ndition
of a community can be derived from the proportion of illegitimate
children born, so one may say regarding the prevalence of divorce that
from this fact almost no inferences are warranted regarding the moral or
social condition of the population. It is by no means impossible, for
example, that the spread of divorce among the negro population in the
South marks a step in advance from the condition of largely unregulated
and illegal unions characteristic of the race immediately after the war.
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 represent the outcome 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 medieval 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 factor 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 19th century, along with a weakening of other religious conceptions;
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 Mr Gladstone
once wrote, a _tribus praerogativa_, but one who knows anything of the
family and home life of America will not readily despond of the outcome.

The great source of American statistical information is the
governmental report of over 1000 pages, _A Report on Marriage and
Divorce in the United States 1867 to 1886, including an Appendix
relating to Marriage and Divorce in