What light, then, does the study of primitive society throw on the first beginnings of family law as administered by the house-father? To answer this question at all adequately would involve the writing of many pages on the evolution of the family. For our present purpose, all turns on the distinction between the matripotestal and the patripotestal family. If the man and the woman were left to fight it out alone, the latter, despite the "shrewish sanction" that she possesses in her tongue, must inevitably bow to the principle that might is right. But, as long as marriage is matrilocal--that is to say, allows the wife to remain at home amongst male defenders of her own clan--she can safely lord it over her stranger husband; and there can scarcely be adultery on her part, since she can always obtain divorce by simply saying, Go! Things grow more complicated when the wife lives amongst her husband's people, and, nevertheless, the system of counting descent favours her side of the family and not his. Does the mere fact that descent is matrilineal tend to imply on the whole that the mother's kin take a more active interest in her, and are more effective in protecting her from hurt, whether undeserved or deserved? It is no easy problem to settle. Dr. Steinmetz, however, in his important work on _The Evolution of Punishment_ (in German), seeks to show that under mother-right, in all its forms taken together, the adulteress is more likely to escape with a light penalty, or with none at all, than under father-right. Whatever be the value of the statistical method that he employs, at any rate it makes out the death penalty to be inflicted in only a third of his cases under the former system, but in about half under the latter. * * * * * We must be content with a mere glance at other types of wrong-doing which, whilst sooner or later recognized by the law of the community, affect its members in their individual capacity. Theft and slander are cases in point. Amongst the ruder savages there cannot be much stealing, because there is next to nothing to steal. Nevertheless, groups are apt to quarrel over hunting and fishing claims; whilst the division of the spoils of the chase may give rise to disputes, which call for the interposition of leading men. We even occasionally find amongst Australians the formal duel employed to decide cases of the violation of property-rights. Not, however, until the arts of life have advanced, and wealth has created the two classes of "haves" and "have-nots," does theft become an offence of the first magnitude, which the central authority punishes with corresponding severity.