A perusal of these laws shows that they are immensely inferior to the Roman law, which not only gave the wife full control of her property, but protected her from coercion and bullying on the part of the husband. The amendment of these injustices has been very recent indeed. Successive statutes in 1870, 1874, and 1882[399] finally abrogated the law which gave the husband full ownership of his wife's property by the mere act of marriage. Beginning with the year 1857, too, enlightenment in England had progressed to such a remarkable degree that certain acts were passed forbidding a husband to seize his wife's earnings and neglect her[400]; and she was actually allowed to keep her own wages after the desertion of her lord. Before that time he might desert his wife repeatedly, and return from time to time to take away her earnings and sell everything she had acquired. An act in 1886 (_49 and 50 Vict., c. 52_) gave magistrates the power to order a husband to pay his wife a weekly sum, not exceeding two pounds, for her support and that of the children if it appeared to the magistrates that the deserting husband had the means of maintaining her, but was unwilling to do so. Still, the husband can at any time terminate his desertion and force his wife to take him back on penalty of losing all rights to such maintenance. There was frantic opposition to all of these revolutionary enactments and many prophets arose crying woe; but the acts finally passed and England still lives. [Sidenote: Divorce. Authorities as above; and Howard, ii, 3-117.]