Divorce

DIVORCE. It is the general rule that marriage is contracted for an indefinite length of time or for life, although even in the latter case it may very frequently be dissolved, for some reason or other, during the lifetime of the partners.

Lower Culture Groups.

Among a few uncivilized peoples marriage is said to be indissoluble or divorce unknown, and among many others divorce is said to be rare or marriage as a rule to last for life; but there are also many tribes in which divorce is reported to be of frequent occurrence or marriage of very short duration. Owing to the defective character of the information it is impossible to say anything definite about the comparative prevalence of lifelong unions and of divorce among the lower races in general, or about the duration of marriage at the differ ent grades of economic culture compared with one another. It is interesting, however, to note the universal or almost universal prevalence of lifelong unions among some of the lower hunters and incipient agriculturists, such as the Veddas of Ceylon, the Andamanese, the Orang Mamaq and Orang Akit of Sumatra, and the "pure" tribes of the Malay Peninsula. Somewhat more definite than the information we possess of the actual prevalence of divorce among the simpler peoples are the statements as to the circumstances in which their customs allow it to be practised. Among a large number of tribes the husband is said to be able to dissolve the marriage at will or on the slightest grounds or pre texts, and in the majority of these cases a similar right is granted to the wife. But we are also frequently told that a man must not divorce his wife and a wife not separate from her husband without just or good cause. The most generally recognized ground for divorce is probably adultery on the part of the wife; and among some peoples the wife is said to have a right to divorce an unfaithful husband. A very frequent cause of divorce is barren ness in the wife, while the birth of a child may make marriage indissoluble; and sometimes we are told that the wife can effect divorce if the husband proves impotent. There are a variety of other recognized grounds for divorce more or less frequently found in the savage world. A mats may divorce his wife if she is lazy or neglectful ; if she suffers from a foul or incurable dis ease ; if she becomes too old ; if all her children die ; or, of course, if she deserts him. The wife, again, may dissolve the marriage if the husband neglects or ill-treats her, if he deserts her or if she has a strong repugnance to him. Among some natives of Eastern Central Africa the wife may divorce a husband who fails to sew her clothes. Among the Shans of Burma, should the husband take to drinking or otherwise misbehave, the wife has the right to turn him adrift and to retain all the goods and money of the part nership.

Early China and Japan.

Among the peoples of ancient civ ilization the stability of marriage is not less variable than it is among the lower races. The old penal code of China says that if a man repudiates his wife "without her having broken the matrimonial connection by the crime of adultery or otherwise, and without her having furnished him with any of the seven justifying causes of divorce," he shall in every such case be punished with 8o blows. The seven causes in question are : bar renness, lasciviousness, disregard of the husband's parents, talk ativeness, thievish propensities, envious and suspicious temper and inveterate infirmity. Yet none of these seven causes will justify a divorce if the wife has mourned three years for the husband's parents, if the family has become rich since the mar riage of ter being poor previously, or if the wife has no parents living to receive her back again. In practice, however, the hus band's power of divorce was no doubt greater than it was ac cording to the letter of the law. On the other hand, it does not seem that either law or public opinion justified a wife in deserting her husband or demanding a separation from him. The divorce law of the Japanese Taiho code was substantially the same as that in China, but practically a wife could be divorced at the pleasure of her husband under any slight or flimsy pretext. As in China, the wife had no legal right to demand a divorce from her husband on any ground. This was the case till the year when a law was enacted which for the first time allowed the wife to bring an action of divorce against the husband ; and the new civil code, promulgated in 1896-98, went further in the same direc tion. Prof. Hozumi, in his commentaries on this code, says that it places husband and wife on an equal footing with regard to the right of divorce ; but it does not seem that mere adultery on the part of the husband gives the wife a right to divorce him, al though he can divorce an unfaithful wife. Divorces are very fre quent in Japan, but since the new code came into force their number has rapidly decreased. In 1897 the proportion of divorces to marriages was 34%, in 190o it was 18.5%• Semitic Peoples.—Among Semitic peoples the husband has had, or still has, the legal right of repudiating his wife at will. In Babylonia, according to the Laws of Hammurabi, however, the wife and even a concubine had certain pecuniary guarantees against arbitrary divorce, and she might also herself in certain circumstances claim a divorce, or at least separation. The right of the husband to repudiate his wife at his pleasure is the central thought in the system of Jewish divorce law; and the Rabbis neither did nor could set it aside, although they gradually tem pered its severity by numerous restrictive measures. It ceased to exist in practice, and was at last, in the earlier part of the i ith century, formally abolished, whereas the husband retained the right to divorce his wife if a good cause could be shown. On the other hand, the wife has no right to divorce her husband. But the Mishnah allowed her to sue for divorce, and if the court decided that she was entitled to be divorced the husband was forced to give her a bill of divorce, although he was supposed to give it of his own free will and accord. At Jewish law the wife may demand a bill of divorce from her husband if he repeatedly ill-treats her, if he is guilty of notorious dissoluteness of morals, if he wastes his property and refuses to support her, if he suffers from some loathsome chronic disease contracted after marriage, if he is physically impotent, and for a few other reasons. For divorce by mutual agreement no specific causes are required. As the ancient Hebrews, so the pagan Arabs permitted the husband to repudiate his wife whenever he pleased, and subsequently this un limited customary right was crystallized in Mohammed's law. And at Mohammedan, as at Jewish law, the wife can never divorce her husband, although she may take steps leading to the dissolu tion of her marriage. When she desires a divorce, she may obtain from him a release from the marriage contract by giving up either her settled dower or some other property ; and when the husband is guilty of conduct that makes the matrimonial life intolerable to the wife or when he fails to fulfil his engagements, she has the right of preferring a complaint before the judge and demanding a divorce by authority of justice. But the facility with which Mohammedan women can effect a dissolution of their marriage is influenced by local custom. So also the frequency of divorce dif fers considerably in different parts of the Mohammedan world. In some parts it is practised to an extent that is almost without a parallel ; whereas among the Mohammedans of India the husband seldom exercises his right to divorce his wife without any special reason. This may be due to Hindu influence.

Hindu Practice.

With orthodox Hindus marriage is a relig ious sacrament which cannot be revoked. A woman convicted of adultery may be deprived of her status and turned out of her caste, but even in this case divorce in the ordinary sense is an impossibility. The law, however, was not always equally strin gent. At present the orthodox Hindu law of divorce is more or less disregarded by certain low castes in the north of India and by many castes, both high and low, in the south, among whom usage has superseded texts; agreeably to such usage the granting of a divorce, or the recognition of a divorce as one properly made, is the duty of the caste.

Early Greeks and Romans.

