"OUR MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE LAWS." 665 



shall say that such grounds ought not to be considered ? "When we 

 bear in mind how difficult it is to pass laws through Congress, and 

 how difficult it is to adopt uniform laws which do not operate harshly 

 on some portion of our immense country, we may well question the 

 advisability of amending the Constitution of the United States in 

 order to put the subject of the marriage relation under the control of 

 Congress. How many years has the Parliament of England been 

 wrestling with the deceased-wife's-sister question ! 



So large a nation as ours, whether the laws are promulgated from 

 "Washington or the capitals of the several States, will always furnish 

 the philanthropist with worry enough on a great variety of questions 

 to make him comfortable, if not happy. 



It is not probable that any laws which Congress could pass on the 

 subject of marriage would be satisfactory to the advanced minority, 

 and their passage would occasion the greater anxiety because such mi- 

 nority would suppose themselves in some manner directly responsible 

 for the laws. It is, therefore, not at all strange that many of the 

 State laws such as those of Ohio, or Virginia, or Alabama, which 

 prohibit marriage between the negro and white races are supposed 

 by people of other beliefs to contravene the fourteenth amendment of 

 the Constitution of the United States. Hence, the writer of the article 

 under consideration criticises the decisions of the Supreme Court of 

 the United States for refusing to declare such laws null and void. He 

 says the decision " abridges the privileges of a citizen on account of 

 color ; it denies the colored male citizen the equal privilege and pro- 

 tection of the law extended to the white male citizen the right to 

 marry a white woman. It denies the white female citizen the privi- 

 lege and protection of the law granted the colored female citizen the 

 right to marry a colored man." 



Perhaps the easiest way to set the matter right with those who 

 might be inclined to think, from the adverse criticism, that the Su- 

 preme Court of the United States had erred, will be to state the facts 

 of the case, and repeat what that high tribunal has said on the subject 

 in the case of Tony Pace vs. Alabama, 106 United States Reports, 

 pages 584, 585. Adultery and fornication, by section 4,184 of the 

 Alabama code, are prohibited by a fine of one hundred dollars and im- 

 prisonment, with or without hard labor, in the county jail, for six 

 months. Section 4,189 of the same code declares that, " if any white 

 person and any negro, or the descendant of any negro to the third 

 generation inclusive, though one ancestor of each generation was a 

 white person, intermarry or live in adultery or fornication with each 

 other, each of them must, on conviction, be imprisoned in the peniten- 

 tiary, or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not less than two 

 nor more than seven years." 



The provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution 

 of the United States prohibit any State from making or enforcing 



