alism maintains an attitude of
neutrality. And the practical effect of an attitude of neutrality is
to leave these things as they are at present. The State is not
urgently concerned with these questions. So long as a marriage
contract provides for the health and sanity of the contracting
parties, and for their proper behaviour so far as their offspring is
concerned, and for so long as their offspring need it, the demands of
the community, as the guardian of the children, are satisfied. That
certainly would be the minimum marriage, the State marriage, and I,
for my own part, would exact nothing more _in the legal contract_. But
a number of more representative Socialists than I are for a legally
compulsory life marriage. Some--but they are mostly of the older, less
definite, Social Democratic teaching--are for a looser tie. Let us
clearly understand that we are here talking of the legal marriage
only--the State's share. We are not talking of what people will do,
but of how much they are to be made to do. A vast amount of stupid
confusion arises from forgetting that. What was needed more than that
minimum I have specified would be provided, I believe--it always has
been provided hitherto, even to excess--by custom, religion, social
influence, public opinion.

For it may not be altogether superfluous to remind the reader how
little of our present moral code is ruled by law. We have in England,
it is true, certain laws prescribing the conditions of the marriage
contract, penalties of a quite ferocious kind to prevent bigamy, and a
few quite trivial disabilities put upon those illegitimately born. But
there is no legal compulsion upon any one to marry now, and far less
legal restriction upon irregular and careless parentage than would be
put in any scientifically organized Socialism. Do let us get it out of
our heads that monogamy is enforced by law at the present time. It is
not. You are only forbidden to enter into normal marriage with more
than one person. If a man of means chooses to have as many concubines
as King Solomon and live with them all openly, the law (I am speaking
of Great Britain) will do nothing to prevent him. If he chooses to go
through any sort of nuptial ceremony, provided it does not simulate a
legal marriage, with some or all of them he may. And to any one who
evades the legal marriage bond, there is a vast range of betrayal and
baseness as open as anything can be. "Free Love" is open to any one
who c