Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/701

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 685

the basis of union, such basis can maintain monopoly only while the different gentes are separated by wide areas of neutral terri- tory. As soon as increasing population compels confederation or conquest, the blood principle loses its monopoly, and certain of its coercive features are transferred to a larger group com- posed of the newly combined gentes. The territorial basis is substituted for the gentile basis. Individuals set up new con- tractual relationships with individuals in other gentes ; the family property is broken into by sale and bequest ; inheritance becomes a matter of actual blood descent and not of corporate gentile descent ; plebeian families enter the social organization without the ancestral worship ; clients and serfs become conscious of a class interest cutting across gentile lines,' and thus gradually and unknowingly the family lops off its collateral lines, its fictitious members, its serfs and dependents, and is reduced to its modern proportions of husband, wife, and children. The principle of private property, however, still remains as the organizing basis both of the family and of the feudal monarchy which has been differentiated out from the associated families. The monarchy is but one form of private property, and the monarch's property in his wife and children, similar to his property in other objects, is also similar to the property of his subjects. The latter are supreme rulers in the family circle, and the content of the mon- arch's power is constituted more from the small increments which he has absorbed from the increasingly large number of families under his control, than from the amount of power which he has taken from each. In other words, his power is confined to inter- familial, intertribal, and international relations rather than to the internal control of the domestic institution. Marriage is there- fore a private contract. For the weaker member it is a necessity. Married women alone are protected as chattels. Unmarried women are protected by their fathers as chattels. Adultery is a violation of property rights, not a matrimonial offense. Severe punishment is meted to the wife by the husband, and he alone can give a bill of divorce.

"FUSTEL DE COULANGES, Za W/c' aw/iV"^, liv. iv.