230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



only. In Ohio and other States there are many ; but in Connecticut, 

 Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina, and Maine, there is any cause that a 

 discontented and dishonest party may allege, or that a judge in his 

 discretion, influenced by sympathy or corrupt motives, may approve. 

 In these extremes of the law, we have the tyranny of bigotry and the 

 liberty of license, this opening the gates of temptation to the licen- 

 tiousness of man, and the other driving in the victims. Surely there 

 is a happy medium sufficiently circumscribed to restrain the vicious 

 and dishonest, and yet liberal enough to afford relief to the innocent 

 and injured ! Thus, it will be seen that uniformity in the operation of 

 the divorce laws, as a part of the marriage contract, is made necessary 

 by the facility with which divorces are now " made easy, and without 

 publicity." The cases where a husband or wife has abandoned home 

 and family, and gone into a neighboring State to procure a divorce that 

 could not be obtained at home, are so frequent and notorious, that the 

 public conscience has ceased to be more shocked over such an occur- 

 rence than over a bank-president's embezzlement, or a willful murder. 

 And yet society should be shocked to the very depths of humiliation, 

 for the histories of the majority of such cases show that they are in- 

 stigated by the basest motives of the human heart. For some fancied 

 or real grievance that could easily be explained by love, or remedied 

 by law ; for the slightest incompatibility that could exist between any 

 two independent individuals, and which might be softened by intelli- 

 gent forbearance, but which must be endured by all under any form 

 of contract ; or, from a sensual desire to form another marriage rela- 

 tion, or for apparent causes that have no deeper root of evil than fash- 

 ionable folly, petty jealousy, and irritability of temper the laws of 

 many of the States offer a way for the dissolution of the marriage 

 contract. It is, however, to the credit of our humanity that the 

 noble and enduring men and women of our race those upon whom 

 the world must ever rely for the true advancement of man toward so- 

 cial perfection and individual happiness seldom or never resort to the 

 courts, even of their own State, for release from a contract which may 

 have become onerous or even disgraceful to bear. Under the present 

 liberal laws, regulating the relation of husband and wife, in some of 

 the more progressive States, the parties stand so nearly equal before 

 the law as individuals, in their personal and property rights, that there 

 can not be the same excuses for resorting to divorce as a remedy for a 

 real or supposed wrong, and certainly not the necessity for the assign- 

 ment of so many statutory causes, as in former years. And while 

 there should be other causes than adultery assigned for divorce, there 

 is no other cause by which the family and society can be so deeply 

 injured ; no other cause that might not be adjusted between the par- 

 ties, or removed by law, the same as if the marriage relation did not 

 exist, or for which the innocent party might not suffer just as severely 

 in his or her relation to society as in the relation of husband or wife. 