Among the Greeks and Romans in the early days, as among the Hindus, marriage evidently was a union of great stability, although in later times, contrary to what was the case among the Aryans of India, it became extremely easy and frequent. Among the Greeks of the Homeric age divorce seems to have been almost unknown, but afterwards it became an everyday event in Greece. According to Attic law the husband could repudiate his wife whenever he liked and without stating any motives, while the wife could demand a divorce by appealing to the Archon and stating the motives for her demand. A Roman marriage was perhaps at no time indissoluble, but the specifically patrician kind of marriage, by con f arreatio, was at any rate very nearly so. The other forms of marriage, not being of the same mystical and sacramental character, could be dissolved without difficulty. The husband's legal authority in regard to the dissolu tion of a marriage with manus was absolute, whereas in the old law a wife in mane was as little a free party to the act of divorce as a child was a free party to that of emancipation. Yet in prac tice the husband's right was no doubt more or less checked by public opinion and, as it seems, even by the Censors ; it was said that for 50o years no one took advantage of the liberty of divorce. In regard to a "free" marriage, which implied that the wife did not fall under the manus of her husband, the rule of divorce was very different : the dissolution of such a marriage could be brought about either by mutual agreement between both parties or by the will of one party only. The rules of divorce that were recognized in the case of a free marriage were after wards practically extended to marriages with manus; and in the end marriages with mama fell into disuse altogether. Towards the close of the Republican era and during the Empire divorce was very frequent among the upper classes; almost all the well known ladies of the Ciceronian age were divorced at least once. Celtic and Teutonic Peoples.—In the Celtic law-books, vari ous rules relate to divorce, from which we may draw the con clusion that separation of married couples was by no means an uncommon occurrence. In ancient Ireland it might take place either by mutual consent or as the outcome of legal proceedings; and with reference to the latter kind of separation, one of the Breton law tracts specifies seven different causes for which a married woman may separate from cohabitation without losing her dowry. According to the old customary law of the Teutonic peoples a marriage could be dissolved by agreement between the husband and the woman's kin; and the husband was entitled to repudiate his wife if she was sterile or guilty of conjugal infi delity and perhaps for some other offences. On the other hand the wife had originally no right to dissolve the marriage.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-L. T.

Hobhouse, G. C. Wheeler, and M. Ginsberg, Bibliography.-L. T. Hobhouse, G. C. Wheeler, and M. Ginsberg, The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples (1915) ; Nobushige Hozumi, Lectures on the New Japanese Civil Code (1912) ; M. Mielziner, The Jewish Law of Marriage and Divorce in Ancient and Modern Times (1884) ; D. W. Amram, The Jewish Law of Divorce according to Bible and Talmud (1897) ; Syed Ameer Ali, Mahommedan Law compiled from Authorities in the Original Arabic, vol. ii. 0908) ; E. J. Trevelyan, Hindu Family Law as administered in British India 0908) ; J. D. Mayne, A Treatise on Hindu Law and Usage (1914) ; E. Hruza, Beitrage zur Geschichte des griechischen und riimischen Familienrechtes, vol. ii. (1894) ; L. Beauchet, Histoire du droit prive de la Republique Athenienne, vol. i. (1897) ; O. Karlowa, ROmische Rechtsgeschichte, vol. ii. (19oi) ; W. A. Hunter, A Systematical and Historical Exposition of Roman Law (19o3) ; R. Sohm, The Institutes, trans. by J. C. Ledlie (19o7) ; Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of the English Law before the Time of Edward I., vol. ii. (1898) ; H. Brunner, Grundziige der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (1913) ; E. Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, vol. iii. (1921, bibl.). (E. W.) Divorce (legal) is the dissolution, in whole or in part, of the tie of marriage. In the main the practice in the legal systems of the civilized world is derived from the Roman law and the teachings and canons of the Christian religion. In countries in which the Roman Catholic creed is supreme, subject to certain exceptions indicated later, complete divorce a vinculo matrimonii (the bond of marriage) is not legally possible, though the same result may be achieved in rare cases by the ecclesiastical courts declaring that the marriage was a nullity owing to duress or other causes. The partial decree of divorce a mensa et thoro (from bed and board), which is still the practice in the Irish Free State and other Roman Catholic countries, and in English law is represented by judicial separation, leaves the parties still married, neither being able to remarry during the lifetime of the other. In the end it was due to the spread of Christianity and the authority of the Church of Rome that marriage came to be regarded not merely as a civil contract but as a sacred bond not lightly to be severed by the spouses or by the State.

How far the Founder of the Christian religion laid down any moral law in regard to divorce has always been a matter of controversy, owing to the form of His declaration that has come down to us, and the different conceptions then existing of the connubial relations, monogamy, so far as a husband was con cerned, not having been established. The rule of the Mosaic law was expressed as follows: "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife" (Deut. xxiv. 1-2).

The Pharisees asked Jesus: "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" Jesus replied : "What God hath joined together let no man put asunder," and also said: "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so." Then came the declaration which is the main basis of the canon law : "Who soever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, com mitteth adultery; and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery" (Matt. xix.). Practically the same formula was used in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. v. 32) and also in Luke xvi. 18, and Mark x. 2.

The Roman Church has always interpreted the exception of fornication as applying only to incontinence by the wife before marriage discovered by the husband after marriage, and has treated it, not as just cause for dissolution of marriage, but as invalidating the marriage itself. It will be observed also that right down to the present century incontinence has been regarded as a matrimonial offence only if committed by the wife. In most coun tries where the civil law allows complete divorce husband and wife are now on an equal footing as to the grounds of divorce. In England the jurisdiction of the divorce court extends to nullity (q.v.) jactitation and restitution of conjugal rights (see below) and legitimation (q.v.).

The Roman Law of Divorce.

The history of divorce took its earliest colour from that conception of the patria potestas, or the power of the head of the family over its members, which enters so deeply into the jurisprudence of ancient Rome. The wife was transferred at marriage to the authority of her husband, in manus, and consequently became so far subject to him that he could, at his will, renounce his rule over her, and terminate his companionship, subject at least to an adjustment of the pecuniary rights which were disturbed by such action. As early, however, as the time of Romulus, it is said that the State asserted its interest in the permanence of marriage by forbidding the repudiation of wives unless they were guilty of adultery or of drinking wine, on pain of forfeiture of the whole of an offender's property, one-half of which went to the wife, the other to Ceres. But the law of the XII. Tables, in turn, allowed freedom of divorce. At last the lex Julia de adulteriis, while recognizing a power of divorce both in the husband and in the wife, imposed on it, in the public inter est, serious restrictions and consequences. It required a written bill of divorce (libellus repudii) to be given in the presence of seven witnesses, who must be Roman citizens of age, and the divorce must be publicly registered. In this way a wife could divorce a lunatic husband, or the paterfamilias of a lunatic wife could divorce her from her husband. The lex Julia was f ollowed by a series of acts of legislation extending and modifying its provisions.

