the point. As she would
allow no other wife to her king, so she would allow no taking of other
wives, no abuse of divorce among her subjects. Whatever her influence
may have been in other ways, here it was all for good. But the queen has
gone, and there is no one left at all. No one but the hangers-on of whom
I have spoken, examples not to be followed, but to be shunned.

But of this there is no manner of doubt, that this freedom of marriage
and divorce leads to no license. There is no confusion between marriage
or non-marriage, and even yet public opinion is a very great check upon
divorce. It is considered not right to divorce your husband or your wife
without good--very good and sufficient cause. And what is good and
sufficient cause is very well understood. That a woman should have a
nagging tongue, that a man should be a drunkard, what could be better
cause than this? The gravity of the offence lies in whether it makes
life unbearable together, not in the name you may give it.

The facility for divorce has other effects too. It makes a man and a
woman very careful in their behaviour to each other. The chain that
binds them is a chain of mutual forbearance, of mutual endurance, of
mutual love; and if these be broken, then is the bond gone. Marriage is
no fetter about a man or woman, binding both to that which they may get
to hate.

In the first Burmese war in 1825 there was a man, an Englishman, taken
prisoner in Ava and put in prison, and there he found certain Europeans
and Americans. After a time, for fear of attempts at escape, these
prisoners were chained together two and two. He tells you, this
Englishman, how terrible this was, and of the hate and repulsion that
arose in your heart to your co-bondsman. Before they were chained
together they lived in close neighbourhood, in peace and amity; but
when the chains came it was far otherwise, though they were no nearer
than before. They got to hate each other.

And this is the Burmese idea of marriage, that it is a partnership of
love and affection, and that when these die, all should be over. An
unbreakable marriage appears to them as a fetter, a bond, something
hateful and hate inspiring. They are a people who love to be free: they
hate bonds and dogmas of every description. It is always religion that
has made a bond of marriage, and here religion has not interfered.
Theirs is a religion of free men and free women.

CHAPTER XVIII

DRINK

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