St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1888-11-11
MATRIMONIAL THEORIES.
Other ID irections For How to Be
Happy Though Married.
Ur,;.to,, for Tho CIoyo

Other ID irections For How to Be
Happy Though Married.
Written for the Globe
1t would seem from TIL way all speak
at once in the matrimonial discussion
as though we were afraid to keep
silent lest we render ourselves liable to
the charge of cowardice or ignorance.
There are always multitudes to pirate
about an existing evil, but how few to
strike at the root of the evil they de-
plore, or suggest remedy for It's cure.
One sweeps his hand from the north
to the south, from the east to the west,
and cries to all the world, Marriages
the institution, is a failurew Another
points at the individual, and walls
forth, You make marriage failure!"
Which is right? Both, / claim. Mar
riage which was instituted to protect
society from the curse Of prostitution,
from the propagation of criminals. from
the ScOurge OF vice, seems to me to but
half accomplish its purpose. On the
other hand, the individual who makes
a failure of life married, would, in nine
cases out of ten, have failed as signally
i'll being blessing to humanity if he
had remained single.
In this question are involved the
strongest human passions. the strongest
natural instinctS-what more is needed
to convince us that as long as the hui
man race exists, sin and suffering pen
citrate into the married state as it does
INTO the single state. Let the indi-
vidual learn to govern and restrain his
natural instincts and passions. let the
law prohibit his entrance into the mar
riei state where his life record proves
him of breed which should be stamped
out of existence, if we would lessen the
vice and misery which meets US at
every hand.
selfish qualification of wholly personal
desires, the natural instinct to perpetu-
ate ones personality through bringing
into existence second self (ail Of
which, combined, goes under the APP
pellatiou-love), that lead up TO the
hvmeueal altar. Is not the cause, of
which marriage is the effect, of ma
ture to generate vice and misery in
every case where reason is not eXer-
cised, and self mastery has not been
attained?
This awful monster, human passion,
because the individual lets it loose to
tear soul from body, must be chained
and controlled by the law; who thinks
to do away with the marriage institution
breaks down the strongest barrier
against vice, and leaves it unfettered,
free to devOur whom it will. free to
crush in its bloody nav the little virtue
and happiness that remain TO us. Let
us rather enact and enforce laws which
shall restrict and control the indulgence
of the tendency to marriage.
The teacher who inStructS our youth,
the doctor who gives us our physic, the
minister who marrieS us, the lawyer who
obtains our divorce, all must prove their
proficiency, their right by reason of
preparation and adaptability, to prac-
tice their chosen profession, ere its
privileges and honofs are granted them;
but tic license to wed and increase the
human race-each after his own kind,
remembers granted almost for the
asking: the only impeachment to mar
riage recognized by the law seeming to
be previous contract of like nature,
which neither death nor divorce may
have annulled.
Wide open stand these gates of matri-
mony. which should be doubly barred
and locked, and guarded by every sentl-
mel that just and strictiy-enforced law
can place there, and the great stream of
humanity pours into the married state,
ignorant OF, Indifferent to, the awful re-
SponSibilitieS that must be assumed,
gives birth to sin and misery, and then
rushes out through the divorce court
with the despairing cry, Marriage is a
failure!" When the pauper and the
criminal, and the moral leper who
abounds in good society,"" are per-
mitted to enter the marriage sanctuary,
the law is but sanctioning the propaga-
ton of pauperism, crime and secret
moral leprosy, and this propagation is
as damnable curse to all humanity as
prostitution ever can be. 1t is thus that
the holy institution OF marriage is per-
verified to the vilest uses; that its power
to protect and maintain purity and hap
piness is imperiled.
We talk about the sore need for ref
ormatlon in our divorce laws-it seems
to me like giving our attention to the
wrong end of the great trouble. The
greatest evil that results from a failure
in marriage is the offspring that are
born to sin, suffer and die, and the di-
vorce court can offer no remedy for this.
1t can dissolve the unhappy union, but
it cannot change the nature of the hui
man beings who are its fruit, nor pro-
nounce them exempt from the sorrow to
which they are born. Reform the man
! and the evils he creates himself,
and through which he snffers,will cease
to eXist-and is there any surer way to