In A.D. 449 the law of divorce was rendered simpler and more facile by Theodosius and Valentinian.

The modification in the civil law of Rome effected by Justinian under the joint influence of the previous law of Rome and that of Christianity was remarkable. Divorce by mutual consent, hitherto, as we have seen, absolutely free, was prohibited except in three cases: (I) when the husband was impotent; (2) when either husband or wife desired to enter a monastery; and (3) when either of them was in captivity for a certain length of time. At a later period Justinian, under the influence of the Christian idea of marriage, placed a further restriction or even prohibition on divorce by consent by enacting that spouses dissolving a marriage by mutual consent should forfeit all their property, and be con fined for life in a monastery, which was to receive one-third of the forfeited property, the remaining two-thirds going to the children of the marriage. The prohibitions of Justinian on divorce by consent were repealed by Justin, his successor.

Justinian further re-enacted, with some modifications, the power of divorce by a husband or wife against the will of the other. Divorce by a wife was allowed in five cases: (I) the husband being party or privy to conspiracy against the State; (2) attempting his wife's life, or failing to disclose to her plots against it ; (3) attempting to induce his wife to commit adultery; (4) accusing his wife falsely of adultery; (5) taking a woman to live in the house with his wife, or, after warning, frequenting a house in the same town with any woman other than his wife. A husband was allowed to divorce his wife for any one of seven reasons: (I) failure to disclose to her husband plots against the State; (2) adultery; (3) attempting or failing to disclose plots against her husband's life ; (4) frequenting dinners or balls with other men against her husband's wishes; (5) remaining from home against the wishes of her husband except with her parents; (6) going to the circus, theatre or amphitheatre without the knowledge of, or contrary to the prohibition of, her husband; (7) procuring abortion.

The canon law of Rome was based on two main principles: (I) That there could be no divorce a vinculo matrimonii, but only a mensa et thoro, i.e., separation. (2) That no divorce could be had at the will of the parties, but only by the sentence of an ecclesiastical court. The papal canon law allowed a divorce a mensa et thoro for six causes : (I) adultery or unnatural offences ; (2) impotency; (3) cruelty; (4) infidelity ; (5) entering into religion; (6) consanguinity. The church, however, always assumed to itself the right to grant licences for an absolute divorce.

Divorce in England.

In England the law of divorce, being based on the canon law of Rome, was practically unchanged until the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857. Divorce a mensa et thoro could only be granted by the ecclesiastical courts, which were invested with this jurisdiction until 18S7. These were the courts of the various dioceses, including that of the archbishop of Can terbury, the court of arches, and that of the archbishop of York, the consistory court of York. An appeal lay to special delegates appointed by the Crown ad hoc, until in 1836 the judicial com mittee of the privy council was given this appellate jurisdiction. Adultery and cruelty were the main grounds for this sort of divorce allowed by the ecclesiastical courts, and the principles acted upon by those courts are still those imposed by statute upon the present courts in regard to judicial separation, except that desertion was added by the 1857 act as a ground for a decree. As regards adultery a mere confession by a spouse of her guilt was not re garded by the canon law as a safe ground for a decree, if uncor roborated, and in the present practice in cases for dissolution of marriage a confession has to be supported by some sort of cir cumstantial evidence in the English court. In general the principle was accepted, and is still the rule, that if an illicit affection is proved and there are opportunities by association to gratify a guilty passion, then a prima facie case is made out, justifying a decree if there is no defence.

As regards cruelty the definition accepted by the ecclesiastical courts as that of the canon law is the same now. It was accepted by the House of Lords in Russell v. Russell (1897, A.C. 395), in which "legal cruelty" was defined as conduct of such a character as to have caused danger to life, limb or health (bodily or mental), or as to give rise to a reasonable apprehension of such danger. Those who wish to read the classic exposition on the subject of legal cruelty should read the judgment of Lord Stowell, one of the greatest English masters of the civil and canon law, in the case of Evans v. Evans (179o, I. Hagg. Con., 35). Since then there have been innumerable decisions all showing that the court is not bound by any cast-iron rule in its interpretation of what con stitutes cruelty within the range of this definition.

Apart from a bare denial the canon law allowed three grounds of answer : (1) Compensatio criminis, or the committal by the spouse bringing the charge of the same matrimonial offence, in which case the petitioner could be refused relief ; (2) Condona tion: the complete forgiveness of the offending spouse by the other with full knowledge of the facts. Resumption by a husband of marital relations with his wife when he has full knowledge of her adultery is conclusive proof of condonation under the English divorce law, but resumption by a wife of marital relations with a guilty husband, with full knowledge, is not necessarily conclu sive proof of condonation on her part. A matrimonial offence even of a different kind revives the former one, even if condoned. Condonation was a bar to relief, and still is. (3) Connivance: this is also a bar to relief, and always was, as it was held that a man could not avail himself of a charge if he did not appear with clean hands. The presumption of law is against connivance, and the intention must be clearly shown for the court to refuse the petitioner relief. The petitioner need not be the active agent in the adultery of the other spouse. He may be guilty of connivance merely by neglect or indifference, though in that case the modern plea under the English statute law would probably come under the head of conduct conducing, which is in some cases hardly dis tinguishable from connivance, and may equally be held a bar to relief.

Collusion between the parties for the purpose of presenting a false case to the court was also held by the ecclesiastical courts to be a bar to relief, whether it was an agreement to give the appearance of having committed adultery when none had occurred or merely to withhold material facts from the knowledge of the court. In the present law of divorce in England collusion may be held to exist not only when a false case is presented, but also where there is a good case. Thus in a recent suit where the hus band made provision for the future of his wife pending divorce proceedings Lord Merrivale, president, though granting a decree, uttered a warning against any transaction pending divorce pro ceedings which raised a suspicion of collusion. In a more recent case a divorce petition was dismissed in the first place owing to an agreement by which the petitioner received a certain sum in advance in respect of damages from the co-respondent, and his second petition on a later charge was dismissed because by taking such sum he had connived at the further adultery of his wife.

The ecclesiastical courts provided for the pecuniary rights of the wife by granting to her alimony during the progress of a suit, and a proper allowance after its termination in cases in which she was successful. Such payments were dependent on the pecuniary means, or faculties, as they were termed, of the husband, and were subject to subsequent increase or diminution in proper cases. But the ecclesiastical courts did not deal with the custody of the children of the marriage, it being probably considered that that matter could be determined by the common law rights of the father, or by the intervention of the court of chancery.

