Marriage and Divorce in America

Southland Times, Issue 10202, 8 July 1889, Page 4

Marriage and Divorce in America

(Philadelphia Telegraph.) Mr Gladstone is not generally at his beßt when he is discussing American conditions, And he i* apt to be at his worst when he attempts to deal with American particulars. Bat Mr Gladstone is a statesman in the largest and best sense of the term ; snd if his insularities bind him in some directions, his grasp of fundamental principles which are of universal application in the affairs of men helps him out in others; and as regards j certain matteiß, he and other Englishmen of j statesmanlike culture and instincts are per- ' haps better able to accurately .note' the tendencies on tkis side of the Atlantic than are those here on the ground; In the last number of the Nineteenth Century magazine, for example, Mr Gladstone diicusae», with becoming serioutnefts, the marriage problem ; and he rightly declares that the controversies with regard to it are the greatest and deepest of all human controversies. He notes with evident anxiety, that the peculiar conditions of modern life — conditions which have been more powerfully knuenced by the means of intercommunication than by anything elseare produoing changes in general opinion on the subject which are fraught with great consequences. He notes also that in America, from some causes, the controversies on the subject of the marriage relation have reached a more advanced stage than elsewhere, and he thinks that come solution of the problem is much more likely to be reached here than in Europe — or, at least, that'a solution is likely to be reached at an earlier day. The particular phenomena in connection with this subject that are noted with pain and anxiety are a growing indisposition to regard the marriage contract as a permanent one and a disposition to regard the idea of easy j divorce with favour, These phenomena Mr Gladstone thinks to be largely due to the sbif tings of our population that are going on, and which encourage laxer notions about living than are likely to be maintained in communities where the bulk of the people are born, live, and die together, and so exert a direct moral influence on each other. There is no doubt that Mr Gladstone is quite right j about this, to some extent, Bat the shif tings of our population are only g*rfc of a general movement that all the peoples of the earth that are reached by the telegraph and steam transportation are participating in to a greater or less degree, and that is influencing British conditions almost if not quite as much as it is {American— although Mr Gladstone apparently does not see this. There are bowever at least two special influences in bebalf of laxity of thinking and acting with respect to marriage which are disturbing Americans, and the nature and importance of which it is most important that moralists and publicists should clearly understand: One of these is the lack of a federal marriage and divorce law which would apply equally in all parts of the country, and for want of wbicb we are troubled with conflicting and demoralising Slate If gislatkm. The other is the* n lisposition to submit to onerous restraints on personal liberty which is the outgrowth of our political institutions and our ways of thinking and talking about them. That is to say the idea of individual liberty has been encouraged to such an extent that men and women who are dissatisfied with their marriage relation are indisposed to submit to its restraints merely for the sake of what may be called the general good. In this connection, however, there is one very important matter which needs to be taken into the moat serious consideration of publicists like Mr Gladstone. While the growth of easy-going divorce laws in this country is attributable to- the disinclination to submit to displeasing restraints for the sake of body politic or the cause of high morals, it is also due to a disposiiioQ among American men and women to live as decently as they can without sacrificing too much to what too many of them regard as an abstraction. Where an Englishman, or a European of any country, would relieve himself ot the galling restraints of a distasttful marriage by forming illegitimate connections, an American similarly situated would seek a divorce end consummate a new marriage. Which procedure is the more demoralising, whether the individual or the general weal be considered, casuists might discuss 'ad infinitum' without reaching any entirely satisfactory conclusions.