposes herself to a penalty of eighty blows.' "As a faithful minister does not serve two lords, neither may a faithful woman marry a second husband "-this is to the Chinese a principle of life, a maxim generally received as gospel.2 Among so-called Aryan peoples the ancient custom which ordained sacrifice of widows survived in the prohibitions issued against their marrying a second time. Even now the bare mention of a second marriage for a Hindu woman would be considered the greatest of insults, and, if she married again, "she would be hunted out of society, and no decent person would venture at any time to have the slightest intercourse with her."4 In Greece and Rome a widow's remarriage was regarded as an insult to her former husband; and so it is still regarded among the Southern Slavs. The early Christians, especially the Montanists and Novatians, strongly disapproved of second marriages by persons of either sex; a second marriage. was described by them as a "kind of fornication," or as a "specious adultery. It was looked upon as a manifest sign of incontinence, and also as inconsistent with the doctrine that marriage is an emblem of the union of Christ with the Church.11 "10 8 Conjugal fidelity, whilst considered a stringent duty in the wife, is not generally considered so in the husband. This is obviously the rule among savage and barbarous tribes; but there are interesting exceptions to the rule. The Igorrotes of Luzon are so strictly monogamous that 1 Gray, China, i. 215. 2 de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. ii. book) i. 745. 3 Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, p. 391. Dubois, People of India, p. 132. 5 Pausanias, ii. 21. 7. Rossbach, Römische Ehe, p. 262. Krauss, Sitte und Brauch der Sudslaven, p. 578. Cf. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 115 (Bulgarians). Mayer, Die Rechte der Israeliten, Athener und Römer, ii. 290. Bingham, op. cit. vi. 427 sq.; viii. 13 sq. 9 Tertullian, De exhortatione castilatis, 9 (Migne, Patrologie cursus, ii. 924). 10 Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis, 33 (Migne, op. cit. Ser. Graeca, vi. 967). 11 Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ii. 187. Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 326. law-books made no mention of the infidelity of husbands, because it was permitted by custom.1 The Romans defined adultery as sexual intercourse with another man's wife; on the other hand, the intercourse of a married man with an unmarried woman was not regarded as adultery.2 The ordinary Greek feeling on the subject is expressed in the oration against Neæra, ascribed to Demosthenes, where the licence accorded to husbands is spoken of as a matter of course :-" We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children and to be our faithful housekeepers." 3 At the same time the idea that fidelity in marriage ought to be reciprocal was not altogether unknown in classical antiquity. In a lost chapter of his Economics,' which has come to us only through a Latin translation, Aristotle points out that it for various reasons is prudent for a man to be faithful to his wife, but that nothing is so peculiarly the property of a wife as a chaste and hallowed intercourse. Plutarch condemns the man who, lustful and dissolute, goes astray with a courtesan or maid-servant; though at the same time he admonishes the wife not to be vexed or impatient, considering that "it is out of respect to her that he bestows upon another all his wanton depravity."6 Plautus argues that it is unjust of a husband to exact a fidelity which he does not keep himself.7 In its condemnation of adultery Christianity made no distinction between husband and wife. If continence is a stringent duty for unmarried persons independently of |