minds lie fallow, we must surely admit that the case for compulsory education is as strong as for poor-relief to orphans and the children of destitute or vicious parents. In one respect it is, of course, incomparably stronger, for the percentage of parents who will allow a child to starve is undoubtedly much smaller than that of parents who will allow it to grow up wild or absorbed in mechanical drudgery.
It may be noticed in passing that where the State limits conjugal rights or parental authority, it gives as much to individualism as it takes from the head of the family. In fact, most changes in the law affecting the family system have come from the need felt by statesmen to modify a power that interfered with State necessities, and from the readiness of citizens to abandon a burdensome obligation. The English husband can no longer compel his wife to return to him, or squander her estate, or deprive her of her children, or inflict on her the moderate correction Dr. Marmaduke Coghill approved of,[1] or the restraint of her liberty which Blackstone expressly allows.[2] On the other hand, he can more or less easily divest himself of all responsibility for her debts or misconduct, and in great part of the civilised world finds it reasonably easy to obtain a divorce. The result, good or bad, is to give man and woman immensely increased freedom of action, the power to draw back from a contract that was once irrevocable, and that was one of the most noticeable conservative forces, and the right to make a fresh start in life. Only
- ↑ Dr. Marmaduke Coghill, Judge of the Prerogative Court in Ireland, ruled, c. 1700, that a husband might give his wife moderate correction with a little cane or switch. Swift alludes to his being jilted in consequence.—Letters to Stella, July 1, 1711.
- ↑ "The Courts of Law will still permit a husband to restrain a wife of her liberty, in case of any gross misbehaviour."—Blackstone's Commentaries, book i. chap. xv.
