That there are hundreds and thousands of infelicitous homes in America no one will doubt. If there were only one skeleton in the closet, that might be locked up and abandoned; but in many a home there is a skeleton in the hallway and a skeleton in all the apartments.
"UNHAPPILY MARRIED"
are two words descriptive of many a homestead. It needs no orthodox minister to prove to a badly mated pair that there is a h.e.l.l; they are there now. Sometimes a 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 soul. Sometimes a consecrated man will be united to a fury, as was John Wesley, or united to a vixen, as was John Milton. Sometimes, and generally, both parties are to blame, and Thomas Carlyle is an intolerable scold, and his wife smokes and swears, and Froude, the historian, is mean enough, because of the shekels he gets for the ma.n.u.script,[3] to pull aside the curtain from the lifelong squabble at Craigenputtock and Five, Cheyne Row. Some say that for
THE ALLEVIATION
of all these domestic disorders of which we hear, easy divorce is a good prescription. G.o.d sometimes authorizes divorce as certainly as He authorizes marriage. I have just as much regard for one lawfully divorced as I 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 I think of the influences which have been abroad militating 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 Inst.i.tute, New York, Tremont Temple, Boston, and all over the land. Some of the women who were most prominent in that movement have since been distinguished for great promiscuosity of affection. Popular themes for such occasions were the tyranny of man, the oppression of the marriage relation, women"s rights, and the affinities. Prominent speakers were women with short curls and short dress and very long tongue, everlastingly at war with G.o.d because they were created women; while on the platform 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 twenty years set more devils in the marriage relation than will be exorcised in the next fifty. 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 perplexity, and the criminal and the civil courts tried to disentangle the Iliad of woes, and this one got alimony, and that one got a 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 dissolute public life, and all went to destruction. The mightiest war ever made against the marriage inst.i.tution was that free-love campaign, sometimes under one name and sometimes under another.
Another influence that has warred upon the marriage relation has been
POLYGAMY IN UTAH.
That is a stereotyped caricature of the marriage relation, and has poisoned the whole land. You might as well think that you can have an arm in a state of mortification and yet the whole body not be sickened, as to have those territories polygamized and yet the body of the nation not feel the putrefaction. Hear it, good men and women of America, that so long ago as 1862 a law was pa.s.sed by Congress forbidding polygamy in the territories and in all the places where they had jurisdiction. Twenty-two years have pa.s.sed along and five administrations, armed with all the power of government, and having an army at their disposal, and yet the first brick has not been knocked from that fortress of libertinism.
Every new President in his inaugural has tickled that monster with the straw of condemnation, and every Congress has stultified itself in proposing some plan that would not work. Polygamy stands in Utah and in other of the territories to-day more entrenched, and more brazen, and more puissant, and more braggart, and more infernal, than at any time in its history. James Buchanan, a much-abused man of his day, did more for the extirpation of this villainy than all the subsequent administrations have dared to do. Mr. Buchanan sent out an army, and although it was halted in its work, still he accomplished more than the subsequent administrations, which have done nothing but talk, talk, talk.
I want the people of America to know that for twenty-two years we have had a positive law prohibiting polygamy in the territories. People are crying out for some new law, as though we had not an old law already with which that infamy could be swept into the perdition from which it smoked up. Polygamy in Utah has warred against the marriage relation throughout the land. It is impossible to have such an awful sewer of iniquity sending up its miasma, which is wafted by the winds north, south, east, and west, without the whole land being affected by it.
Another influence that has warred against the marriage relation in this country has been a
PUSTULOUS LITERATURE,
with its millions of sheets every week choked with stories of domestic wrongs, and infidelities, and ma.s.sacres, and outrages, until it is a wonder to me that there are any decencies or any common-sense left on the subject of marriage. One-half of the news-stands of Brooklyn and New York and all our cities reeking with the filth.
"Now," say some, "we admit all these evils, and the only way to clear them out or correct them is by easy divorce." Well, before we yield to that cry, let us find out
HOW EASY IT IS NOW.
