Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/193

ADULTERY times, and cotton-seed oil and other cheap fats are substituted for the cream. There are two principal sugar substitutes. One is glucose, with which sugar products are adulterated. It has less than two-thirds the sweetening power of sugar. The other is saccharine. This is the sweetest substance known; it is 230 times sweeter than sugar. It may be regarded as practically harmless. Sugar itself is generally pure. Meat is not much adulterated. It is generally only open to adulteration with preservatives, and cold storage causes these to be little used. It is sometimes dusted over with a preservative while in the piece, and sausages and similar products are often treated with preservatives and colouring matter. Boric acid and borax are typical preservatives, and sulphurous acid salts are used to restore a fresh appearance to stale meat. Starch is added to sausages. It is claimed that it prevents them from shrinking in cooking. Flour is adulterated by the addition of lower-grade meals, such as rye flour, corn meal, or potato starch; their use is not very common. Alum is employed to disguise the presence of damaged flour, and to prevent decomposition. Alum is a still more frequent adulterant of bread; it is considered injurious to the animal system. Coffee is much adulterated, when sold ground. The root of chicory is a common adulterant, and even this has been supplanted by ocher and cheaper substances such as peas, beans, wheat, ground up after roasting. Attempts have been made to produce a counterfeit of the berry, an imitation being moulded out of some paste, but this has made no inroads. If coffee is bought unground, it will generally be pure, although the country of its origin may not be truthfully stated. Tea is generally pure, except that it may be of much lower grade than stated. Spent leaves are sometimes used, and the appearance is sometimes improved by "facing". This is the agitation with soapstone, Prussian blue, etc.

For discussion of the morality of adulteration of food see ;.

2em

Adultery.—It is the purpose of this article to consider adultery with reference only to morality. The study of it, as more particularly affecting the bond of marriage, will be found under the head of. The discussion of adultery may be ordered under three general divisions: I. ; II. ; III. .

I. .—Adultery is defined as carnal connection between a married person and one unmarried, or between a married person and the spouse of another. It is seen to differ from fornication in that it supposes the marriage of one or both of the agents. Nor is it necessary that this marriage be already consummated; it need only be what theologians call matrimonium ratum. Sexual commerce with one engaged to another does not, it is most generally held, constitute adultery. Again, adultery, as the definition declares, is committed in carnal intercourse. Nevertheless immodest actions indulged in between a married person and another not the lawful spouse, while not of the same degree of, guilt, are of the same character of malice as adultery (Sanchez, De Mat., L. IX. Disp. XLVI, n. 17). It must be added, however, that St. Alphonsus Liguori, with most theologians, declares that even between lawful man and wife adultery is committed when their intercourse takes the form of sodomy (S. Liguori L. III, n. 446).

Among savages generally adultery is rigorously condemned and punished. But it is condemned and punished only as a violation of the husband's rights. Among such peoples the wife is commonly reckoned as the property of her spouse, and adultery, therefore, is identified with theft. But it is theft of an aggravated kind, as the property which it would spoliate is more highly appraised than other chattels. So it is that in some parts of Africa the seducer is punished with the loss of one or both hands, as one who has perpetrated a robbery upon the husband (Reade, Savage Africa, p. 61). But it is not the seducer alone that suffers. Dire penalties are visited upon the offending wife by her wronged spouse. In many instances she is made to endure such a bodily mutilation as will, in the mind of the aggrieved husband, prevent her being thereafter a temptation to other men (Schoolcraft, Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, I, 236; V, 683, 684, 686; also H. H. Bancroft, The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America, I, 514). If, however, the wronged husband could visit swift and terrible retribution upon the adulterous wife, the latter was allowed no cause against the unfaithful husband; and this discrimination found in the practices of savage peoples is moreover set forth in nearly all ancient codes of law. The Laws of Manu are striking on this point. In ancient India, "though destitute of virtue or seeking pleasure elsewhere, or devoid of good qualities, yet a husband must be constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife"; on the other, hand, "if a wife, proud of the greatness of her relatives or [her own] excellence, violates the duty which she owes to her lord, the king shall cause her to be devoured by dogs in a place frequented by many" (Laws of Manu, V, 154; VIII, 371).

In the Græco-Roman world we find stringent laws against adultery, yet almost throughout they discriminate against the wife. The ancient idea that the wife was the property of the husband is still operative. The lending of wives practised among some savages was, as Plutarch tells us, encouraged also by Lycurgus, though, be it observed, from a motive other than that which actuated the savages (Plutarch, Lycurgus, XXIX). The recognized license of the Greek husband may be seen in the following passage of the Oration against Neæra, the author of which is uncertain, though it has been attributed to Demosthenes: "We keep mistresses for our pleasures, concubines for constant attendance, and wives to bear us legitimate children, and to be our faithful housekeepers." Yet, because of the wrong done to the husband only, the Athenian lawgiver Solon, allowed any man to kill an adulterer whom he had taken in the act (Plutarch, Solon).

In the early Roman Law the jus tori belonged to the husband. There was, therefore, no such thing as the crime of adultery on the part of a husband towards his wife. Moreover, this crime was not committed unless one of the parties was a married woman (Dig., XLVIII, ad leg. Jul.). That the Roman husband often took advantage of his legal immunity is well known. Thus we are told by the historian Spartianus that Verus, the colleague of Marcus Aurelius, did not hesitate to declare to his reproaching wife: "Uxor enim dignitatis nomen est, non voluptatis." (Verus, V). Later on in Roman history, as the late William E.H. Lecky has shown the idea that the husband owed a 