favour of reform will, without doubt, lead to a change in the glaring
injustice and inconsistencies of our law. It is, however, certain that
an enlightened divorce law must go much further than providing ways of
escape from marriage. Such exits tend to destroy the true sanctity of
marriage; also they are unable to meet the needs of all classes, no
matter how wide and numerous they are. They can never form the
ultimate solution. They tend to make marriage ridiculous, and there
are real grounds in the objections raised against them. There must be
no special exits; the door of marriage itself must be left open to go
out of as it is open to enter. This will come. When personal
responsibility in marriage is developed, when all the relationships of
sexes are founded on the recognition of the equality of the mother
with the father--the woman with the man, then will come divorce by
mutual consent.

Whenever divorce is difficult, there woman's lot is hard and her
position low. It is a part of the patriarchal custom which regards
women as property. It would be easy to prove this by the history of
marriage in the civilisations of the past, as also by an examination
of the present divorce laws in civilised countries. I cannot do this,
but I make the assertion without the least shadow of doubt. I would
point back in proof to the Egyptian and Babylonian divorce law, and to
the splendid development of Roman Law in this direction. Consent is
accepted as necessary to marriage; it should be the condition of
divorce. This, I believe, is the only solution which women will be
content to accept, when once they are awakened to their
responsibilities in marriage. And here I would quote the wise dictum
of Mr. Cunninghame Graham: "Divorce is the charter of Woman's
Freedom".

The condemnation of divorce and the pillorying of divorced persons are
not really the outcome of any concern for true morality, though most
people deceive themselves that they are. They are predominantly the
outcome of ignorance, of prejudices and false values, based, on the
one hand, on the primitive patriarchal view of the wife (hence the
insistence on woman's chastity and the inequality of the law), and, on
the other, on the ecclesiastical doctrine of the indissolubility of
marriage and the sin of all relationships outside its bonds. It is
only when we realise how deeply and terribly these worn-out views have
saturated and falsified our judgments that we come to under