If what has just been said of adultery is true, shall the family remain undisturbed in its harmony and peace, if none of the spouses commit adultery? Our observation in its limited sphere shows us that such a condition cannot always be attained. The fabric of which human society is made up is so intricate and perflexing that marriage relation cannot be secured from the infinite number of misfortunes. To cite an instance; if a husband, without committing adultery, wilfully and without cause, abandons his family and children without leaving any life provision whatsoever for his wife and children, will the family remain in peace? Shall the law close its eyes and its ears completely to the bitter cries and miserable situation of the family? There is no one to support; no one to protect the members of the family. and what is worse, the natural object of marriage can no longer be accomplished. Desertion is no less an offense than adultery with respect to the marriage relation, while in desertion the suffering inflicted is moral as well as material injury. If such galaxy of unhappy circumstances will loom out in the sacred sanctuary of marital affection, it is beyond peradventure of doubt that that poor helpless wife will seek refuge in the heaven of carnal profession in order to maintain the union of her body and soul together and also those of her children. In view of these reasons, we shall naturally include desertion as one of those causes with those wise limitations which are necessary to prevent abuses and miscarriage of justice. Desertion is recognized as ground for divorce in England, United States, Germany (Art. 1567), Venezuela (Art. 152 pr. 2), Porto Rico (Art. 164 pr. 5), Italy (Art. 148), Guatemala (Art. 170 pr. 8) and Japan (Art. 813 pr. 6). Cruelty inflicted by one spouse to another should also be one of the grounds for divorce with certain carefully defined limitations. Some of these limitations are that such cruelty must be such as being intolerable, barbarous, savage or inhuman acts. Or, according to Connecticutt statute, such cruelty must be such as to cause "danger to life, limb or health", or such as to make the conyugal community undurable. The apprehended harm must be bodily, including detriment to health, but not mere mental suffering, because the court has no scale of sensibilities by which it can gauge the quantum injury done and felt. This rule rests not strictly on justice, but on the difficulty of making proof. But mere rudeness of language, petulance of manners, austerity of temper, or an occasional sally of temper which does not injure or threaten to injure the health or body of the complaining party, does not constitute cruelty within this law. The justification of cruelty as ground for divorce rests on the vindication of the weaker (usually the wife). The wrong done to the wife in this particular case may be actually greater than when the husband commits adultery. On the other hand since love and affection is deemed the foundation, cornerstone and unit of the social order, once that such natural love has disappeared, does it not follow that it is improper, unjust and immoral to force a man and a woman to continue to live together as husband and wife while love has been destroyed by cruelty and betrayal? Cruelty as ground of divorce is recognized in all States of the Union, except in two or three. It is also recognized in Japan (art. 813 pr. 5), Guatemala (Art. 170 pr. 3), Uruguay (Art. 148,) Porto Rico (Art. 164 pr. 4), Italy (Art. 148), Venezuela (Art. 152 pr. 2), Spain (Art. 105 pr. 2), Germany (Art. 1568) and France (Art. 231). The third ground which I believe ought to be included as a ground of divorce is where one of the spouses is suffering absolute, perpetual and incurable impotency, occurring after marriage. Impotency used in this case means the total loss or destruction of the sexual organ, so that copulation is absolutely impossible. It is needless to state that the principal and immediate object of marriage is reproduction. I see no reason, no valid reason why the marriage relation be still maintained against the will of one of the spouses when there is absolute certainty of the impossibility of realizing the very object of marriage. The fourth ground which I recommend is where one spouse has attempted against the life of the other spouse. The justification of this ground is even more apparent than in adultery, desertion and cruelty. In cruelty, the body of the offended party is injured; in the one under consideration the very life of the offended is exposed to destruction. This ground of divorce is recognized in Germany (Art. 1566, Uruguay (Art. 148), and Guatemala (Art. 170). EFFECT OF DIVORCE LAWS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES (a) Advantages: It is precisely under the system of matrimonial indissolubility that crime is rewarded and innocence punished; for them the unprepossessed and reckless husband can live in adultery outside of his house and demands however that this wife, faithful and submissive, should continue living with him under the same roof and tolerating his incontinence protected by law. The only thing to be attained from this system in the prostitution of the sanctity of the home, protection of vice and punishment of innocence, without avoiding the unfaithful spouse from committing the crime. It is an undeniable fact that wherever the matrimonial institution exist, there are disagreeable marriages which only recognize hatredness and the home converted into a birth place of immorality and unfaithfulness. In these cases when by the fault of one of the spouses the tics of marriage have been lossened and the conditions imposed by the institution cannot be fulfilled, it is an immorality, a tyranny to compel one of the spouses to remain perpetually and indissolubly subjected under the yoke of the guilty spouse. To these unfortunate marriages which can no longer find happiness in the union contracted but misfortune and shame, the balsam is applicable, and not to the happy marriages that breathe in an environment saturated with happiness. Can we perchance look upon with good eyes when our daughters having contracted marriage in search of happiness, do not find, however, but cruelties, insults and véžations from the man of whom they precisely await happiness, protection, and esteem? That woman is forever miserable and dead for kindness, because she has no remedy to free her oppressor. It is very unjust that love having disappeared between two beings who once loved each other and having been converted into an intolerable suffering the conyugal bed that was a time a nest of fragrant flowers, of poetical blisses and of unspeakable felicities, they should be condemned to remain during their lifetime drowned in misfortune, when each of them could look for a new love and new happiness. To deny this remedy to unfortunate beings who are grieving under the pressure of an eternal unhappiness, is unjust, immoral that cries against the justice of men and of God. If on the contrary we only grant them personal separation, this indissolubility of marriage will place those spouses who have not made any vow of chastity in an unsupportable