As well might we say of the female bird for whose favours the male fights until overcome by exhaustion and loss of blood, that she belongs to him, or that he may appropriate her, as to say that the men of early groups could “appropriate” women. From all the facts relative to the condition of early society, it is plain that if either sex could with propriety be designated as property it must have been the male. It is evident that women were stolen from distant tribes for the express purpose of sexual slavery, a position to which free, native-born women could not be dragged; therefore, when Lubbock assures us that these foreign women naturally “became wives in our own sense of the term,” we may be sure that he is neither unmindful of the origin of our present social system, nor of the true significance attached to the position of wife. Indeed, he informs us that the “origin of marriage was independent of all sacred and social conditions,” and proves the same by actually producing the evidence. He has no hesitancy in declaring that marriage is a masculine institution, established in the interest (or supposed interest) of males; that it was “founded not on the rights of the woman, but of the man,” and that there was not on the woman’s part even the semblance of consent. In fact he declares that he regards it as an illustration of the good old plan that “he should take who has the power, and he should keep who can.” He says also that it had nothing to do with mutual affection or sympathy, that it was invalidated by no appearance of consent, and that it was symbolized not by any demonstration of warm affection on the one side and tender devotion on the other, but by brutal violence and unwilling submission. To prove that the connection between force and marriage is deeply rooted, Sir John Lubbock, like Mr. McLennan, has furnished numerous examples of peoples among whom marriage by actual capture still prevails, as well as many among which the system has passed into a mere symbol. He is quite certain that the complete subjection of the woman in marriage furnishes an explanation to those examples in barbarous life in which women are looked upon as being too great to marry—and cites the case of Sebituane, chief of the Bechuanas, who told his daughter, Mamochisáne, that all the men were at her disposal—“she might take any one, but ought to keep none.” This instance, together with numberless others which might be cited, proves that long after the practice of appropriating solitary women for sexual purposes had become general, the position of wife was considered too degrading to be occupied by women of rank.