As regards suits for divorce any substantial delay might lead to the imputation of acquiescence or even condonation. To that extent, at least, the maxim vigilantibus non dormientibus Jura subveniunt applied. Desertion by either party to a marriage, ex cept as giving rise to a suit for restitution, was not treated as an offence by canon law in England. It formed no ground for a suit for divorce, and constituted no answer to such a suit by way of recrimination. It might indeed deprive a husband of his remedy if it amounted to connivance, or perhaps even if it amounted only to culpable neglect.

Conjugal rights are those rights which a husband and wife have to each other's society. When either party continues to refuse to render these rights to the other, they may he enforced by a suit for the restitution of conjugal rights. Until the grounds of complete divorce were equalized in 1923, the procedure of resti tution was mainly used by wives to shorten the statutory period of desertion, non-compliance by the husband with a decree being followed by the wife's petition for divorce on the dual grounds of adultery and desertion.

Jactitation of marriage is a persistent claim by a person of a marriage falsely alleged to have taken place between himself or herself and the complainant, who petitions for a decree enjoining perpetual silence on the person alleging such marriage in regard to it. In these days such a remedy is rarely required, though it was not an uncommon proceeding when "Fleet" and other irregular marriages were frequent and rights to property were involved. The procedure might still be useful for obtaining a declaration as to the validity of a disputed marriage in cases where the procedure under the Legitimacy Declaration Act 1858, now re enacted in the Supreme Court of Judicature (Consolidation) Act 1925, is not convenient or applicable. The most historic case in which jactitation arose was the duchess of Kingston's case in 1776, reported in the State Trials. The last reported case was in 1922 when the petition was dismissed.

Criminal Conversation.

Up to the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, a husband could bring an action for damages against his wife's paramour (action for criminal conversation). It was a common law suit, and the damages were estimated accord ing to the loss he was supposed to have suffered by the seduc tion and loss of his wife. This procedure was abolished by the 1857 act and engrafted upon the new procedure in divorce, by way of a separate prayer for damages against the co-respondent in a petition for dissolution. In theory the damages are assessed on the same principle, though in practice a jury often fixes the amount at a figure calculated to inflict a severe punishment on the co-respondent. If a petitioner for divorce or the respondent (husband) die before the petition comes to trial, the petition is "abated," i.e., abandoned, the matrimonial tie having been dis solved by death. But if it is the respondent wife who dies the husband's prayer for damages against the co-respondent may be pursued to trial.

It was for some time supposed after the Reformation that the sentences of divorce pronounced by the ecclesiastical courts ac quired the effect of allowing remarriage, and such divorces were in some cases granted. In Lord Northampton's case in the reign of Edward VI. the delegates pronounced in favour of a second marriage after a divorce a naensa et thoro. It was, however, finally decided in Foljarbe's case, in the 44th year of Elizabeth, that a marriage validly contracted could not be dissolved for any cause. In 1669 a private act of parliament was granted in the case of Lord de Roos, and this was followed by another in the case of the duke of Norfolk in 1692. Such acts were, however, rare until the accession of the House of Hanover, only five acts passing before that period. The jurisdiction thus assumed by parliament to grant absolute divorces was exercised with great care.

The Act of 1857.

The Matrimonial Causes Act (which came into operation on Jan. i, 1858) embodied two main principles: 1. The constitution of a lay court for the administration of all matters connected with divorce. 2. The transfer to that court, with as little change as possible, of the powers exercised in matri monial matters by (a) the House of Lords, (b) the ecclesiastical courts, (c) the courts of common law.

The functions of the new court, termed "The Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes," were practically entrusted to the judge of the court of probate (which was also established in termed the "Judge Ordinary," who thus in matters of probate and divorce became the representative of the former ecclesiastical jurisdiction. The parties to a suit obtained the right of trial by jury of all disputed questions of fact ; and the rules of evidence of the common law courts were made to apply. An appeal to the full court was given in all matters, which the judge ordinary was enabled to hear sitting alone.

1. To this court were transferred all the powers of the ecclesi astical courts with regard to suits for divorce a n ensa et thoro, to which the name was given of suits for "judicial separation," nullity, restitution of conjugal rights, and jactitation of marriage, and in all such proceedings it was expressly enacted (s. 22 [now comprised in ss. 32 and io3 of the Judicature (Consolidation) Act 1925]) that the court should act on principles and rules as nearly as possible conformable to the principles and rules of the ecclesiastical courts. Judicial separation could be obtained by either husband or wife for adultery, or cruelty, or desertion con tinued for two or more years.

2. There were also transferred to the court powers equivalent to those exercised by the legislature in granting absolute divorce. The husband could obtain a divorce for adultery, the wife could obtain a divorce for adultery coupled with cruelty or desertion for two or more years, and also for incestuous or bigamous adultery, or rape, or unnatural offences. As has been explained above, connivance, condonation or collusion continued to be absolute bars to divorce, and the court was given discretion to refuse relief where the petitioners had been guilty of adultery or conduct conducing to the respondent's adultery or had delayed unreasonably in prosecuting his suit.

This act assigned a new force to desertion. The ecclesiastical law regarded it only as suggestive of connivance or culpable neglect. But the act of 1857 made it (I) a ground of judicial separation if continued for two years, (2) a ground in part of dissolution of marriage if continued for the same period, (3) a bar, in the discretion of the court, to a petition for dissolution, though it was not made a bar to a suit for judicial separation.

S. 32 provided, in case of dissolution, for maintenance of the wife by the husband on principles similar to those recognized by the ecclesiastical courts, and s. 45 for the settlement of the property of a guilty wife on her husband or children. By later acts of 18S9 and 1878 provision was made for altering settlements made in view or in consequence of a marriage. The act (s. 35) provides also in all divorce proceedings, and also in those of nullity, for provision for the custody, maintenance and education of children by the court. It was made obligatory to join an alleged adulterer in the suit, and damages (s. 33) might be claimed against him, and he might be ordered to pay the cost of the proceedings (s. 34).

The act of 1857 also provided (s. 21) that a wife deserted by her husband might apply to a magistrate in petty sessions and obtain an order which had the effect of protecting her earnings and property, and during the currency of such order of protec tion a wife was to be in the same position as if she had obtained an order for judicial separation. The effect of this section appears to have been small; but the Summary Jurisdiction (Married Women) Act 1895, now reinforced by the Summary Jurisdiction (Separation and Maintenance) Act 1925, has afforded a cheap and speedy remedy to all classes. The act of 1857 made no pro vision as to the name to be borne by a wife after a divorce; and this omission led to litigation in the case of a peer's wife, in Cowley v. Cowley (1901, A.C. 450), in which Lady Cowley was allowed to retain her status.

