Connecticut western news., 1899-09-21

tioMnl Importance Uniformity of
 Divorce Laws In the Various States
 Suggested.
 lCopyright, Louis Klopsch 1s99.l
 WAsHINaToN, Sept. 1T.-Dr. Talmage h this discourse discusses question If national importance, which Is con fessedly as difficult as 1t Is urgent. The text Is Matthew xix, 6, What there fore God hath joined together let not man put asunder."
 That there are hundreds and thou sands of infelicitous homes in America to one will doubt If there were only one skeleton in the closet, that might le locked up and abandoned, but in many a home there Is a skeleton In the hallway and a skeleton in all the apart ments. "Unhappily married" are two words descriptive of many a home stead. It needs no orthodox minister to prove to a badly mated pair that there Is a hell. They are there now. Some times n grand and gracious woman will be thus incarcerated, and her life will be a crucifixion, as was the case with Mrs. Sigourney, the great poetess and the great sol Sometimes consecrat- nd man will be united to a fury, as was John Wesley, or united to a vixen, as was John Milton. Sometimes and gen. orally both parties are to blame, and Thomas Carlyle Is an intolerable grum- bier, and his wife has a pungent retort always ready, and Froude, the histo- rian, pledged to tell the plain truth, has to pull aside the curtain from the lifelong squabble at Craigenputtock and Cheyne row.
 Domestic Disorders.
 Some say that for the alleviation of all these domestic disorders of which we hear easy divorce is a good pre- scription God sometimes authorizes divorce as certainly as he authorizes marriage. I have just as much regard for one lawfully divorced as have for one lawfully married. But you know and I know that wholesale divorce Is one of our national scourges. I am not surprised at this when 1 think of the influences which have been abroad mill tating against the marriage relation. For many years the platforms of the country rang with talk about a free love millennium. There were meetings of this kind held in the Academy of Music. Brooklyn; Cooper institute, New York; Fremont temple, Boston, and all over the land Some of the women who were most prominent in that move ment have since been distinguished for great promiseuosi<y of affection. Popu- lar themes for such occasions were the tyranny of man, the oppression of the marriage relation, womens rights and the affinities. Prominent speakers were women with short curls and short dress and very long tongue, everlast- lngly at war with God because they were created women, while on the plat form sat meek men with soft accent and cowed demeanor, apologetic for masculinity and holding the parasols while the termagant orators went on preaching the gospel of free love. That campaign of about 20 years set more devils into the marriage relation than will be exercised in the next 50. Men and women went home. from such meetings so permanently confused as to who were their wives and husbands that they never got out of the perplex- ity, and the criminal and the civil courts tried to disentangle the Had of woes, and the one got alimony, and that one got limited divorce, and this mother kept the children on condition that the father could sometimes come and look at them, and these went into poorhouses, and those went into an insane asylum, and those went into dis solute public life, and all went to de- struction. The mightiest war ever made against the marriage institution was that free love campaign, some times under one name and sometimes under another. -
 Suppress Polygamy.
 Another influence that has warred upon the marriage relation has been polygamy in Utah. That Is a stereotyp- ed caricature of the marriage relation and has poisoned the whole land. You might as we'll think that you can have an arm in a state of modification and yet the whole body not be sickened as to have any territories or states polyg- amized anc yet the body of the nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear it, good men and women of America, that 30 long ago as 1862 law was passed by congress forbidding polygamy in the territories and in all the places where they had jurisdiction. Thirty seven years have passed along and nine ad- ministrations, yet not until the passage of the Edmunds law in 1882 was any active policy of polygamic suppression adopted. Armed with all the power of government and having an army at their disposal, the first brick had not till then been knocked from that for tress of libertinism. Every new presi- dent in his inaugural tickled that mon- ster with the straw of condemnation, and every congress .stultified itself In proposing some plan that would not work. Polygamy stood in Utah, and in other of the territories more intrench- ed, more brazen, more puissant, more braggart and more internal than at any time in its history. James Buchanan, a much abused man of his day, did more for the extirpation of this will lainy than all the subsequent adminis- trations dared to do up to 1882. MT. Buchanan sent out an army, and, al- though 1t was halted in its work, still he accomplished more than the subse- quent administrations, which did nothing but talk, talk, talk. Even at this late day and with the Edmunds act in force the evil has not been wholly extirpated. Polygamy in Utah, though outlawed, Is still practiced in secret. 1t has warred against the mar riage relation throughout the land. It is impossible to have such an awful sewer of iniquity sending up its mias- ma, which Is waited by .the winds north, south, east and west, without the whole land being affected by it.
 Divorce Easy.
 Another influence that has warred against the marriage relation in this country has been a pustulous litera- ture, with its millions of sheets every week choked with stories of domestic