I. Adultery in General.
We will now pass in review some of the principal penalties (the enumeration of all of them would be too long) with which the men of all times and races have attempted to repress adultery. That the human species, and especially the primitive, unpolished human species, is one of the most ferocious of the animal kingdom, stands out strikingly from these investigations; but it is perhaps in regard to adultery that the cruelty and injustice of men are most strongly shown; and by the word "men" here we mean the masculine half of mankind, for generally the only adultery which has been punished has been that of the woman. As for the adultery of the husband, men have been very slow in admitting that it was a wrong of which the wife might complain.
The reason of this revolting partiality is very simple. Diderot makes Orou tell it in his Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville; it is that "the tyranny of man has converted the possession of woman into a property."[1]
On the whole, our long inquiry has abundantly proved that very generally, in human societies, marriage has been, or is still, a bargain, when not a capture. In all legislations the married woman is more or less openly considered as the property of the husband, and is very often confounded, absolutely confounded, with things possessed. To use her, therefore, without the authority of her owner, is a theft; and human societies have never been tender to thieves. Nearly everywhere theft has been considered a crime much more grave than murder. But adultery is not a common theft. An object, an inert possession, are passive things; their owner may well punish the thief who has taken them, but him only. In adultery, the object of the larceny, the wife, is a sentient and thinking being—that is to say, an accomplice in the attempt on her husband's property in her own person; moreover, he generally has her in his keeping; he can chastise her freely, and glut his rage on her without any arm being raised for her defence. On the
- ↑ Diderot, Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville, in Œuvres, t. ii. p. 245.