By the Act of 186o a very important change was made, having for its object a practical mode of preventing divorces in cases of connivance and collusion or of misconduct of the petitioner. It was provided that a claim of dissolution (a provision afterwards extended to decrees of nullity) should in the first instance be a decree nisi, which should not be made absolute until the expiration of a period then fixed at not less than three, but by subsequent legislation enlarged to not less than six, months. During the inter val which elapsed between the decree nisi and such decree being made absolute, power was given to any person to intervene in the suit and show cause why the decree should not be made absolute, by reason of the same having been obtained by collusion, or by reason of material facts not having been brought before the court. At any time before the decree was made absolute, the queen's proctor, if led to suspect that the parties were acting in collusion for the purpose of obtaining a divorce contrary to the justice of the case, might under the direction of the attorney general intervene and allege such case of collusion. It was estab lished in Sloggett v. Sloggett (1928, 44 The Times L.R., 394) that it was open to the king's proctor by direction of the court to intervene during the progress of a divorce suit before decree nisi and to call new evidence, not only when collusion is in question but in regard to other matters.

By an act of 1866 the court was given power to order a guilty husband to make provision for the maintenance of his former wife on the marriage being dissolved, and by an act of i9o7 the court was enabled in suitable cases to order the husband to make similar provision when he was the petitioner and she the guilty spouse. From time to time the law of evidence in the divorce court was varied by statute until in 1869 it was enacted that no witness in any proceeding should be asked or be bound to answer any question tending to show that he or she had been guilty of adultery, unless in the same proceeding such witness had given evidence in disproof of alleged adultery.

The Law of Domicile.

No petition for dissolution of mar riage can be granted in England unless the husband is domiciled in this country at the commencement of the proceedings. If such domicile is established the court may adjudicate even if the parties are not British subjects, or the marriage was contracted abroad, or at the time of the marriage the parties were not domiciled in England. The wife's domicile is that of her husband. It has been suggested by a series of judicial obiter dicta that if a man desert' his wife and acquire a domicile abroad the wife may still petition for dissolution of her marriage in the divorce court, but the point has not yet been definitely decided. It has been held, however, that if a woman domiciled in England marry a foreigner domiciled abroad, and the latter obtains under the law of his domicil a decree of nullity not recognized by English law, she may petition for divorce despite the foreign decree. As regards judicial separa tion the test of jurisdiction is either residence of both parties, irrespective of domicil or nationality, in England at the time of the institution of the suit, or where the parties are domiciled in England. The English court does not recognize a divorce pur porting to be made by a foreign tribunal with reference to persons domiciled in England. This principle was maintained in the prosecution of Earl Russell on a technical charge of bigamy before the House of Lords in 19o1, it being held that if a divorce were refused a man in England he would not be relieved from the guilt of re-marrying by securing an American divorce.

Summary Proceedings for Separation.

The legislature has sought to extend the relief afforded by the courts in matrimonial causes by a procedure fairly to be considered within the reach of all classes. In 1895 an act was passed which re-enacted in an improved form the provisions of an act of 1878 of similar effect. By the act of 1895 power was given to a married woman whose husband (1) has been guilty of an aggravated assault upon her within the Offences against the Person Act 1861, or (2) convicted on indictment of an assault on her and sentenced to pay a fine of more than £5 or to imprisonment for more than two months, or (3) shall have deserted her, or (4) been guilty of persistent cruelty to her or wilful neglect to maintain her or her infant children, and by such cruelty or neglect shall have caused her to leave and live apart from him, to apply to a court of summary jurisdiction and to obtain an order containing all or any of the following provisions :—(1) that the applicant be not forced to cohabit with her husband, (2) that the applicant have the custody of any children under 16 years of age, (3) that the husband pay to her an allowance not exceeding L2 a week. (The words in italics have been repealed by the Separation and Maintenance Act 1925, with the result that a wife may now apply to the magistrates notwithstanding that she has not left her home owing to her husband's neglect and cruelty.) The act provides that no married woman guilty of adultery should be granted relief, but with the very important proviso, altering as it does the rule of the common law, that the husband has not conduced or connived ' at, or by wilful neglect or misconduct conduced to, such adultery.

Recent Developments.

The above is a summary of the law of divorce up to 191o. Since then there have been developments, statutory and otherwise, which may be classified as follows : (1) Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 ; (2) Poor Persons Rules of liti gation; Divorce on Assize; (3) The Decision in Russell v. Russell, (4) Extended exercise of the court's discretion; (5) Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of Reports) Act 1926.

The royal commission on divorce and matrimonial causes, of ter sitting for three years, completed its monumental labours in Nov. 1912, and by a majority report recommended important changes in the substantive law of divorce. The more important recom mendations of the majority report were as follows: (a) Hearing of divorce locally by commissioners of the High Court. (b) Powers of magistrates to make orders having the permanent effect of a decree of judicial separation to be abolished, and a simple process in the High Court with that object to be made available; husbands to be entitled to separate orders on the grounds of cruelty, habitual drunkenness, and wilful desertion, equally with wives. (c) Amendment of law so as to place the two sexes on an equal footing as regards the grounds of divorce. (d) New grounds for divorce: (i.) desertion for three years; (ii.) cruelty; (iii.) incurable insanity after five years' confinement ; (iv.) habitual drunkenness found incurable after three years from first order of separation; (v.) imprisonment under commuted death sentence.

(e) Habitual drunkenness as a ground for judicial separation.

(f) Provision for overcoming difficulties of jurisdiction as to domicil and residence. (g) (i.) Unsoundness of mind, actual or incipient, at the time of the marriage, if unknown to the peti tioner, and (ii.) if a spouse is suffering from a venereal disease unknown to the other, or the wife is pregnant by another man, both at the time of the marriage, to be grounds for nullity. (g) Provision for proceedings in forma pauperis. (h) No reports of divorce suits until a case is finished, and divorce judges to forbid or limit reports at their discretion.

In their minority report Dr. Lang (archbishop of York), Sir William Anson, and Sir Lewis Dibdin confined their recommenda tions to placing the sexes on the same basis as to grounds of divorce, and to accepting the above recommendations as to the ground for nullity, plus that of wilful refusal to consummate the marriage.

By the Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 (sometimes called the Entwhistle Act from the name of its chief sponsor), it was pro vided that since July 18, 1923, any act of adultery by a husband would entitle his wife to a divorce. This act was repealed but re-embodied in the Judicature (Consolidation) Act 1925. Thus the royal commission's proposal in (c) above was carried into effect, and an immense change made in the law of divorce, in keeping with the spirit of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 (q.v.) but in contradistinction to the principle which actuated the divorce statutes of the 19th century. Thus a woman may now divorce her husband for a single act of infidelity. As a consequence of the alteration in the law the number of wives' petitions has in creased in a marked degree. Moreover the procedure of restitu tion of conjugal rights, mostly utilized up to 1923 for the purpose of shortening the statutory period of two years for desertion, has become extremely rare.

