[Footnote 339: By the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1884, 47 and 48 Vict., c. 68, sec. 5, failure to respond to a decree for restitution of conjugal rights, even for a less time than two years, is made equivalent to desertion.] [Footnote 340: GEARY, _op. cit._, 353, 354.] [Footnote 341: Except when alimony has been decreed and is in arrear the husband is liable for necessaries furnished his wife: 20 and 21 Vict., c. 85, secs. 25, 26: _Statutes at Large_, XCVII, 537. _Cf._ HARRISON, _op. cit._, 152, 153; GEARY, _op. cit._, 424.] [Footnote 342: 20 and 21 Vict., c. 85, sec. 33: _Statutes at Large_, XCVII, 539. _Cf._ Mason _v._ Mason (1883), 8 P. D., 21-23, C. A.; also WOOLSEY, _Divorce_, 177; GEARY, _op. cit._, 354, 255-61; HARRISON, _op. cit._, 182, 183.] [Footnote 343: WOOLSEY, _Divorce_, 177; 20 and 21 Vict., c. 85, secs. 33, 45: _Statutes at Large_, XCVII, 539, 541.] [Footnote 344: 20 and 21 Vict., c. 85, sec. 22: _Statutes at Large_, XCVII, 536; _cf._ also HARRISON, _op. cit._, 117.] In the third place, by the existing law provision is made for what is commonly called "magisterial separation." The "separation order," presently to be considered, is one of several remedial devices introduced by various statutes in the injured wife's behalf. Thus the act of 1857 enables a woman deserted by her husband to apply to a local court of summary jurisdiction, or, if she prefer, to the high divorce court of the kingdom, for an order to protect her subsequently acquired earnings or property from being seized by him or any of his creditors.[345] By this "protection order" the wife is to be in the same position as to property and contracts, suing and being sued, as if she had obtained a decree of judicial separation.[346] In all respects she is treated as a _feme sole_. For a number of years after it was first introduced the protection order was a means of real redress; for then, according to the principles of the barbarous laws of the Middle Ages which still survived, a married woman without settlements had practically no property rights at all during her husband's lifetime. Her landed property at marriage passed into his control; her chattels and personal effects of every description became absolutely his; and she had no legal power to dispose even of the wages of her own toil.[347] The protection order merely gave the wife her own, preventing the man who had basely abandoned her without making any provision for her support from appropriating the wages or the property which she might thereafter gain. More than this it did not do. "So to a poor wife a protection order was but little, if any, advantage, and now seems absolutely useless. For it did not relieve her from cohabitation, it did not compel the husband to pay her any alimony, and it did not permit her to pledge his credit for necessaries."[348] Since the Married Women's Property Acts, therefore, notably those of 1870 and 1882, by which many of