As to Blackstone's second count--"the right to personal liberty"--I can perhaps do no better than give a few bald facts. Under Pagan rule the personal liberty of woman had become very considerable, as well as her proprietary liberty; but Christianity began her degradation at once. Christianity was introduced into England in the fourth century, and the _sale of women began in the fifth_; and it was not until the eleventh that a girl could refuse to marry any suitor her father chose for her. In a word, she always had a guardian; she had no personal liberty whatever; she could neither buy nor own property as her brothers could; she could not marry when and whom she preferred, live where she wished, eat, drink, or wear what she liked, or refuse any of these provisions when they were offered by her male relatives. If they decided that she had too many back teeth they simply pulled them out, and she had nothing to say on the subject. She could be sold outright by her father, or leased or bound out as he preferred. She never got so old but that her earnings belonged to him, and a mother never arrived at an age sufficiently advanced to be entitled to the earnings of her children. Sharswood says, "A father is entitled to the benefits of his children's labor." "An infant [any one not of age] owes reverence and respect to his mother; but she has no right to his services."* * Blackstone. Sharswood. This is upon the theory, doubtless, that starvation is wholesome for a widowed mother, but that it does not agree with a father's digestion at any time. Sir Henry Maine in his "Ancient Law." says, that from the Pagan laws all this inequality and oppressiveness of guardianship and restriction of the personal liberty of women had disappeared, and he adds: "The consequence was that the situation of the Roman female, whether married or unmarried, became one of great personal and proprietary independence. _But Christianity tended somewhat from the very first to narrow this remarkable liberty...._ The great jurisconsult himself [Gaius] scouts the popular Christian apology offered for it in the mental inferiority of the female sex.... Led by their theory of Natural Law, the Roman [Pagan] jurisconsults had evidently at this time assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle of their code of equity."