ormous
responsibility of so taking fate into their own hands would frighten
most people, if they gave themselves time to think--but they do not.
Nine-tenths of them have no compunction in breaking vows, because they
do not realise that by making them they have connected themselves with
currents and assumed responsibilities the consequences of which to
themselves they cannot possibly eventually avoid, no matter how they
may try temporarily to evade them.

It would seem to me that divorce for the rich and educated should be
made as difficult as possible, and the pleas investigated mercilessly,
to discover if any advantage has been taken of legal quibbles for
ulterior ends; but that the judge should grant decrees instantly when
habitual drunkenness, madness, or anything which degrades and lowers a
household or community is proved against the defendant. It would seem
to me that divorces for the poor should be facilitated in every way,
if this difference to those of the rich could possibly be
accomplished, so that the hideous cruelty and encouragement of vice
(cases of which are so admirably set forth in the pamphlets issued by
the Divorce Law Reform Union) could be summarily dealt with, and
relief and peace conferred upon the innocent party. Because the lives
of the poor are too filled with work to be as easily influenced by
personal emotion as the lives of the rich, and the lower level of
their education and standard of manners admits of such far greater
unkindness and brutality in their actions than in a higher class; and
thus they are the more entitled by justice to relief and protection
than the highly endowed and developed section of society who can
better take care of themselves. It seems to me to be a crying
injustice that the law of divorce can only be administered by paying
exorbitant fees for it; and that if the separation of two human beings
who are admittedly bound together by law can be accomplished by law
and that the breaking of the marriage vow is a sin against the law,
then the poorest in the land have an absolute right that this law
should be put into execution for them without special payment, just as
they have now a right to the Law's working for them to catch offenders
who steal their goods, or who break business contracts with them. It
would seem that this is a frightful case of there being one law for
the rich and one for the poor, and that it is a blot upon the boasted
equity and fairness of English