After the manner of all barbarous legislations, that of Mahomet has corrected, or at least tried to restrain, certain especially ferocious customs; but, on the other hand, it has given the force of law to some particularly crying abuses, and has thus rendered them more difficult of redress. This is generally the case. In all barbarous societies the subjection of woman is more or less severe; customs or coarse laws have regulated the savagery of the first anarchic ages; they have doubtless set up a barrier against primitive ferocity, they have interdicted certain absolutely terrible abuses of force, but they have only replaced these by a servitude which is still very heavy, is often iniquitous, and no longer permits to legally possessed women those escapes, or capriciously accorded liberties, which were tolerated in savage life. We shall have to prove this fact more than once in continuing our ethnographic study of divorce in barbarous societies. In ancient Peru the liberal and reasonable custom of divorce by mutual consent was adopted.[779] At Quito, at least, where marriage was not civil and obligatory, the married pair had the power of separating by mutual accord. In Mexico divorce was merely tolerated. Before being allowed to break the conjugal tie, the couple were obliged to submit their differences to a special tribunal, which, after a minute examination of the facts, and three hearings of the parties, sent them away without pronouncing judgment, if they persevered in their design.[780] The tribunal could, it seems, forbid the separation, but it did not expressly authorise it. Its silence, however, equalled a sentence of divorce. This luxury of legality, this pretence of placing the conjugal union out of reach of the caprice or injustice of one of the parties, can only be met with in societies already advanced in organisation.