e other, or gross and unlawful attack on the
honour or personal liberty. (7) Incompatibility of temper and
quarrelsome disposition, if rising to the height of endangering life or
health. (8) Opprobrious crime for which either spouse has suffered
imprisonment, or a knowingly false accusation of such crime by one
spouse of the other. (9) If either spouse by unlawful transactions
endangers the life, honour, office or trade of the other, or commences
an ignominious employment. (10) Change of religion. In addition to these
causes, marriages, when there were no children, could be dissolved by
mutual consent if there be no reason to suspect levity, precipitation or
compulsion; and a judge had also power to dissolve a marriage in cases
in which a strongly rooted dislike appeared to him to exist. In all
cases of divorce, but sometimes subject to the necessity of obtaining a
licence, remarriage was permissible (see Burge, _Commentaries on
Colonial and Foreign Law_, vol. i. 649).

Before 1876 only a divorce _a vinculo_ could be obtained in some of the
German states, especially if the petitioner were a Roman Catholic. The
only relief afforded was a "perpetual separation." By the Personal
Status Act 1875 perpetual separation orders were abolished and divorce
decrees allowed in cases where the petitioners would, under the former
law, have been entitled to a perpetual separation order. However, two
Drafting Commissions under the act declined to alter the new rule, but
under pressure from the Roman Catholic party the Reichstag passed a law
introducing a modified separation order, termed "dissolution of the
conjugal community" (_Aufhebung der ehelichen Gemeinschaft_). This order
can be converted into a dissolution of the marriage at the option of
either party. Under the Civil Code of 1900 a petitioner can obtain a
divorce or judicial separation on "absolute" or "relative" grounds. In
the former case if the facts are established the petitioner is entitled
to the relief prayed for; in the latter case, it is left to judicial
discretion. The absolute grounds are adultery, bigamy, sodomy, an
attempt against the petitioner's life or wilful desertion. The relative
grounds are (a) such grave breach of marital duty or dishonourable or
immoral conduct as would disturb the marital relation to such an extent
that the marriage could not reasonably be expected to continue; (b)
insanity, continued for more than three years during the marriage, and
of