t be disturbed, for, although such a fear
might be justified by considerations of particular circumstances
and localities, it could not fairly be entertained in an inquiry
into the nature of men and States in general. For experience
frequently convinces us that just where law has imposed no
fetters, morality most surely binds; the idea of external
coercion is one entirely foreign to an institution which, like
marriage, reposes only on inclination and an inward sense of
duty; and the results of such coercive institutions do not at all
correspond to the intentions in which they originate."

A long succession of distinguished thinkers--moralists,
sociologists, political reformers--have maintained the social
advantages of divorce by mutual consent, or, under guarded
circumstances, at the wish of one party. Mutual consent was the
corner-stone of Milton's conception of marriage. Montesquieu said
that true divorce must be the result of mutual consent and based
on the impossibility of living together. Senancour seems to agree
with Montesquieu. Lord Morley (_Diderot_, vol. ii, Ch. I),
echoing and approving the conclusions of Diderot's _Supplement au
Voyage de Bougainville_ (1772), adds that the separation of
husband and wife is "a transaction in itself perfectly natural
and blameless, and often not only laudable, but a duty." Bloch
(_Sexual Life of Our Time_, p. 240), with many other writers,
emphasizes the truth of Shelley's saying, that the freedom of
marriage is the guarantee of its durability. (That the facts of
life point in the same direction has been shown in the previous
chapter.) The learned Caspari (_Die Soziale Frage ueber die
Freiheit der Ehe_), while disclaiming any prevision of the
future, declares that if sexual relationships are to remain or to
become moral, there must be an easier dissolution of marriage.
Howard, at the conclusion of his exhaustive history of
matrimonial institutions (vol. iii p. 220), though he himself
believes that marriage is peculiarly in need of regulation by
law, is yet constrained to admit that it is perfectly clear to
the student of history that the modern divorce movement is "but a
part of the mighty movement for social liberation which has been
gaining in volume and strength since the Reformation." Similarly
the cautious and judicial Weste