Note 184 — Chapter XXVI · THE INVINCIBLES.

Though writers like De Tocqueville have laid it down that the civilisation and development of a State can be always measured by the social status and independence of its women and the equality of the sexes before the law, one curious exception may be noted. From various reasons, the northern kingdom of Scotland has for many centuries remained appreciably rougher in manners and less polished and refined in culture than England. The women of Scotland, too, like those of Germany, have always been compelled to render their families harder domestic service than English women, who, during the greater part of the Victorian period, led lives of comparative ease and luxury in most respectable households. Yet it is strange that in Scotland the law has always been jealous in guarding the rights of women. For example, it secured to a woman a third of her husband’s property after his death, so that he could not disinherit her by will. It enabled her, through a simple and cheap legal process, to protect her earnings from seizure by her husband. It was at pains to preserve to women in the direct line of succession their right to baronies and peerages after the males in that line were exhausted. The divorce law, too, did not, like that of England, recognise any inequality in the position of the sexes. The effect of the improved legal status of women in Scotland was curious. Though living in a ruder society, and under the pressure of harder conditions of life than their more luxurious and polished English sisters, they seem in all ages to have enjoyed by custom a position of authority in the family, scarcely even yet conceded to their sex in England. Arduous household service was, however, the price they had to pay for their privileges. It may also be added that whilst in England, till very recently, parents were more particular about the education of their sons than their daughters, such a distinction between the sexes was rarely made in Scotland at any time in its history.