OUR MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE LAWS. 231 



Although New York has experimented with both a prohibitory and 

 a liberal policy of divorce, long years of experience have demonstrated 

 that the peace and happiness of the family and the purity of public 

 morals are best subserved by a restrictive policy ; yet no State in the 

 Union can boast of a larger personal freedom of its citizens, or a higher 

 standard of intelligence and morality. The percentage of illiteracy is 

 comparatively small ; woman is held in the highest esteem, and on all 

 school questions has the equal right of suffrage ; she is better protected 

 in her personal and property rights than elsewhere ; and, so far as the 

 domestic relations are concerned, no State has a happier or a more con- 

 tented people. The rural population is prosperous and happy in its 

 Arcadian simplicity ; and even in the great commercial metropolis of 

 the State, where the opportunity for temptation and crime, corruption, 

 and luxurious licentiousness, is so great, the intelligence and morals of 

 the people are equal to those of any city in the world. Notwithstand- 

 ing this, the laws of other States and the decisions of the courts make 

 marriage in New York, as elsewhere, a contract subject to the caprice 

 or dishonesty of either of the parties. 



Parties who legally marry know the conditions of the contract into 

 which they have entered. In New York they know that, as a part of 

 the contract, so long as they reside in the State there is one cause only, 

 except death, for its dissolution. And so long as one of the parties to 

 a marriage continues to reside in the State in which the contract was 

 made, and under the protection of its laws, no other State, into which 

 the other party may have removed for the purpose of obtaining a di- 

 vorce, should assume jurisdiction of the contract, or change its terms, 

 so as to annul it for any other cause than that which existed in the 

 State where the contract was made, and then only after obtaining per- 

 sonal service upon the non-resident defendant. It is questionable, as a 

 matter of individual right, whether any State into which the parties 

 may have mutually agreed to remove should assume jurisdiction to 

 set aside the marriage contract for any other cause than could be as- 

 signed in the State in which the contract was made. Certainly one 

 State should respect the laws of another, as it would have its own laws 

 respected by the other. But the question of jurisdiction and domicile 

 in interstate divorce has perplexed the courts almost endlessly. The 

 general principle of law that the domicile of the wife remains with or 

 follows the husband is limited by the reasons on which it rests, and 

 must be varied according to the circumstances of the case, so that for 

 the purpose of divorce each party is said to have a separate domicile. 

 When one of the parties removes into another State for the purpose 

 of divorce, and, after gaining a legal residence there, commences pro- 

 ceedings for divorce, how can the court, if marriage is a contract, get 

 personal service upon the defendant so as to affect the rights of this 

 non-resident party ? Or, if marriage is a status, and the court takes 

 cognizance only of the condition of the plaintiff, it, the condition of 



