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right of property which fettered more or less rigorously the liberty of the women who were thus possessed.
These primitive unions were concluded according to the chance caprices or needs of extremely gross societies, who cared little to submit to a uniform conjugal type. There are some very singular ones among them, which differ essentially from the legal forms of marriage finally and very tardily adopted by the majority of mankind. It is these isolated conjugal unions, extravagant and immoral in our eyes, that we now have to consider.
