When both sides of this picture are studied; when we look back, on the one hand, to Marie Antoinette and Madame Récamier, and, on the other, to Madame Roland, Madame de Staël, and Marie de Lamourous,--it is not strange that the fanciful protectorship of such men as Michelet should be balanced by a claim, made not only by Talleyrand, but Condorcet, for woman's full equality as a laborer and a citizen. And this varying and inconsistent estimate of woman, made evident in the social, industrial, and literary spheres of France, is strangely sustained by her legal enactments. The "Code Napoléon" is founded on the Roman, and is very similar to the English common law, so far as it concerns woman: but beside this law, which is called, in reference to married women, the _dotal_, there is another, called the _communal_; and, before marriage, parties may choose between these two. That contract once signed, they must abide by their choice ever after. If the dotal law is founded on Roman law and usage, and so came naturally enough to prevail in Southern France until the time of the Revolution; so the communal law prevailed at the North, and is founded on the German habits and laws, beneath which always lay the idea, that, if not technically a laborer, the wife, by care and industry,--the thrift of the housewife,--contributed to the acquisition of property. It is very singular that all the nations of Continental Europe, with the exception of Spain, have rejected the dotal or Roman law. The objection to it seems to have arisen out of the fact, that it permits the wife's property to be settled _solely_ on herself, and to be so secured against her husband's debts. In the community of estates, the property of each is liable for the debts of either. It was on this account, probably, that, while the "Code Napoléon" elucidated and defined the dotal system, it expressly provided for the right of choice in the parties, and declared, that, if no choice were made, they should be supposed to be living under the German or communal law. The Dutch law is essentially the same. When the "Code Napoléon" came into force, there were not wanting French legislators to say, that woman was now better _protected_ than ever before. But this _legal protection_ is of a kind due only to minors and lunatics. This law, like our own, suspects, not only the _intelligence_ of woman, but her integrity; and aims not to protect _her_, but _man_, against her weakness or fraud. In marriage, the husband administers for both, not only the common property, but her personal possessions. That is to say, by _pretending to protect it_, the law _takes away_ from woman her personal property. It often happens, that a woman who has brought her husband a large property is compelled to shift in narrow ways, like a beggar or a miser, on account of his parsimony or personal ill-will.