The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-03-10
The Ethics of Divorce.

london Telegraph .r
The indissolublity of wedlock which for the
most part characterizes Latin races, is simply
due to the plain historical fact that the Refor-
nation made little or no progress in countries
under Latin domination, and that the council
of Trent was the first general council which
proclaimed absolute indissolubility. The con-
sequence was that it became point of honor
with all Catholic princes and peoples to adhere
to the council in this as in other matters, while
the Protestant nations leant to the side of
easier separations. We cannot say that the So
cial results in the countries that remained un-
der the control of the Vatican are such as to
make the advocates of indissolubility rejoice
All comparisons are invdious, and there are
facts which cannot be tabulated or brought to
statistical proof. ..
Yet it certainly may be said that, as regards
fidelity to marriage VOWS, Italy, Spain, France
and the South American republics are, if we
may trust the impressions of all observers, on
lower level than England, Germany, or the
United States. The very number of the separ
tions thus granted yearly in France more than
double the annual amount of separations and
divorces pronounced in England, while ''semi-
detached couples" in Italy and Spain are con-
spicuous enough. 1t can hardly be contended
therefore, that the marriage bond which in
cludes love and domestic union as well as the
mere legal restraints more reverenced in
the countries where it can never be dissolved
than in the States where it can be renounced.
The excessive facilities for complete severance
offered by the laws of Switzerland and the
United States have their own evils, no doubt.
but the other extreme of positive indissolu-
bility is not without its dangers.
Men and women find in this absolute barrier
to new union kind of excuse for wild Ii
cense of manners that despises all restraints
and abjures all forms of fidelity. The readi-
ness with which in some American and Ger
man states married persons dissolve old ties
and form new ones has in it, no doubt, some
thing at once ludcrous and contemptible; but,
after all, the parties contract mutual legal
and social obligations, and 1T is possible enough
that happiness may be found in second mar
riage, even when the first has been lightly dis
solved. In Latin countries the too frequent
resources of the separated though undivorced
couples is a kind of second union neither rec
ognized by society nor by law, dissoluble at
any caprice, and tending usually to degrade
both parties. This evil, following now the
rigid rule of the Roman communion, was
abated in old times by the discipline of the
church.
The husband or the wife who had erred was
liable to be summoned before an ecclesiastical
court, and anything like the spectacle of open
and unabashed infidelity now displayed in Lat
in countries by married persons was impossible
where the priests had full power to impose
serious penances. AT the present day the
church retains the theory of indissoluble con-
tracts, but is obliged to condone the vice that
too often follows actual separation, so that the
corrective influence of her old system is lost.
She forces husband and wife to remain legally
chained together, but cannot forbid either to
take revenge in wild license. When the
English church at the reformation retained the
Roman doctrine of indissoluble marriage many
of the bishops wished to revive the old disc;-