2 2 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



OUR MARRIAGE AND DIYORCE LAWS. 



By GOEDON A. STEWAET. 



THE worst of our social evils, personal wrongs, and political sins 

 arise from the ununiform operation of our marriage and divorce 

 laws. The loose manner in which a contract of marriage may he en- 

 tered into and the reckless facility with which a marriage contract 

 may be dissolved are a disgrace to our high civilization and professed 

 Christianity. However learned commentators and jurists may differ 

 as to the correct definition of marriage, it is not only a partially exe- 

 cuted agreement to marry, but is a contract continuous in its obliga- 

 tions governing the status of the parties, until it is dissolved by the 

 death of one of the parties, or by one of them obtaining a divorce for 

 some wrongful or invalidating act committed by the other. 



In nearly all of the States marriage is recognized as a civil contract 

 only, and has no ecclesiastical obligation so far as society and the State 

 are concerned. The contracting parties are subjects of the law. The 

 person performing the ceremony by which the contract is publicly 

 acknowledged by the parties, whether he be magistrate, parson, or 

 layman, becomes a civil officer by authority of the law for that occa- 

 sion. Generally, however, the marriage contract is solemnized by a 

 clergyman, agreeably to the rules and regulations of the religious de- 

 nomination to which he belongs, and for which one or the other of the 

 parties has a religious attachment or preference ; or, because a reli- 

 gious solemnization in church gives a better opportunity to gratify the 

 desire for social rivalry and display. But perhaps most persons, 

 especially when young and looking forward to a long future of con- 

 nubial happiness, consider the act of marriage more as a religious 

 rite than a civil contract, and hence the forms and ceremonies of the 

 Church accord more agreeably with the sentiment of love and affection 

 than the business-like and informal words of the magistrate, who, in 

 response to their acknowledgment of intention to marry, simply pro- 

 nounces them man and wife. This sentiment, no doubt, is largely the 

 result of a lingering belief in marriage as a divine institution and a 

 sacrament of the Church, as taught when the ecclesiastical court had 

 exclusive jurisdiction of marriage and divorce. It is perhaps not until 

 later, not until they have become dissatisfied with the conditions of 

 the solemn obligation they had agreed to faithfully perform through 

 life, that they discover it is simply a civil contract that binds them, 

 and from which the law has generously provided unlimited means of 

 escape. 



Lawful marriage is the basis of the family relation, and the family 

 relation is the fundamental principle of association upon which the 

 superstructure of society and the State is built. And yet there is no 



