Morning journal and courier., 1880-09-10
Divorce in England.
SIX Hundred Marriages Dissolved i'm One.
 Year-What the Statistics Of the Court
[From the Iondnn standara

'AA ~ uh0Eeu M3Fr1a geS Dissolved i'm One.
 Year-What the Statistics of the Court
 Show.
 [From the London standardJ
 Business in the Divorce Court during tbe past legal year seems to have been decidedly brisk Altogether as many as 643 causes have in one form or another been before the judge, and probably between 300 and eco marriages have been dissolved. According to the records of the Divorce Court one of the commonest causes of separation between man and wife is the vice of drunkenness. whether in the man or in the woman. But in order fully to appreciate the class of cases of which this IS asserted, we must look be hind the drunkenness and try to ascertain it's cause: The vast majority of petitions, 1t would seem, come from the lower middle class and the working classes, and how often do we hear it said that persons in this station an life have been driven to drinking because they were uncomfortable at home not mere " tnat tnelr homes were untidy, or their meals ill-cooked, but that they were unhap- py with their wives or with their husbands In the classes above these-at all events, in the higher and the upper middle classes- If a husband and wife do not like each other, they can manage to keep apart without going 10 the pubic house The small tradesman or mechanic has not that advantage If he ouar- rels with his wife at breakfast, he is obliged to go back to her for supper, when, if hostih- ties are renewed, he probably rushes off to the public house, and returns to beat her. It is impossible to say in how many instances incompatibilty of temper first leads to intox- lcatlon, and lntoxication in turn to those acts of cruelty or immortality which finally end ln the Divorce Court. Drunkenness may be the proxlmate cause of majority of divorce cases, but whether there is not very often a remote cause in the background, is question not hastily to be answered in the negative It is said that the fear of disturbing marriage settlements kpaT0c O vf1a1. 1Ioc AI.z Divorce Court; yet it may be allowed that the pauclty of exposure among them does not necessarily indicate any higher standard of morality. Dr. Johnson was convinced that the aristocracy in his own time was less vic- ious in this respect than the lower class. He attributed the difference to education, and the greater sense of propriety and delicacy thus lnculcated. Nor is it clear that his ob- servations on this subject are not true at the present time. We have had some revelations. no doubt, of very painful character touch ing the morals of the Upper ten thousand,n But they may not unreasonably be set down among the exceptions which prove the rule. seeing that, as some cases come out the chances are that if they were very common we should have great number of them In matters of this nature there can be little question that among the lower orders there exists at present a less lively sense of shame than in other grades of society. The differ ence Is one which we should hope is gradually growing less, and we must trust to education and improved domestic arrangements to re- move it altogether.
 One curious circumstance to be noted in the records of the Divorce Court is this, that the majority of the petitions are presented by people who have been married some years 10, 15, and 20 years-and not by persons still under the influence of youthful passions or in the possession of all their youthful charms. This is curious physiological fact and what fca ,,oIT .1roIl practitioners in the court declare, neverthe- less, to be their experience, that the offense which usually gives rise to the demand for separation IS frequently unaccompanied by any decline of coniugal affection in the guilty party. Women who have broken their mar rlage VOWS are not unfrequently found to be still much attached to their husbands, and to feel separation from them as acutely as if they had been innocent. We do not make these statements merely for their own sake or as being interesting to students of human nature. Apractical moral is to be drawn from them. Do we not all of us take far too little pains to consider what ought to be the meaning of such terms as Q suitable match, very proper engagement, and so forth? difference of some two or three years in the respective ages of the lady and the gentle man is thought to afford the best chance of happiness, and, where there are sufficient means, early marriages are always thought conducive to virtue. Is this the lesson to be learned from the records of the Divorce Court? It would seem not. If so large pro- portion of domestic quarrels take place after 10 or 12 years of welded life, and are then due to infdelity on one side or the other, it would not seem that early marriages, or mar riages in which husband and wife are nearly of the same age, the most conducive to the sanctity of the tie. It is delicate sub- ject to discuss, but experience seems to prove that neither the number of years for which people have lived happily together, nor the number of children they may have is any guarantee under certain circumstances for continued fidelity to each other. This would seem to be the moral to be drawn from the evidence supplied by Sir James Hannen's court. And if this be so, it should alter not little the popular conception of the conditions of really happy marriage. It is difficult, however, to generalize on a sub ject in reference to which the material facts have never been carefully digested The Divorce Court is not pleasant institution, but if it helps to disseminate sounder views on marriage, it's disclosures, repulsive as they are in the great majority of cases, will not have been entirely valueless.
 The Four Corners Store.