A Substitute for Marriage Laws.

Southland Times, Issue 14516, 16 December 1899, Page 1 (Supplement)

A Substitute for Marriage Laws.

Admitting (says Herbert Flowerdew, in the Westminster Review) that it is outside the province of the law to make either a religious duty or an ideal or even respectable course of conduct compulsory for no other reason than that it is a religious duty or an ideal course of conduct, it will not be denied that the law should exercise some control over the union of the sexes, for .the law is the guardian of the unborn, and if its duty is to protect the individual from injustice it must seek to obtain before a child s conception some guarantee that it will be provided for from those responsible for its existence. In the second place it is its duty to render valid a fair contract. Under our present regulations the law would appear to perform both these functions, as the guardian of the unborn and the overseer of the marriage contract, very unsatisfactorily. Possibly both ends might be achieved by a single enactment, for nobody would enter into a marriage without a view to its permanence if at the time of doing so he rendered himself liable to a serious penalty for annulling it in the form of compensation to his partner and provision for his children. Let us suppose, then, that the legal marriage contract consists simply of an agreement between man and woman to live together until such time as either chooses to terminate the agreement, and to be jointly responsible for the maintenance of the children born during the arrangement and within nine months of the termination, both parties agreeing to compensate the other for any loss incurred by his or her failure to make the arrangement permanent. It will be asked at once what is to prevent a man, under the proposed rule,marrying frequently and enjoying a virtual promiscuity under cover of the law’s sanction. It mayjbe answered that the wife is compensated against pecuniary loss; that the companionship of a man willing to desert her, but restrained only by the law, cannot be of much value ; that the man has a pecuniary restraint commensurate with the number of his childien , and that, thanks to the need of producing his record, he can look only for p, woman of no moral worth as his second wife—a woman whom he could live with under existing circumstances for all that the law can do to prevent him. In addition to this, it must be suggested that a woman must herself be a great deal to blame if with all the advantages that married life gives she cannot retain her husband’s affection after her first youth has gone. It is, indeed, more than probable that the hypothetical regulation would introduce a much better atmosphere into the relation between husband and wife. The proverbial difference between the lover and the husband, the Sweetheart and the wife, can no doubt be accounted for largely by the fact that husband and wife feel that their partner is bound to them for life by the law, whether they make the partnership pleasant or irksome. Under the supposed regulation the whole of married life would fee a courtship, each partner wooing the

other to remain, and the unavoidable jealousy and fears would not dispel its charm any more than they destroy that of the days before marriage. But the crux of every marriage question lies in the disposition ot the children, and it will be urged that the law should not render it possible for children to be bereft at an early age of the companionship and guidance of their father. But it must be remembered that the companionship and guidance of which they are bereft is that of a father who has no affection for their mother, and as a resulthnost probably none for her children — who at the best has so little that it does not induce him to remain with their mother for their sakes. If the law compelled him to do so, their gain would be questionable. But the law as guardian of the unborn has as great a duty to perform in regard to the illegitimate as the legitimate,and it may reasonably be supposed that any relaxation of the stringency of the marriage laws ■would result in giving legitimate birth to many children who otherwise would be born illegitimately. At present the loving woman who is urged to dispense with marriage has tw’o restraints, the veto of religion and the fear of public opinion. The laws offers none,although she commits a crime by bringing a chiid into the world without any guarantee that its father will support it.) |With a woman’s love of sacrifice, she is too liable to fall when her refusal has the*appearance of a selfish prudence about her soul and her reputation. If, however, marriage were made little more than the promise of the father to maintain the children of their union she would be more likely to see her acquiescence in the light of an injury to her unoorn child, whom she has no tendency to sacrifice with herself. In the supposed regulation, then, we have a rule which can be logically taken as one which comes within the province oi the law; it is a rule which promises in practice to save unhappy husbands and wives from an intolerable servitude, to render unnecessary the inconsistent and unwholesome divorce court, and to diminish illegitimacy. One wonders why it should not be made a law.