MARRIAGE LAWS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9011, 26 March 1888, Page 3

MARRIAGE LAWS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I am pleased to observe that the press of Sydney resents generally the action of Her Majesty's advisers in connection with the refusal of the Royal assent to the Divorce Extension Bill." I think an extension of facility for divorce is much wanted in the colonies. Marriages often work unhappily in the colonies, as elsewhere. If a couple cannot live happily together, it would have been better they had not married ; but, having married, legal separation is their only escape from an unhappiness which was unforeseen. Whatever laws bind to irrevocable misery are bad laws. The marriage laws in effect say, that however incompatible a couple find their tastes and tempers ; however alienated their affections have become, and however hateful and unhappy the lives they lead are, yet, if the one cannot prove that the other has cruelly kicked and abused him or her, or has cohabited with another, there are no grounds for applying for divorce. Evidence of cruelty and infidelity is what must be carried into the Divorce Court to be successful. The-.'Court is crowded to excess ; the unhappy details of a blighted married life are torn from the witnesses ; many listeners listen to counterparts of their own lives ; the reporters drive their pencils, and the paper next morning is interesting, and sells well.

What need for more evidence that) a couple should have a legal separation than that the couple desire it. A solemn declaration that they cannot live happily together and desire to separate, made by them, and repeated after several months, should be sufficient to release the one from the other. They would then part with their characters unstained, and without having their privacy rummaged, and their delicate affairs torn and dragged with the teeth of public scandal.

I am of opinion that greater facility for legal separation would not "tend to magnify trivial family quarrels into causes for the disruption of family ties." Were separation easy, a husband or wife who set value on the partnership into which they had entered would feel they were on good behaviour to preserve the partnership unfractured and unbroken ; they would try to promote each other's comfort, and anticipate each other's wishes. With marriage as it is, the husband at one time, the wife at another, take advantage of the indissolubility of the bond ; manifest no interesfa in each other's happiness, though inhabiting the same domicile. In the days of courtship they found they had to try and please, or the one would not secure the other; married, they are bound to each other, please or not please— slaves. Facility for divorce would alter this, and cause courtship to bo kept up throughout the married life.

The divorce laws of the United' States are different in different States, and it is alleged " that facilities of divorce in certain States are a disturbance of domestic relations in adjoining States." It is also alleged "that the New South Wales Divorce Extension Act, had it become law, would have had a disturbing effect on the neighbouring colonies." There is nothing against facile legal separation in either of these allegations. Information upon what are the effects of easy divorce in the American States which have it would have been to the question. That couples from the neighbouring States to be disunited flock to the States where divorce has been made easier, only proves that the desire for extension in the divorce laws is gaining ground in America. That couples would proceed to Sydney to get untied were the Divorce Extension Act law there we can believe. When it was unlawful to marry a deceased wife's sister in New Zealand, proscribed couples went to Victoria and married there, returned and lived among us, and neither we nor them are the worse.

In divorces where the couple had had a family, it would of course be necessary that they produced substantial bonds for the care and rearing of their children, so that these should not be deserted and left a burden on the State. Altogether, with this precaution, I am of opinion that easier legal separation of unhappy couples would lessen prostitution and increase marriages. The irrevocable character of marriage deters many, and the most prudent and upright, from venturing upon it. It may be said, that with facility of divorce, a man in his life might in succession have several wives, a woman several husbands. It is so now, though the partners are not called wives or husbands, and they have these concurrently, not in succession. lam no admirer of butterflies of either sex who fib from flower to flower, and I think a man or woman who, taking advantage of easy divorce ran through many partners, would in the long run find it difficult to obtain a good partner, 1 like the old-fashioned style when they "lived and loved together through many changing years ;" but if the new generation cannot do that, we must not be too hard on them ; give them easy divorce and do nob drive them to prostitution. I am, &c., 25th March. A. Campbell.