Long ago, when the family or clan formed a unit, the right of the father over the children and the women was a part of a very necessary discipline upon which probably the existence of all depended. These ideas have very naturally survived, for custom clings with wonderful pertinacity, and we have had the strange spectacle of the house divided against itself, the father clinging to his old rights, the wife and children clamouring for their new ones. As an instance which illustrates how long the woman continued to be viewed as part of the property of her husband, it is but necessary to recall the fact that only since the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1858 was it rendered impossible for a husband after deserting his wife to return to her and _lawfully_ possess himself of all the property she had herself acquired during the time of his desertion. So too with our old ideas regarding parental rights, which were so tenacious a survival that until as late as 1891 a father could not forfeit these either by contract or neglect. Before the Act to amend the law relating to the custody of children passed in March, 1891, a man who had deserted his children could afterwards insist on their returning to him, and, although a reprobate in every way, he could claim them from the parish or custodian who had been responsible for their upbringing. These and many other injustices have been and are being removed, and it must be remembered that this has been done not by a forcible adjustment gained by strength of numbers, but by the force of public opinion and the sense of justice of all classes and of both sexes. The rights have been given, they have not been taken; the poor have had rich men on their side, and the promoters of women’s independence and advancement have in large numbers been the men themselves. It is true that much unnecessary inequality remains, and that we treat certain sections of the community in a most undesirable fashion--witness the herding of the profligate with the unfortunate or aged pauper--but the very fact that justice has come as the result of claims put forward and recognised as just, rather than at the point of the sword in open rebellion of the many against the few, shows that as a nation we are instinct with the feeling of obligation. There is a feeling that whatever is right will ultimately be done, that so-called injustices are survivals of past ages from which emancipation must take place, and that all we have to encounter is that right and necessary conservatism which adapts itself slowly and cautiously to changing conditions of things, clinging to that which is because the present is the best to which we have yet achieved, yet willing to change this for what we have reason to believe will be really better. With this modern development of the sense of obligation, we may anticipate that all those who are really dependent upon their own actions will be seriously considered, and have their welfare fully assured.