On the subject of divorce the governor says:

I recommend a revision of our laws with regard to divorce.
According to the report of the State librarian there were in
the State last year 4,734 marriages and 478 divorces.
Discontented people come here from other States, to take
advantage of what is called our liberal legislation, to
obtain divorces which would be denied them at home. As the
sacredness of the marriage relation lies at the foundation
of civilized society, it should be carefully guarded. Under
our present laws the causes of divorce are too numerous, and
not sufficiently defined, and too wide a discretion is given
to the courts. I think the law of 1849 should be modified,
and so much of the statute as grants divorces for "any such
misconduct as permanently destroys the happiness of the
petitioner, and defeats the purposes of the marriage
relation," should be repealed. I would also suggest that the
law provide that no decree of divorce shall take effect till
one year after it is granted.

In conversation with the governor on this point in his
message he stated the singular fact that the majority of the
applications for divorce were made by women. If this be so,
we suggested that the laws of Connecticut should stand as
they are until the women have the right of suffrage, that
they may have a voice in a social arrangement in which they
have an equal interest with man himself. If Connecticut,
with its blue laws, disloyal Hartford convention, and
Democracy, has, nevertheless, been a Canada for fugitive
wives from the yoke of matrimony, pray keep that little
State, like an oasis in the desert, sacred to sad wives, at
least until the sixteenth amendment of the federal
constitution shall give the women of the republic the right
to say whether they are ready to make marriage, under all
circumstances, for better or worse, an indissoluble tie. We
have grave doubts as to the sacredness of a relation in
which the subject-class has no voice whatever in the laws
that regulate it. We shall never know what "laws lie at the
foundation of all civilized society" unti