permitted to do as he pleases, the happier everybody will be. When the law has been changed, public opinion, that is to say the opinion of the majority who do not think seriously about the matter, soon adjusts itself to the new law, and little social blame attaches to those who use the licence which the law has granted. Seeing then how largely the law, whether of the Church or of the State, moulds the sentiment of the people on such a subject as this, and seeing that the Church no longer makes or administers law in Protestant countries, one may say that the civil law is practically left to keep their conscience. This tendency of the Church to abnegate its old functions makes the question of the way in which the Law should deal with divorce a question of critical importance 1.

As regards America, the opinion of the wisest and best informed people, though far from unanimous in points of detail, agrees in thinking that many States have gone too far in the way of laxity.

XXIII. DOES THE ENGLISH LAW OF DIVORCE
NEED AMENDMENT?

In England the topic has been less discussed; yet there are some who hold that women ought to be placed on the same footing as men, and allowed to obtain a divorce from an unfaithful husband, even if he has not been guilty of cruelty. Others would go even further and admit other grounds as entitling either party to a dissolution of the marriage. The late Lord Hannen, whose opinion was entitled to exceptional weight, for he had presided over the English Divorce Court for many years with singular ability and fairness, told me that he thought the English law might with advantage be somewhat relaxed, so numerous were the cases in

1 Some of the Churches in the United States have however tried to deal with the matter. The Protestant Episcopal Church is at this moment (1901) considering a draft canon.

which it was obviously best that a miserable marriage should be extinguished altogether. Yet the example of the United States (not to speak of Rome) suggests the danger of any but a very slow and cautious advance in that direction. Great as is the hardship of chaining an innocent to a vicious or drunken or brutal consort, the evil of permitting people to get rid of one another merely because they are tired of one another is no less evident. When the question is asked, 'What is the best divorce law?' the only answer can be,' There is no good divorce law.' There are some faults in human nature which always have existed and apparently always will exist; and there is no satisfactory method of dealing with them. All that can be done is to choose between different evils.

Upon the whole, after weighing the considerations on both sides, the balance seems to incline to a change in the law which should not only equalize the position of the wife and the husband, by giving the former the same right to dissolution as the latter, but should also allow dissolution in cases of hopeless lunacy and of longcontinued desertion.

Throughout this discussion it has been assumed that marriages ought to be permanent, and that obstacles should be thrown in the way of those who seek to dissolve them. It may be asked whether this assumption is justified. There is a school of thought, small perhaps, but of long standing and supported by a few eminent names, which insists that marriage should last no longer than love does; and therefore that the pair should, as in Rome, be permitted to separate with freedom of re-marriage, whenever they are no longer held together by inclination. There is also a larger school, which feels so keenly the misery caused by ill-assorted unions as to think that the parties should be allowed to dissolve them, when certain terms for reflection and repentance prescribed by law have been completed.

I do not propose to argue afresh this question, for

it has been often and copiously argued. Yet it is not a question to be dismissed without argument, for in our day no moral or religious dogma, however long established or widely held, is permitted to rest upon authority alone. But to argue it fully would draw us far from the historical inquiry we have been engaged on. It is enough to indicate in a word or two the main grounds which have in fact led the vast majority of thoughtful men to the assumption aforesaid. The first of these is the interest of children. Few things can be more harmful to the moral well-being of the offspring of a marriage than the divorce of their parents, which destroys one or other of the two best influences that work on childhood and may poison even the influence that is left. The next is the fact that, though it is professedly in the interest of suffering wives that facility of divorce is usually advocated, such facility tends to the injury of wives even more than of husbands, because men are, it would seem, more fickle and more prone to seek the dissolution of marriage when they are tired of their partner, or have formed some illicit connexion, or seek to marry some other woman. The third is that whatever weakens the conception of the marriage tie as a permanent one strikes at the whole character and essence of the marriage relation. It is often said that when people know they have got to live together, they are forced to exercise the self-control necessary to enable them to live together. But the moral effect of the sense of permanence in wedded union goes deeper than this. It is in the complete identification of the two beings and the two lives that the true happiness of a happy marriage lies. The sense that each has absolutely committed himself or herself to the other-each taking charge of the joys and sorrows and hopes of the other, each trusting to the other his or her joys and sorrows and hopes-gives to the relation an incomparable sanctity, and makes the strongest possible appeal to the best feelings of each. If selfishness and falsehood

can be overcome by anything, it is by calling into action the sense of obligation to fulfil this trust which the enduring nature of the union is calculated to inspire. Were the union to cease to be thought of as enduring, were it to be in the minds of the parties, as their minds are moulded by the practice and the prevailing notions of society, merely the result and expression of a possibly transient passion, or of the willingness to try the experiment of a joint household, the sanctity and the sense of obligation would receive an irreparable blow.

Thus we are driven to the conclusion that numerous as the cases may be in which, if one looked only at the wretchedness of the parties to an ill-assorted union, one might desire to see that union dissolved, more harm than good may on the whole result from permitting the parties to dissolve their union at their pleasure, as the later Romans did, as the French did during the Revolution, and as some American States practically do to-day; and more harm than good may result even from extending in large measure the opportunities for divorce which the law of England or that of Scotland at this moment affords.

How vital to the future of humanity are the interests involved is admitted on all hands by those who would change, as well as by those who would uphold, the conception of marriage as a permanent relation. Great as is the contrast between that sensual and unworthy view which finds its expression in the polygamy of the East and the view which Christianity has formed among Western peoples, it is hardly greater than that which exists between the view of marriage as a life-union, dissoluble only when infidelity has shattered its basis, and the view which puts it at the mercy of the caprice of a volatile nature or the temper of an irritable one. Polygamy has been and remains a blighting influence on Musulman society, and on the character of individual Musulmans. So if marriage were to become a transitory relation, as it practically was among the upper classes in

the Roman Empire, the effects upon family life and on the character of men and women would in the long run be momentous.

XXIV.

SOME GENERAL REFLECTIONS: CHANGES IN THEORY AND IN SENTIMENT REGARDING MARRIAGE.

A few words more to sum up the general result of our survey. We have seen that the relations of the wife to the husband have been regulated sometimes by one, sometimes by the other of two systems, which have been called those of Subordination and Equality 1. In all countries custom and law begin with the system of Subordination. In some, the wife is little better than a slave. Even at Rome, though she was not only free but respected, her legal capacity was merged in her husband's.

This system vanishes from Rome during the last two centuries of the Republic, and when the law of Rome comes to prevail over the whole civilized world, the system of Equality (except so far as varied by local custom) prevails over that world till the Empire itself perishes.

In the Dark Ages the principle of the subordination of the wife is again the rule everywhere, though the forms it takes vary, and it is more complete in some countries than in others. It was the rule among the Celtic and Teutonic peoples before they were Christianized. It finds its way, through customs conformable to the rudeness of the times, into the law of those countries which, like Italy, Spain, and France, were only partially Teutonized, and retained forms of Latin speech. It holds its ground in England till our own time, though

1 By Equality I do not mean any recognition of Identity or even Similarity as respects capacity and practical work (though the tendency is in that direction), but the equal possession of private civil rights and the admission of an individuality entitled to equal respect and an equally free play of action. Such Equality is perfectly compatible, given sufficient affection, with a complete identification of the consorts in the harmony which comes of the union of diverse but complementary elements.