By the Administration of Justice Act 192o, provision was made for the local hearing of undefended divorce suits on assize, and of defended Poor Persons' divorce suits, if this venue was suitable. In the last year for which statistics are available the number of proceedings commenced in matrimonial causes under the Poor Persons' Rules was 2,15o of which the majority were tried on circuit. This procedure, coupled with the Poor Persons' system, has brought divorce within the range of people whose small means formerly discouraged this resort to the court, and to this extent the recommendations of the divorce commission (a) and (g) have been followed.

By the majority of three law lords to two the House of Lords in Russell v. Russell (1924, A.C. 687) effected a retrograde move ment in the law of evidence by denying to spouses the right of stating on oath anything as to the possibility of marital access, if such evidence would tend to bastardize a child. The judge of first instance and three lords justices of appeal had admitted the evi dence in question, and the majority decision reversed the accus tomed practice of the divorce court. The decision has involved undue hardship on poor litigants, but subsequent judgments have reduced its effect to the lowest possible range. If this had been the law before, hundreds of War divorce suits depending on the evidence of the husbands' simpliciter as to non-access, in cases where their wives had given birth to children, would have been abortive, owing to the difficulties of securing independent evi dence.

Notably since the War, the attitude of the court has changed in several important respects in the direction of greater humanity. Lord Merrivale in his judgment in Wilson v. Wilson (192o, P. 2o) showed that in exercising his discretion in favour of a spouse who had himself been guilty of adultery, such action was not incon sistent with the interests of morality at large. The old rule that a guilty mother was not entitled to access to her children was over come by the decision of the court of appeal in B. v. B. P. 174). On the other hand one result of equalizing the grounds of divorce was the marked increase in the number of wives' suits in which the charge was based on a solitary incident at a hotel. In March 1928 Lord Merrivale called a halt to this kind of petition by declaring that he would not grant decrees in cases where the real facts seemed to be cloaked by an artificial procedure.

By the Judicial Proceedings (Regulation of Reports) Act 1926, the reporting of matrimonial causes by newspapers was limited to the names, address and occupations of the parties and witnesses, legal submissions, summings-up and judgments, and verdicts of juries. Thus the recommendation of the divorce commission, (h) above, has been dealt with in more drastic fashion than was pro posed.

The Matrimonial Causes Act, 1937.

This act was promoted by a private member of parliament, Mr. A. P. Herbert, and, after interesting discussions in both houses of parliament, was finally passed in July 1937 to take effect from Jan. 1, 1938. It was largely based upon the recommendations of the royal commission published in 1912. To adultery as grounds for divorce were added desertion for three years, cruelty, and unsoundness of mind re garded, af ter five years' duration, as incurable. No divorce pro ceedings could be initiated until three years after the date of marriage; but the courts were given power to reduce this period in cases of exceptional hardship or depravity. A feature of the Act is that it lays no compulsion whatever upon the Church in the matter of re-marriage of divorced persons, leaving the Church free to recognize or not in practice the law of the land.

Divorce in Other Countries.

So far as matrimonial laws are concerned Scotland, Ireland and the British dominions overseas are just as independent of the Engish law as foreign countries.

In Scotland marriages may be judicially dissolved for two causes, adultery and wilful desertion. Condonation is a bar to re lief as in England, and so are connivance or conduct conducing, pleaded in defence as lenocinium. If the petitioning spouse has been guilty of adultery it is no bar to a divorce, though it may be set up by the accused spouse by way of counteraction. Delay in prosecuting the suit has to be taken into account by the court, but is rarely a bar to relief. Collusion is also guarded against, the lord advocate being equipped with much the same powers as the king's proctor in England. As regards an action for dissolution on the ground of desertion, the petitioner must prove that the desertion has been wilful from the beginning, and has continued for four years. In such a case it is a good answer that the petitioner has been guilty of adultery. Actions for judicial separation may be raised for adultery or cruelty, and since 1908 the sheriff has had jurisdiction in judicial separation.

In Ireland there is no absolute divorce, but the courts may grant divorce a mensa et thoro, and a petitioner may secure a complete dissolution by act of parliament. Both Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State have had freedom to legislate in this matter since 1922, but have made no statutory change.

In Canada though divorce is a matter exclusively within the con trol of the Dominion parliament that body has not seen fit to pass any such act, with the result that there is no complete divorce in the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Sas katchewan, but as the other four provinces, British Columbia, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, each had jurisdiction in divorce before the federating act of 1867 was passed, they still retain this jurisdiction. The Dominion parlia ment can pass special acts of divorce in individual cases, as was done in England prior to the act of 1857. There is no absolute divorce in Newfoundland.

In the Commonwealth of Australia the grounds of complete divorce vary according to the State, but, generally, they are wider than in England, including conduct which would only justify a judicial separation in England.

In New Zealand the grounds of absolute divorce are (I) adul tery; (2) wilful desertion for five years; (3) habitual drunkenness for four years coupled with cruelty or desertion by the husband and neglect of household duties by the wife; (4) commuted life sentence or sentence of seven years, penal servitude; (5) incurable lunacy for at least ten years.

In the Union of South Africa the Roman-Dutch Law is in operation for the most part, the grounds of divorce being (I) adultery or unnatural offences; (2) malicious desertion; (3) lifelong imprisonment.

As regards European countries there is no complete divorce where the Church of Rome still preserves its ancient powers and influence.

In Italy a husband may secure a divorce a mensa et thoro on the ground of his wife's adultery, and the wife is entitled to the same decree if her husband keeps a concubine in such a way as to constitute a grave indignity to his wife, or if he voluntarily deserts her or fails to make a home for her, or is guilty of violence, threats or cruelty endangering her safety or health, or if he is sentenced for a grave crime. The Italian courts do not recognize foreign divorce decrees relating to Italian subjects. In Spain and Portugal the law is practically the same as in Italy.

In Germany complete divorce is allowed on the grounds of adul tery, an attempt by one spouse to kill the other, desertion for a year, bigamy, incest and certain gross crimes, insanity for three years, dishonest or immoral conduct. If the innocent spouse prose cutes, the spouse guilty of adultery may be sent to prison for not more than six months. A husband may forbid his divorced wife to use his name. Judicial separation is granted on the same grounds, but either party may later apply to have the decree made into a complete divorce.

In Austria the grounds for complete divorce are adultery, con viction for a crime for which the penalty could be five years' im prisonment, malicious desertion, cruelty or conduct endangering life or health and invincible aversion. A judicial separation is allowed in the same grounds, and also by mutual consent. In Hungary the law is very similar.

