The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-12-13

during slavery and since its extinction. or
her couples contented. 1t only enabled a
man, who could not get divorce and knew
his wife could not, TO make his concubine
queen of the home, and if the wife rebelled,
to tell the wife she had no remedy in law
but to endure the insulting companion
ship or take to flight and support herself.
In New York as many couples get divorced
for causes other than adultery as IN other
states, and marital morality and felicity
are as grossly outraged as in states where
there are a half dozen legal pleas for d.
vorce. The disconnected couples in New
York have only to acquire residence in
some other state of liberal divorce laws in
order to get free. You can punish the
married for offenses against chastity, but
you cannot make them content in that
state when it becomes chronic moral
rebellion. Make legal marriage difficult
and you have illicit and illegal cohabita-
ton; make divorce difficult and you have
chronic conjugal intidelity.
Certain reformers at the East propose
an amendment to the constitution of the
United States giving congress power to
make uniform law of marriage and d.
vorce. This is a mere dream of the doc
trinaires and philanthropic PicKwicks of
our civilization. If congress should propose
prohibition amendment today, does any
intelligent person suppose it could obtain
ratification by three-fourths of the states;
does any sane man believe that the United
States will ever prohibit the manufacture
and sale of wine, malt liquors and ardent
spirits? 1t is useless to argue that because
congress can enforce uniform laws relating
to money, mails, bankruptcy, etc., it
could enact, much less secure, the ratifica-
ton of a uniform federal marriage and di-
vorce law. Subjects of pure superficial
self-interest and cold business are one
thing, and subjects that involve questions
of sentiment and passion are another.
The trouble with all this sort of legisla-
ton is that it has for its end in view the
making of good wives and good husbands
by law. This effort is about as absurd as
the attempt to sober men by statute pro-
hibiting the sale of ardent spirits. The
law can regulate the property relations of
married people, but it cannot make a mar
rage good or bad; it cannot make good
wives or faithful husbands. 1t can punish
husbands and wives for infidelity, just as
it can punish drunken man for inebrety,
but it cannot make married folks chaste or
contented by statute any more than it can
keep people sober by statute. You can
cd ha fn hal in
and chastity as the highest wisdom, but
you cannot make a marriage or divorce
law SO strict that the unprincipIed cannot
evade or emasculate it, any more than you
can by statute make ardent spirits so
scarce that a man who wants it cannot
get it.
Marriage and divorce reform, like tenn
perance reform, cannot be accomplished
by amendments to the constitution au-
thofAing congress to pass uniform law
on these subjects for all the states. Such
amendments would be like the recon-
by the practice of the people. The educa-
ton at home, in the church, the school,
that makes for the greatest number of
high-minded men and women, will bear
fruit in the largest number of true mar
riages that are now represented by the
suppliants of the divorce courts.
Our courts are conservative in requiring
proof that genuine marriage has taken
place, entered into in good faith, moral in
tent and solemn pledge, as separated from
the immoral intent of convenient and
capricious concubinage, mere device to
impose on decent society mistress under
the illegitimately appropriated name OF
wife. The courts fairly hold that ''con-
cubinage has no more claim in law to be
enforced as marriage than the collection of
a gambling debt; that a contract of mar
riage, not mere arrangement for concu-
binage, must be established"