Page:The evolution of marriage and of the family ... (IA evolutionofmarri00letorich).pdf/258

 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. 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. 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.

In lamaic Thibet, where marriage is a simple civil convention, with which the theocratic government of the country does not interfere, marriages are dissolved, as they are made, by mere mutual consent; but this consent is necessary, and there only results a separation analogous to ours, and taking from the separated couple the power to re-marry. With the nomad Mongols we find, in spite of a relative civilisation, the absolute right of repudiation left to the husband alone, as it is in savage countries. The Mongol husband who is tired of his wife, whom, besides, he has purchased, can send her back to her parents without giving the least reason; he simply loses the oxen, sheep, and horses that he has paid for her. On their side, the parents make no difficulty of taking her back, for they have the right to sell her again. The Mongol wife can also