It must be remembered that as soon as a woman has left her father's roof and passes under the care of her husband--or rather of her husband's parents, if they are still alive--her father's family have no longer any legal control over her. Her husband's father and brothers become to all intents and purposes her own father and brothers: and to her father-in-law she owes the complete obedience that before marriage she owed to her father. She has in fact changed her family. Yet if she prove "unfilial"--that is, disobedient to her husband's family--a magistrate may call upon her father's family to go security for her future good conduct, on the ground that her unfilial behaviour must be due to her bad bringing-up, for which her father's family is responsible. An English historian once pointed out that when two men sit on the same horse both of them cannot ride in front at the same time. The reference was to politics, the intimation being that there cannot be two co-ordinate controlling powers in the active government of the State: but the remark applies equally well to family life. If Crown and Parliament (or two separate Houses of Parliament) cannot have co-equal powers in the body-politic, neither can a man and a woman have co-equal powers in the body-domestic: as there must be a supreme authority in the State, so there must be a supreme authority in the Family. Such used to be the theory of Englishmen, and such is still the theory of the Chinese. They have a proverb which recalls Gardiner's criticism of Clarendon's constitutional ideal. The Chinese say: "One horse cannot carry two saddles; the loyal servant cannot serve two masters."[162] But though in China the husband is legally possessed of very extensive powers over his wife and has every right to administer corporal punishment if she disobeys him or fails to treat his parents with proper respect, it is very rarely indeed that one hears of such powers being exercised in Weihaiwei.[163] No Chinese husband within my experience at Weihaiwei has ever been convicted of wife-beating: whereas the physical castigation of husbands by wives is by no means unheard of.