all the way from no
divorce for any cause in South Carolina, for only one cause in New
York and other States, up to twenty or thirty causes, with that
indefinite or "omnibus" clause of "mutual incompatibility," or
allowing the courts to grant divorces in the interest of the
general peace. Since the efforts of reformers have wiped out the
express-omnibus clause from the legislation of all States, the same
abuse has crept in under the guise of "cruelty"; the national divorce
report before referred to showing that the courts of this broad land
have held sufficient cruelty to justify divorce (to the wife at least)
to exist in tens of thousands of different incidents or causes,
ranging all the way from attempts to murder ("breaking plaintiff's
nose, fingers, two of her ribs, cut her face and lip, chewed and
bitten her ears and face, and wounded her generally from head to
foot") to not cutting his toenails [1] or refusing to take the wife to
drive in a buggy; indeed, one young North Carolina woman got a divorce
from a man she had recently married, on the ground that he was
possessed of great wealth, but she had been assured that he was an
invalid, and had married him in the hope and belief of his speedy
decease, instead of which he proceeded to get cured, which caused her
great mental anguish; while one husband at least got a divorce for a
missing vest button.[2] But, independent of the vagaries of courts and
judges, and perhaps, most of all, of juries in such matters, it has
been found that the numbers of divorces bear no particular relation to
the number of causes. In fact, many clergymen argue that to have only
one cause, adultery, is the worst law of all, as it drives the parties
to commit this sin when otherwise they might attain the desired
divorce by simple desertion. Moreover, the difference in condition,
education, religion, race, and climate is so great throughout the
Union that it is unwise, as well as impossible, to get all of our
forty-eight States to take the same view on this subject, the Spanish
Catholic as the Maine free-thinker, the settler in wild and lonely
regions as the inhabitant of the old New England town over-populated
by spinsters. It was, therefore, the opinion of the State
Commissioners that the matter of causes was best determined by States,
according to their local conditions, and that it would be unwise to
attempt, even by amendment to the Constitution, to enforce a national
uniformity. All the