WEAKENING MARRIAGE TIE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3294, 12 August 1911, Page 4

WEAKENING MARRIAGE TIE.

EMINENT DOCTOR AGAINST NEW GROUNDS FOR DIVORCE.

Sir Samuel Crichton Browne, speaking at the annual conference of the Mothers’ Union, at the Church Houoe, London, made an emphatic protest against any further weakening of the Divorce Law by the introduction of 1 new grounds. The Divorce Act, he said, was again in the crucible, and it was possible that it might come out still further reduced in value. It was against that happening that a stand must be made. One of the new grounds that might be recommended (though he hoped not) was insanity. Insanity was a bodily disease with a mental symptom, and if,it was allowed as a ground of divorce then there were many other diseases, as protracted and disabling, that must be admitted to the same category. In Norway leprosy had been added to the grounds of divorce, while in Austria infectious diseases and in Germany diseases generally were similarly scheuuled'. The social fabric must soon break up if such latitudinarian notions of what marriage meant were extensively adopted. Even on 'die ground of expediency divorce should be diligently safeguarded, for the easier its annulment was made the more carelessly would marriage be entered into and the less scrupulous would be the observance of the conditions which made for success and felicity.