第18章 CHAPTER 2(3)

I have no desire to exaggerate, nor does the case stand in any need ofexaggeration. I have described the wife's legal position, not her actualtreatment. The laws of most countries are far worse than the people who executethem, and many of them are only able to remain laws by being seldom or nevercarried into effect. If married life were all that it might be expected tobe, looking to the laws alone, society would be a hell upon earth. Happilythere are both feelings and interests which in many men exclude, and in most,greatly temper, the impulses and propensities which lead to tyranny: andof those feelings, the tie which connects a man with his wife affords, ina normal state of things, incomparably the strongest example. The only tiewhich at all approaches to it, that between him and his children, tends,in all save exceptional cases, to strengthen, instead of conflicting with,the first. Because this is true; because men in general do not inflict, norwomen suffer, all the misery which could be inflicted and suffered if thefull power of tyranny with which the man is legally invested were acted on;the defenders of the existing form of the institution think that all itsiniquity is justified, and that any complaint is merely quarrelling withthe evil which is the price paid for every great good. But the mitigationsin practice, which are compatible with maintaining in full legal force thisor any other kind of tyranny, instead of being any apology for despotism,only serve to prove what power human nature possesses of reacting againstthe vilest institutions, and with what vitality the seeds of good as wellas those of evil in human character diffuse and propagate themselves. Nota word can be said for despotism in the family which cannot be said for politicaldespotism. Every absolute king does not sit at his window to enjoy the groansof his tortured subjects, nor strips them of their last rag and turns themout to shiver in the road The despotism of Louis XVI was not the despotismof Philippe le Bel, or of Nadir Shah, or of Caligula; but it was bad enoughto justify the French Revolution, and to palliate even its horrors. If anappeal be made to the intense attachments which exist between wives and theirhusbands, exactly as much may be said of domestic slavery. It was quite anordinary fact in Greece and Rome for slaves to submit to death by torturerather than betray their masters. In the proscriptions of the Roman civilwars it was remarked that wives and slaves were heroically faithful, sonsvery commonly treacherous. Yet we know how cruelly many Romans treated theirslaves. But in truth these intense individual feelings nowhere rise to sucha luxuriant height as under the most atrocious institutions. It IS part ofthe irony of life, that the strongest feelings of devoted gratitude of whichhuman nature seems to be susceptible, are called forth in human beings towardsthose who, having the power entirely to crush their earthly existence, voluntarilyrefrain from using that power. How great a place in most men this sentimentfills, even in religious devotion, it would be cruel to inquire. We dailysee how much their gratitude to Heaven appears to be stimulated by the contemplationof fellow-creatures to whom God has not been so merciful as he has to themselves.

Whether the institution to be defended is slavery, political absolutism,or the absolutism of the head of a family, we are always expected to judgeof it from its best instances; and we are presented with pictures of lovingexercise of authority on one side, loving submission to it on the other --superior wisdom ordering all things for the greatest good of the dependents,and surrounded by their smiles and benedictions. All this would be very muchto the purpose if anyone pretended that there are no such things as goodmen. Who doubts that there may be great goodness, and great happiness, andgreat affection, under the absolute government of a good man? Meanwhile,laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad.