The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-12-19

adultery, lntoierable severity as Illus
trated by chronic alcoholism and in
tolerably insulting and degrading treat
ment. Congress- has no constitutional
jurisdiction over matters of this sort, and
state legislatures have already by a large
majority declared their dissent from the
clerical view of divorce limited to adult
cry as the only cause. Ninety per cent of
the persons who make our laws believe in
divorce to the extent Of including deser-
ton. chronic alcoholism, cruel treatment
among just causes for covering the mar
riage tie.
Liberal divorce has evidently been a
welcome gift to women, for IS per cent. of
the divorces are granted to women. who
have been deserted when their youthful
beauty was faded or their money squan-
dered by unchaste and Incorporate hus-
bands. Unless we assume tnat women
are naturally less reverent of the marriage
tie and more anxious to escape from its
obligations than men the fact that IS per
cent. of the divorces granted are given on
the appeal of women goes far to show that
liberal divorce did something TO relieve
women from that legal state OF domestic
slavery and tyranny which married life
becomes inevitably when its rights are
outraged and its duties degraded to the
ditch of RIGHTEOUSNESS and intemperance
by deprayed husbands.
The absurd English law which prohibits
marriage with a wife's sister dates back for
its origin to Levitlcus, and was part of the
Mosaic law devised for and applied to
polygamous people. The command not to
marry the wife's sister 'to vex her" i'm
plies polygamy and was clearly meant to
warn the Jews not to have two
sisters for wives at the same time, lest they
make trouble, as Jacob did when he mar
ried two sisters, Leah and Rachel, his first
cousins. Moses forbade marriages of Atm
ity and consequently, but he did not for
bid polygamy. David and Solomon were
conspicuous polygamists and were not re-
proved for their Mormonism.
The fact that this stupid prohibition of
marriage with u deceased wife's sister is
still enforced by the canons of the En-
glish church and by English law, illus
trates how difficult it is to get out of the
ruts of ancient errors that have been
enacted into church and state laws.
Bishop Phillips Brooks warned the church
against the danger Of making marriage
too difficult, and thus promoting vice.
1t is noteworthy fact that many women
of conspicuous intellectually and abso-
lutte purity of life are advocates of free de
vorce. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who dur
ing her long married life lived most hap
PLY with her excellent and gifted hus-
band, bluntly argues that free divorce is
preferable to the frightfui decentralization
consequent upon chronic domestic war
alton of marriage when lack of sympathy
and content indicates in the parents radi-
cal lack of physical and moral affinity.
Milton speaks of children born of such
marriages as "of unlawful birth, and
heirs to the misfortune of being trained in
household where discord and bitterness
stamp their demoniac features"
Mrs. Stanton argues that the interest of
the state and the interest of the individ-
ual demand that all unions in which the
real object of marriage is defeated be
legally dissolved, and she holds that in
compatibility of temper, which defeats
the true objects of marriage, should be the
primal cause of divorce. Her conclusion is
that the consequences of discomfort and
discomfort in marriage are so fatal to the
usefulness of the home, the good Of So
ciety and the solidarity Of the state that
free encouragement to divorce ought to be
given. She views the question from the
standpoint of individual sovereignty and
individual happiness and in denial of the
idea that the interests of society are para
mount. and she would have the question of
divorce, like marriage, settled as to its most
sacred relations by the parties themselves.
The property and children should be
viewed and regulated as civil contract.
and this done she would have the union
dissolved with as much deliberation and
publicity as it was formed. Mrs. Stanton,
instead Of making divorce q reproach
would make it respectable, recognized by
society as duty as well as 3 right, to be
executed in all preliminaries as to the di-
vision of property and guardianship of
children without recourse to the courts.
Helen Fl. Gardener ably supports the views
of Mrs. Stanton, which are also maintained
in England by Mrs. Mona Card and Miss
Alice Bodington.
A noteworthy thing is that all these
women who champion free divorce are
women whose lives are without reproach.
Two of them have been most happily mar
RED. and all of them are women suffra-
gists, because in suffrage they think they
see their best hope to enact their radical
views on the subject of free divorce. There
is deal of truth in what Mrs. Stanton
says of the disastrous moral and social
consequences of bad marriages to the in
dividual, the family and the state, but in
spite of the church the law continues so
liberal in its practice that there would
seem to be no need of any present agita-
ton for free divorce. Episcopalian women
in increasing numbers marry men whose
divorces are not for "scriptural" cause :;
society does not ostracise them, and as
long as il does not the church will fulmi.
nate in vain.
The friends of free divorce among women
do not need woman suffrage to force a re-
form, which, by the liberality of masculine
lawn sars ard the buDpana rapstrpct;o,,