Belgium in all respects, the result is that in each there were five legal decrees to 1000 marriages, although in France the decrees were for separation, and in Belgium for either. That is, after living for three-quarters of a century under laws as totally different as the Catholic and Protestant theories, the two regions are found to have a perfectly identical rate. Can it longer be doubted that a return to the policy of separation would not solve our problem?

§ 30. Laws affecting the Expense of Divorce.

The one efficient means of reducing the number of divorces by law is to make them expensive. The evidence demanded will be furnished, but the money may not. The English law illustrates this. Prior to 1858 divorces were granted only by Parliament, the House of Lords sitting as a court. The expense was enormous, probably some thousands of dollars, for two suits at law must be won by the plaintiff before a hearing was given in Parliament. The much-discussed divorce law of 1857 simply created a court to transact the business more rapidly and cheaply. The procedure was substantially the same, the causes for which divorces were granted were unaltered; and the reason that divorces have increased to some hundreds a year, when before only one or two were granted, must be found in the difference of expense. Yet even now, with only one court for England and Wales, the cost of carrying a suit through must be some hundred dollars at least, and in this may be found the fundamental reason for the small number of divorces in that country.

France has pursued the opposite policy. A law was passed in 1851 allowing those unable to pay the expense of a suit for separation, to plead without cost. It resulted in a marked increase in the number of applications.

The obvious objections to having one system of law for the rich and another for the poor, make discussion of this method of restricting divorce unnecessary.

§ 31. The Uniform Law in Switzerland.

Uniform laws on divorce are needed in the United States, but so are uniform laws on bills and notes and various other subjects. The divorce problem would hardly be touched by uniformity. The present differences between the states would continue to exist almost unaffected. As they were not created by law, so they cannot be abolished by law. If the reader be not already persuaded, the example of Switzerland may convince him. That country is remarkably like our own in its divorce rate, but the differences between its cantons are greater than those between our states. Formerly, each canton controlled the subjects of marriage and divorce, but in 1874 the Constitution was revised and the Federal authorities empowered to pass a national marriage and divorce law. Such a law went into effect January 1st, 1876, and a recent volume of Swiss statistics summarizes the results of ten years of the new law. The differences between the cantons have been very slightly affected thereby. The following table,* based on those results, may profitably be compared with table IX., § 20, the basis of the two being the same.

TABLE XI.

Divorce Rate of Swiss Cantons under Uniform National Law for

After ten years of a uniform law, Appenzell, Outer Rhodes, has forty-nine times as much divorce as Unterwalden o. d. W., while with all the divergences of law in this country the differences of rate are much less.

* Compiled from Die Bewegung der Bevölkerung in der Schweiz im Jahre 1885. Beilage I.

32. Legal Restrictions upon Marriage.

Certain students of the divorce problem have advocated restrictions by law upon early or improvident marriage. For example, Prof. Robinson, of Yale University Law School, says:* "No person should be marriageable under the age of 21, and a marriage ceremony celebrated between persons either of whom is under age should be ipso facto void."

Four thousand eight hundred and fifty-five married persons under the age of twenty were living in Massachusetts in 1885. To these must be added a large and indeterminate number of married persons between twenty and twenty-one, in order to ascertain the number of marriages which would be declared void by such a law as is proposed. How large a proportion of these nearly ten thousand people (for in the great majority of instances only one of the two is under twenty-one), would have remained virtuous and continent in the face of a law forbidding marriage? Each reader must judge for himself, but the experience of Bavaria may aid him in forming a conclusion.

In that country the local authorities were empowered to refuse marriage to such as could not give reasonable evidnece of ability to support a family, in short to paupers. The number of marriages decreased rapidly, but parallel with this decrease went a large increase in the number of illegitimate births, until they reached a total of nearly one-fourth the births in the kingdom. Disturbed by this result, the legislature changed the law in 1861, and at last entirely repealed it. The annual number of marriages leaped at once from 38,000 to 59,000, and remained abnormally high for several years, thus proving the number of persons who were glad to marry when the law allowed. Simultaneously with this came a marked decrease in the number of illegitimate births. Similar results have been obtained elsewhere. Therefore legal restrictions upon marriage cannot be deemed a satisfactory method of checking divorce.

*The Diagnostics of Divorce, Journal of Social Science (Am. Ass.), xiv. (1881), p. 136.

§ 33. Summary of Results.

The proposed modes of reducing divorce by law may be grouped as restrictions on marriage, restrictions on divorce, restrictions on remarriage.

Restrictions on marriage reduce the number of marriages, and thus ultimately the number of divorces. By excluding the poorest or lowest classes they may do this, not only in comparison with the population, but even in comparison with the married couples. The attendant evils are so great nevertheless, as to make such restrictions unwise.

Restrictions on remarriage would probably not reduce the number of divorces. The statistical evidence obtainable indicates that divorces are not sought in order to remarry. All the objections to restrictions on marriage weigh with equal force against restrictions of this class. Furthermore, countries which have similar conditions but different laws on remarriage, present rates of divorce or separation practically identical.

Restrictions on divorce exert a minor influence on the rate. The three belts are not explained by differences of law; similarity of conditions and sentiment rides roughshod over diversities of statute in our own adjacent states, while in Switzerland diversities of condition hide any effects of a uniform law. The single efficient means of reducing divorce by law, neglecting as unadvisable and impracticable the South Carolina method, is to make it expensive. This is open to all the objections against restrictions on marriage. It makes one law for the rich and another for the poor.

The conclusion of the whole matter is that law can do little. Agitation for a change of law may educate public opinion. It may even be the most efficient and powerful means of education. Such effects no statistics can measure, and therefore in a paper like this the educative influences of law must be neglected, but the immediate, direct and measurable influence of legislation is subsidiary, unimportant, almost impercep

PART III.

CAUSES AND REMEDY.

$34. Basis and Character of Conclusions.

In so complex a social plenomenon as this, the line of statistical demonstration is short, and its limit soon reached. While following it, however, opinions may gradually develop, which statistics can neither justify nor gainsay, and a few, struck out in the course of the present study, will be appended here. Some are hardly more than hypotheses to be verified, modified or retracted on further study; others, perhaps, may rank as probabilities; but all alike are offered merely as suggestions.

§ 35. Two Conceptions of Marriage Law.

A fundamental antithesis underlies the marriage laws of the Christian world. How far the antithesis is really one of race between Teuton and Celt, it would be hard to decide. Ordinarily it is treated as one of religion between Catholic and Protestant.

The Catholic theory is that marriage law should recognize, embody and hold fast to, a moral or religious ideal, unmodified by consideration of the needs and moral condition of the community to which the law applies. This may be termed the idealistic theory.

The realistic theory of Protestantism lays more stress on the moral standards of the community, and finds greater difficulty in solving the divorce problem with a simple, "Thus saith the Lord."

The different conceptions of marriage law may be illustrated by the different treatment of celibacy in southern and northern