ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a careful analysis of the various legal institutions and argues that they, too, are each and every one the necessary product of particular economic conditions. The existence of the women and children came, in short, to depend henceforth upon the labour of the man, and he, therefore, naturally acquired economic and therewith also legal power over those who owed him their life. Thus as economic relations change, domestic relations have likewise to be modified, and as Georges Sand has so profoundly observed, proprietors as well as labourers carry over into their domestic life the same relations of authority which they exercise or submit to in the outside world. The influences exerted by economic conditions upon the right of succession are still more interesting. Economic evolution has, moreover, long since resulted in the application of the principle of redemption to the perpetual lease or emphyteusis.