I have looked over the laws of all the States, and I find that while in some States it is easier than in others, in every State it is easy.
The State of Illinois through its legislature recites a long list of proper causes for divorce, and then closes up by giving to the courts the right to make a decree of divorce in any case where they deem it expedient. After that you are not surprised at the announcement that in one county of the State of Illinois, in one year, there were 833 divorces. If you want to know how easy it is you have only to look over the records of the States. In Ma.s.sachusetts 600 divorces in one year; in Maine 478 in one year; in Connecticut 401 divorces in one year; in the city of San Francisco 333 divorces in 1880; in New England in one year 2113 divorces, and in twenty years in New England 20,000. Is that not easy enough?
If the same ratio continue, the ratio of multiplied divorce and multiplied causes of divorce, we are not far from the time when our courts will have to set apart whole days for application, and all you will have to prove against a man will be that he left his slippers in the middle of the floor, and all you will have to prove against a woman will be that her husband"s overcoat was b.u.t.tonless. Causes of divorce doubled in a few years, doubled in France, doubled in England, and doubled in the United States. To show how very easy it is I have to tell you that in Western Reserve, Ohio, the proportion of divorces to marriages celebrated is one to eleven; in Rhode Island is one to thirteen; in Vermont is one to fourteen. Is not that easy enough?
I want you to notice that frequency of divorce always goes along with the dissoluteness of society. Rome for five hundred years had not one case of divorce. Those were her days of glory and virtue. Then the reign of vice began, and divorce became epidemic. If you want to know how rapidly the Empire went down, ask Gibbon. Do you know how the Reign of Terror was introduced in France? By 20,000 cases of divorce in one year in Paris.
WHAT WE WANT
in this country and in all lands is that divorce be made more and more and more difficult. Then people before they enter that relation will be persuaded that there will probably be no escape from it except through the door of the sepulchre. Then they will pause on the verge of that relation until they are fully satisfied that it is best, and that it is right, and that it is happiest. Then we shall have no more marriage in fun. Then men and women will not enter the relation with the idea it is only a trial trip, and if they do not like it they can get out at the first landing. Then this whole question will be taken out of the frivolous into the tremendous, and there will be no more joking about the blossoms in a bride"s hair than about the cypress on a coffin.
What we want is that the Congress of the United States at this present session move for the changing the national Const.i.tution so that a law can be pa.s.sed which shall be uniform all over the country, and what shall be right in one State shall be right in all the States, and what is wrong in one State will be wrong in all the States.
HOW IS IT NOW?
If a party in the marriage relation gets dissatisfied it is only necessary to move to another State to achieve liberation from the domestic tie, and divorce is effected so easy that the first one party knows of it is by seeing it in the newspaper that Rev. Dr. Somebody, on April 14, 1884, introduced into a new marriage relation a member of the household who went off on a pleasure excursion to Newport or a business excursion to Chicago. Married at the bride"s house. No cards.
There are States of the Union which practically put a premium upon the disintegration of the marriage relation, while there are other States, like our own New York State, that has the pre-eminent idiocy of making marriage lawful at twelve and fourteen years of age.
The Congress of the United States needs to move at the present session for a change of the National Const.i.tution, and then to appoint a committee--not made up of single gentlemen, but of men of families and their families in Washington--who shall prepare a good, honest, righteous, comprehensive,
UNIFORM LAW
that will control everything from Sandy Hook to Golden Horn. That will put an end to brokerages in marriage. That will send divorce lawyers into a decent business. That will set people agitated for many years on the question of how shall they get away from each other to planning how they can adjust themselves to the more or less unfavorable circ.u.mstances.
