OUR MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE LAWS. 229 



although the statute governing the transfer had not been complied 

 with. 



In these three States, and in most of the States, the laws regu- 

 lating the solemnization of marriages except from their general pro- 

 visions certain religious denominations. This exception was an early 

 spasm of religious toleration, entirely out of date in this tolerant 

 age. Marriage being a civil contract between two persons, its con- 

 ditions should be performed by them, of whatever religious faith 

 they may be, the same as they would have to perform the conditions 

 of any other civil contract or legal obligation. The exception is anti- 

 constitutional, in establishing a religious distinction even as against 

 the Catholic Church, which still holds marriage as a divine institution, 

 and its celebration a sacrament of the Church. No such exception is 

 made in the execution of any other legal contract or in favor of other 

 religious sects, and no hardship or violation of conscience or religious 

 belief could follow the abolition of this incongruity. As members of 

 society and citizens of the State, all persons should conform to the 

 same civil law, leaving the individual parties free to supplement the 

 civil ceremony with a religious one, according to the rules of the re- 

 ligious soeiety to which they belong. 



There is a peculiarity in the marriage contract, that does not enter 

 into any other contract in the ordinary commercial transactions of life. 

 While others may be, it must be between one man and one woman 

 only. The contract does not end with the marriage ceremony ; its 

 conditions are for life, and continue until dissolved by death or di- 

 vorce. Once it might have been considered to end with the solemni- 

 zation, and to take on the form of a status, but that was in those days 

 when on the " nuptial day " all the identity of the woman, her person- 

 ality, individuality, right of property, and control of offspring, were 

 merged in the man, and he became her lord and master, leaving her 

 without the right of appeal to any civil authority for the redress of 

 any wrong. But the barbarism of those days is fading away, and 

 the light of a new civilization is dawning, though still confused here 

 and there by old forms and prejudices. When woman shall stand 

 before the law equal with man in all her personal, property, and polit- 

 ical rights, then indeed will marriage be a contract sanctioned by na- 

 ture and approved by God. All the instincts of nature favor mar- 

 riage, all the passions, desires, and affections of the human heart enter 

 into it, and the highest development of the human race depends upon 

 it. Yet, as a part of the contract, the law of divorce enters in ; and, 

 while it is over-rigid in some States, in others its laxity almost neu- 

 tralizes the fundamental idea of the continuance and perpetuity of the 

 marriage obligation. 



As a relic of that " peculiar institution," with its concubinal prac- 

 tice between whites and blacks, South Carolina preserves its old laws 

 which allow no cause for divorce. In New York there is one cause 