Dissolution of marriage by mutual consent is allowed in several European countries. Thus in Belgium this course is permitted, subject to the approval of the court. The other grounds of com plete divorce in Belgium are the adultery of the wife, the adultery of the husband only if he has brought a concubine to the home, cruelty and conviction for infamous offence. The law on separa tion was modified by a law of March 20, 1927. There has to be an interval of ten months before remarriage. In Switzerland also the marriage may be dissolved by mutual consent on grounds deemed sufficient by the court ; specific grounds are cruelty or dishonourable treatment, wilful desertion for three years, incurable insanity or mental disease of three years' duration, and in cases of gross antagonism a couple may be granted a trial separation for two years, followed by a divorce if there is no reconciliation.

In Sweden a divorce is granted after the expiry of a year from the date of a judicial separation allowed on the ground of aversion, if there has been no reconciliation; other grounds of divorce are adultery, six years' absence by one spouse without news, insanity for three years, conduct endangering life and imprisonment for life. These are judicial grounds, but a divorce may also be pro nounced by means of the royal prerogative against a person who has been the subject of a sentence for a grave crime, or on proof of violence, insobriety or prodigality. In Norway and Denmark the grounds are' very similar, and in the former country a royal decree of divorce may be obtained by mutual request after three years of separation. In Holland judicial separation is allowed on the usual grounds of the canon law, and complete divorce can be secured for each of the following grounds : adultery, wilful deser tion for five years, unnatural offences, life imprisonment and absence for ten years. The court sits in camera.

In Russia under the present code of the Soviets complete divorce is obtainable either by mutual consent, or on the applica tion of husband or wife subject to the approval of the court. The decree does not become absolute until after the time for appeal has expired. Under the imperial law the grounds for divorce used to be adultery, bigamy, impotence at the time of marriage, absence of one spouse without any news for five years, exile to Siberia and loss of civil rights. In Japan a complete divorce is allowed by mutual consent with notice to the registrar, and also on the respec tive grounds of the wife's adultery, the husband's cruelty or deser tion or his being sentenced for a grave offence, or three years' absence without knowledge.

Under the Jewish laws there is no distinction between nullity and divorce, the grounds of divorce being bigamy, breach of the law of affinity, the wife's adultery, the husband's leprosy or vice or neglect, the wife's refusal of marital rights for a year or by her cursing her father-in-law in her husband's presence; a divorce may also be obtained by mutual consent. Jews in most countries however are bound by the national laws.

In France the law of divorce has had a chequered history. Before the Revolution the Roman canon law prevailed, marriage was considered indissoluble, and only divorce a mensa et thoro, known as la separation d'habitation, was permitted; though it would appear that in the earliest age of the monarchy divorce a vinculo matrimonii was allowed. But the Revolution swept away marriage among the institutions which it overwhelmed, and by the law of Sept. 20, 1792, so great facility was given for divorce a vinculo matrirnonii as practically to terminate the obligations of marriage. A reaction came with the Code Napoleon, yet even under that system of law divorce was fairly easy. On the restora tion of the monarchy in 1816 divorce a vinculo was abolished.

Divorce was re-enacted by a law of July 27, 1884, the provisions of which were simplified by laws of 1886 and 1907. But a wide departure was made by these laws from the terms of the Code Napoleon. Divorce by consent was not permitted, and the follow ing became the causes for which divorce was allowed : (I) Adul tery by either party to the marriage at the suit of the other, without, in the case of adultery by the husband, the aggravation of introduction of the concubine into the home required by the Code; (2) violence (exces) or cruelty (sevices); (3) injures graves, acts reflecting on honour or reputation, and such things as unjustifiable refusal of marital rights or habitual drunkenness, and (4) peine afflictive et infamante, a legal punishment involving corporal confinement and moral degradation.

In addition to its recognition of full divorce, the French law recognizes separation de corps. The grounds are the same as those for a divorce; and if a separation de corps has existed for three years, it may be turned into a divorce upon the application of either party to the court.

On a divorce both parties are at liberty to remarry. The husband could remarry at once; but the wife (art. 296 of the Code) was only allowed to remarry after an interval of ten months. By the act of i 907, this article was abolished, and the wife allowed to remarry as soon as the judgment or decree grant ing the divorce has been entered, providing 30o days have elapsed. Under the law of March 26, 1924, art. 295 was amended in favour of greater, but not complete, freedom of remarriage of the parties divorced, not still in a state of wedlock. The publication of divorce proceedings in the press is forbidden under heavy penal ties. After a divorce the wife may not continue to use the name of her divorced husband. An appeal may be brought against a decree of divorce within two months; and a decree made on appeal is subject to revision by the court of cassation within two months. A decree must be transcribed in the Register of Civil Status before it becomes absolute. (Cf. Woodland v. Woodland, 44 The Times L.R. 495.) (ST. H.; C. Mo.) According to American practice, divorce is the termination by proper legal authority, sometimes legislatively but usually judicially, of a marriage which up to the time of the decree was legal and binding. It is to be distinguished from a decree of nullity of marriage, which is simply a legal determination that no legal marriage has ever existed between the two parties. It is also to be distinguished from a decree of separation, which per mits or commands the parties to live apart, but does not com pletely and for all purposes sever the marriage tie. The matri monial law of England, as at the time of the Declaration of Inde pendence, forms part of the common law of the United States. But as no ecclesiastical courts have ever existed there, the law must be considered to have been inoperative.

Upon the subject of divorce in the United States and foreign countries a careful investigation was made by the former Ameri can Department of Labour, its report covering the years 1867– 86 ; further reports for the period 1887-1906 have been pub lished by the Federal Census Bureau. The number of divorces was in 1886 over 2 5,000, and in 1906 was over 7 2,000, about double the number reported for that year from the rest of the Christian world. The number in 1916 was over 112,000, and in 1926 nearly 181,000, indicating an increase, 1906-16, of 56% and 1916-26 of 61%, about four times as rapid as the increase of population. The number of divorces annually to each ioo,000 people has increased as follows: 1867, 27; 34; 1887, 47; 1897, 62; 1906, 86; 1916, 113 ; 1926, 154.

The several States differ in divorce-rate, from South Carolina, with no provision for legal divorce, to Oregon, where the rate is more than twice and Nevada where it is more than eight times the average for the country. In general the rate is about the same in the North as in the South, but greater in the Central States than in the Eastern, and in the Western than in the Central. The several State groups had in 1926 the following divorce rates per ioo,000 married persons: Middle Atlantic (New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania) 14 7 ; New England, 2 2 7 ; South Atlan tic, 249; East South Central, 425; West North Central, 426; East North Central, 459; Mountain, 543 ; West South Central, 654; Pacific, 656; being an average for the United States of 378, and showing that all six central and western groups had rates above the average. Although the divorce-rate in the United States has increased rapidly and steadily, in 6o years, distinct tendencies are traceable in different regions. In the North Atlantic group the rate rose by 165 %, in the North Central by 3 5 2 %, in the Western by 400%, but in the South Atlantic by 1,o9o%, and in the South Central by 1,340%. This very rapid increase in the South was largely due to the spread of divorce among the emancipated negroes.