condition, compelling them to be criminals in order to find in the arms of a man or woman some mitigation for their suffering souls which are thirsty of love. But with a legislation on divorce, the anomalous situation of unhappy marriage and the condition of the children and of society are thereby remedied; besides, concubinage, polygamy and poliandry are avoided. We see every day throughout the events that without a Divorce Law, illicit unions of married men and married women with women or men who are not their respective spouses and which are the external manifestation of a scandalous polygamy, are enhanced. It is very immoral to see children living under the conyugal roof where nothing are found but infamies; where, instead of preserving the faith promised before the altar, it is converted into a place of the ugliest immoralities. It is not an edifying example that the children should grow up contemplating the impunity of the perpetual commission of such a crime which develops in the family. But with the present law, the moral conditions of the country and the morality of the family in particular, will be bettered, for under the rule of divorce there will not have abandoned wives compelled to look for bread in clandestine relations; there will not have deserted children lost in the rivulet on account of the separation of the parents, without education, without home, without the environs of love or of charity. Supposing that the contending parties in a divorce case should have children; it is asked, what will become of them? They will be benefitted, their surroundings will be bettered, for the home where they were reared up is stained with infamy or cruelty, for their parents or any of them cannot give them but example of deceit and treason; their sentiments will be bettered, for an immoral home cannot produce noble sentiments; and lastly, their life will be bettered, for divorce will reduce the number of abortions, infanticides, abandonment of many children, sons of misfortunes: Looking upon the divorce question from the stand point of events, we are convinced that it has not obstructed the progressive and moral development of procreation According to the Statistics furnished by the Bureau of the Census of the United States, the number of divorces is increasing in the divorce countries, as for example, Japan, which is the country most radical in divorce and, yet, its population is ever increasing. Compared with the Philippines, Java where absolute divorce is in force, in 1880 it only had two millions and a half people for its population and now that number has increased to twenty-nine millions. On the other hand, the Philippines where no absolute divorce was in force, of one million and a half of people for the same year, can only boast now of scarcely ten million inhabitants. (Census of the Philippines). (b) Disadvantages: The divorce law which opens the way to the unloosening of passion and gives facility to the celebration of new and repeated marriages is the cause of the corruption of domestic usages and customs. Could a sadder scene and at the same time a more horrible spectacle present itself before the children than the sight of their fathers united in lawful wedlock to other women, and their mothers to other men, in such a way that they find themselves with two or more father and two or more mothers? According to Mr. Stearney,-Divorce is the portal which is opened to passion, in order to search for, or create pretexts, whenever the weight of matrimony, the conyugal tedium is felt. Who can assure that in such cases, where love no longer reigns and the house that was formerly a paradise of delights, but now converted into a scene of ignominy, collision will not be sought so that common life could be made unsupportable? There cannot be a more harmful thing to the moral well-being of the off-springs of a marriage than the divorce of their parents which destroys one or the other of the two best influences that work on childhood, and may poison even the influence that is left. And according to Mr. Pablo Mankeggaza,—“Divorce is now one of the fathomless fountains of mishaps, a slow venon which undermines domestic felicity, which destroys the healthful youth of the children, the morals of a nation, and the development of the economic resources of a country." Glassen in his work "Le Marriage et le Divorce", affirms that, according to statistics, the number of divorces increases continously in rapid progression; that divorce results in its own abuse and that the abuse of divorce endangers the existence of the family. In England, when the bill on absolute divorce was introduced for the first time in the august body of the English Parliament, Gladstone, the celebrated orator said the following in the course of his discussion regarding the bill: "I do not know where divorce leads us; but what I know is that it drags us to the place where Christianity had taken us away. If England declares the dissolubility of marriage, it is wise to record such an event in the annals of history with black letters rather than with golden ones." These positive assertions of eminent men lamenting the condition of their country because of divorce, would lack weight and authority to convince us of the dismal consequences which go hand in hand with divorce if we do not strengthen with facts sufficient to prove their existence. In America, for example, where absolute divorce is known, we hear cries of alarm which spring from the hearts of the poor and the rich alike, in the hut as well as in the palace, due to the rapid increase of divorces that are daily recorded by the tribunals. As a result of this abnormality which endangers national morality and tranquility, various societies were formed to combat and dethrone from the heart of man the liking for divorce. In Boston, & Congress of protestant bishops was held, in which a justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Islands said, "The institution of marriage is undergoing a vertiginous evolution from a contract for life into a contract for conventionalities. We are facing a danger which makes me tremble greatly, and the chruch as well as the State should co-operate and take a stand to preserve society from this imminent ruin."" Divorce has increased and extended itself like an epidemic which corrupts morality and diminishes population. Thus, in France, the law of divorce having been reestablished in 1884, the birth rate decreased in 1901 by 19% and in 1907 by 32%. In the early half of the year 1909, the number of divorces amounted to 398,710, and that od deaths to 426,913, that is, an excess of 28,203 deaths over births: Von Moltke, the great strategic of the modern age, said: "that from 1870 France had been losing a battle each day and its cause is the law of divorce, and within fifteen years France will have 37 or 38 regiments less. And according to Mr. Bureau, a famous professor of the University of Paris, in his book entitled "La Crisis Moral de los Tiempos Modernos", publishes the following statistics that proves the increase of divorce which has been the principal cause of the decrease of the French population, In 1886 the number of divorces was 2,950 |