MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. Men and Women Better Off Where Divorces are Not Easily Obtained. [N. 0. Davis in "North American Review."}

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 62, 9 August 1884, Page 4

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE. Men and Women Better Off Where Divorces are Not Easily Obtained. [N. 0. Davis in " North American Review."}

All precedent shows that human life, and [especially woman's life, is happier, as a rule, in countries where divorce is not lawful and not permitted than in those where it is most common and free. For divorce is an evil that always grows by what it feeds upon. It feeds upon the baser views of our nature, and they propagate and increase as the demand enlarges to meet an inordinate and depraved appetite. A striking illustration of this fact has just been disclosed by the discovery of a manufactory of forged divorces in the City of Brooklyn, from which it is said two hundred decrees have lately issued with the apparent formalities of judicial procedure, the parties obtaining them looking and caring for nothing but expedition, cheapness, and secrecy. Such a state of things could not exist but for the appalling moral laxity bred by the frequency of divorces. Both physically and morally, men accommodate themselves to the rule and necessity of conditions. So, if the condition of life and law be such that the marriage tie may be easily disrupted, men speedily come to think of its disruption as a process of relief, proper and defensible. This fact speedily operates to change the harmonies of wedded life into discords j and conjugal jars, which otherwise might only be considered as new starting points for closer and tenderer affiliations, are nursed into irreconcilable and fatal quarrels. But when the rule and necessity are the opposite both husband and wife are taught by that condition to adhere to the true nature of marriage by turning discords out of doors, and studying the conciliations due to mutual happiness.