More difficult divorce will put an estoppal to a great extent upon marriage as a financial speculation. There are men who go into the relation just as they go into Wall Street to purchase shares. The female to be invited into the partnership of wedlock is utterly unattractive, and in disposition a suppressed Vesuvius. Everybody knows it, but this masculine candidate for matrimonial orders, through the commercial agency or through the county records, finds out how much estate is to be inherited, and he calculates it. He thinks out how long it will be before the old man will die, and whether he can stand the refractory temper until he does die, and then he enters the relation; for he says, "If I cannot stand it, then through the divorce law I"ll back out." That process is going on all the time, and men enter the relation without any moral principle, without any affection, and it is as much a matter of stock speculation as anything that transpired yesterday in Union Pacific, Wabash, and Delaware and Lackawanna.
Now, suppose a man understood, as he ought to understand, that if he goes into that relation there is no possibility of his getting out, or no probability, he would be more slow to put his neck in the yoke.
He should say to himself, "Rather than a Caribbean whirlwind with a whole fleet of shipping in its arms, give me a zephyr off fields of sunshine and gardens of peace."
Rigorous divorce law will also hinder women from
THE FATAL MISTAKE
of marrying men to reform them. If a young man by twenty-five years of age or thirty years of age has the habit of strong drink fixed on him, he is as certainly bound for a drunkard"s grave as that a train starting out from Grand Central Depot at 8 o"clock to-morrow morning is bound for Albany. The train may not reach Albany, for it may be thrown from the track. The young man may not reach a drunkard"s grave, for something may throw him off the iron track of evil habit; but the probability is that the train that starts to-morrow morning at 8 o"clock for Albany will get there and the probability is that the young man who has the habit of strong drink fixed on him before twenty-five or thirty years of age will arrive at a drunkard"s grave.
She knows he drinks, although he tries to hide it by chewing cloves.
Everybody knows he drinks. Parents warn, neighbors and friends warn.
She will marry him, she will reform him.
If she is unsuccessful in the experiment, why then the divorce law will emanc.i.p.ate her, because habitual drunkenness is a cause for divorce in Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, Connecticut, and nearly all the States. So the poor thing goes to the altar of sacrifice. If you will show me the poverty-struck streets in any city I will show you the homes of the women who married men to reform them. In one case out of ten thousand it may be a successful experiment. I never saw the successful experiment. But have a rigorous divorce law, and that woman will say, "If I am affianced to that man it is for life; and if now in the ardor of his young love, and I am the prize to be won, he will not give up his cups, when he has won the prize, surely he will not give up his cups." And so that woman will say to the man, "No, sir, you are already married to the club, and you are married to that evil habit, and so you are married twice, and you are a bigamist. Go!"
A rigorous divorce law will also do much to hinder hasty and
INCONSIDERATE MARRIAGES.
Under the impression that one can be easily released people enter the relation without inquiry and without reflection. Romance and impulse rule the day. Perhaps the only ground for the marriage compact is that she likes his looks and he admires the graceful way she pa.s.ses around the ice cream at the picnic! It is all they know about each other. It is all the preparation for life. A man not able to pay his own board bill, with not a dollar in his possession, will stand at the altar and take the loving hand, and say, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow!" A woman that could not make a loaf of bread to save her life will swear to cherish and obey. A Christian will marry an atheist, and that always makes conjoined wretchedness; for if a man does not believe there is a G.o.d, he is neither to be trusted with a dollar nor with your lifelong happiness.
Having read much about love in a cottage people brought up in ease will go and starve in a hovel. Runaway matches and elopements, 999 out of 1000 of which mean death and h.e.l.l, multiplying on all hands. You see them in every day"s newspapers. Our ministers in this region have no defence such as they have in other cities where the banns must be previously published and an officer of the law must give a certificate that all is right; so clergymen are left defenceless, and unite those who ought never to be united. Perhaps they are too young or perhaps they are standing already in some domestic compact.
By the wreck of ten thousand homes, by the holocaust of ten thousand sacrificed men and women, by the hearthstone of the family which is the corner-stone of the State, and in the name of that G.o.d who hath set up the family inst.i.tution and who hath made the breaking of the marital oath the most appalling of all perjuries, I implore the Congress of the United States to make some righteous, uniform law for all the States and from ocean to ocean, on this subject of marriage and divorce.