Grounds of Divorce.

Each State determines for itself the causes for which divorce may be granted, and no general state ment is therefore possible. The cause pleaded is seldom an index to the motives which caused the suit to be brought. This is determined by the character of the law rather than by the state of mind of the parties; and so far as the individuals are concerned, the ground alleged is thus a cloak rather than a clue or revelation. Still those causes which have been enacted into law by the various State legislatures do indicate the pleas which have been endorsed by the social judgment of the re spective communities. In the United States exclusive of Alaska and the recent insular accessions there are 49 different juris dictions in the matter of divorce. Six out of every seven allow divorce for desertion, adultery or cruelty; and of the divorces reported with their causes in 1926 nearly 8o% were granted for some one of these three causes, viz., 39% for cruelty, 32% for desertion and 9% for adultery. Probably nearly 7% more were for some combination of these causes. Three other grounds for divorce are admitted as legal in many or most American States, viz., imprisonment in 39, habitual drunkenness in 38 and neglect to provide in 22. About 98% of American divorces are granted on some one or more of these six grounds. In general the legislation on the subject of the causes allowed for divorce is most restrictive in the States on the Atlantic coast, from New York to South Carolina inclusive, and is least so in the Western States. The slight expense of obtaining a divorce in many of the States, and the lack of publicity which is given to the suit, are also important reasons for the great number of decrees issued. The importance of the former consideration is reflected in the fact that the divorce-rate for the United States as a whole shows clearly, in its fluctuations, the influences of good and bad times. When times are good and the income of the work ing and industrial classes likely to be assured, the divorce-rate rises. In periods of industrial depression it falls, fluctuating thus in the same way and probably for the same reason that the marriage-rate in industrial communities fluctuates. In two-thirds of the divorce suits the wife is the plaintiff, and the proportion has risen slightly in the 4o years. In the Northern States the percentage issued to wives (1887-1906) was 71, while in the Southern States it was only 56. But where both parties desire a decree, and each has a legal ground to urge, a jury will usually listen more favourably to a woman's suit.

Divorce is probably especially frequent among the native population of the United States, and among these probably more common in the city than in the country. This statement cannot be established absolutely, since statistics afford no means of distinguishing the native from the foreign-born applicants. It is, however, the most obvious reason for explaining the fact that, while in Europe the city divorce-rate is from three to five times as great as that of the surrounding country, the difference in the United States between the two regions is very much less. In other words, the great number of foreigners in American cities probably tends to obscure by a low divorce-rate the high rate of the native population. Divorce is certainly more common in the New England States than in any others on the Atlantic coast north of Florida, and it is not unlikely that wherever the New England families have gone divorce is more frequent than else where. For example, it is much more common in the northern counties of Ohio settled largely from New England than in the southern counties settled largely from the Middle Atlantic States.

There are two statements frequently made regarding divorce in the United States which do not find warrant in the statistics on the subject. The first is that the real motive for divorce with one or both parties is the desire for marriage to a third person. The second is, that a very large proportion of divorces are granted to persons who move from one jurisdiction to another in order to avail themselves of lax divorce laws. On the first point the American statistics are practically silent, since, in issuing a marriage licence to parties one or both of whom have been previously divorced, no record is ordinarily made of the fact. In Connecticut, however, for a number of years this information was required ; and, if the statements were trustworthy, the number of persons remarrying each year was about one-third the total number of persons divorcing, which is probably a rate not widely different from that of widows and widowers of the same age. Foreign figures for Switzerland, Holland and Berlin indicate that in those regions the proportion of the divorced who remarry speedily is about the same as that of widows and widowers. What statistical evidence there is on the subject therefore tends to discredit this popular opinion. The evidence on the second point is more nearly conclusive, and has gone far towards decreas ing the demand for a constitutional amendment allowing a federal marriage and divorce law. About four-fifths of all the divorces granted in the United States were issued to parties who were married in the State in which the decree of divorce was later made ; and when from the remaining one-fifth are deducted those in which the parties migrated for other reasons than a desire to obtain an easy divorce, the remainder would constitute a very small, almost a negligible, fraction of the total number.

Social Results.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to say how far the frequency of divorce in the United States has been or is a social injury; or to what extent it has weakened or undermined the ideal of marriage as a lifelong union. The prevalence of divorce in the United States among the native population, in urban communities, among the New England element, in the middle classes of society, and among those of the Protestant faith, indicates how closely this social phenomenon is interlaced with much that is characteristic and valuable in American civilization. In this respect, too, the United States perhaps represents the later stage of a tendency which has been at work in Europe at least since the Reformation. Certainly the divorce-rate is increasing in nearly every civilized country. Decrees of nullity of marriage and decrees of separation not absolutely terminating the marriage relation are relatively far less prevalent than they were in the mediaeval and early modern period, and many persons who under former conditions would have obtained relief from unsatisfactory unions through one or the other of these avenues now resort to divorce. The increasing proportion of the community who have an income sufficient to pay the requisite legal fees is also a fac tor of great importance. The belief in the family as an institution ordained of God, decreed to continue "till death us do part," and in its relations typifying and perpetuating many holy religious ideas, probably became weakened in the United States during the i9th century, along with a weakening of other religious con ceptions; and it is yet to be determined whether a substitute for these ideas can be developed under the guidance of the motive of social utility or individual desire. In this respect the United States is, as Gladstone once wrote, a tribus praerogativa, but we need not too readily despond of the outcome.

The great source of American statistical information is the govern mental report of over i,000 pages, A Report on Marriage and Divorce in the United States 1867 to 1886, including an Appendix relating to Marriage and Divorce in Certain Countries of Europe, by Carroll D. Wright, commissioner of labour; together with the further report for 1887 to 1906. The statistics contained in the former volume have been analysed and interpreted in W. F. Willcox, The Divorce Problem. A Study in Statistics (1891, 1897) Further interpretations are con tained in an article in the Political Science Quarterly for March 1893, entitled "A Study in Vital Statistics." The best legal treatise is probably Bishop on Marriage, Divorce and Judicial Separation. See also J. P. Lichtenberger, Divorce: A Study in Social Causation (19o9) ; Walker Gwynne, Divorce in America under State and Church (1925) ; and E. R. Mowrer, Family Disorganization (1927). (W. F. W.)