I am afraid that these remarks are but too true; and it is the more singular, as not only in the United States, but in every other Protestant community that I have ever heard of, divorce can be obtained upon what are considered just and legitimate grounds. It has been supposed, that should the marriage tie be loosened, that divorces without number would take place. It was considered so, and so argued, at the time that Zurich (the only Protestant canton in Switzerland that did not permit divorce, except for adultery alone,) passed laws similar to those of the other cantons; but so far from such being the case, only one divorce took place, within a year after the laws were amended. What is the reason of this? It can, in my opinion, only be ascribed to the chain being worn more lightly, when you know that if it oppresses you, it may be removed. Men are naturally tyrants, and they bear down upon the woman who cannot escape from their thraldom; but, with the knowledge that she can appeal against them, they soften their rigour. On the other hand, the woman, when unable to escape, frets with the feeling that she must submit, and that there is no help or hope in prospect; but once aware that she has her rights, and an appeal, she bears with more, and feels less than otherwise she would. You may bind, and from assuetude and time, (putting the better feelings out of the question,) the ties are worn without complaint; but if you bind too tight, you cut into the flesh, and after a time the pain becomes insupportable. In Switzerland, Germany, and I believe all the Protestant communities of the old world, the grounds upon which divorce is admissible are as follows:--adultery, condemnation of either party to punishment considered as infamous, madness, contagious chronic diseases, desertion, and incompatibility of temper.
The last will be considered by most people as no ground for divorce. Whether it is or not, I shall not pretend to decide, but this is certain, that it is the cause of the most unhappiness, and ultimately of the most crime.
All the great errors, all the various schisms in the Christian church, have arisen from not taking the holy writings as a great moral code, (as I should imagine they were intended to be,) which legislates upon broad principles, but selecting particular passages from them upon which to pin your faith. And it certainly appears to me to be reasonable to suppose that those laws by which the imperfection of our natures were fairly met, and which tended to diminish the aggregate of crime, must be more acceptable to our Divine Master than any which, however they might be in spirit more rigidly conformable to his precepts, were found in their working not to succeed. And here I cannot help observing, that the heads of the Church of England appear not to have duly weighed this matter, when an attempt was lately made to legislate upon it. Do the English bishops mean to assert, that they know better than the heads of all the other Protestant communities in the world--that they are more accurate expounders of the gospel, and have a more intimate knowledge of God's will? Did it never occur to them, that when so many good and virtuous ecclesiastics of the same persuasion in other countries have decided upon the propriety of divorce, so as to leave them in a very small minority, that it might be possible that they might be wrong, or do they intend to set up and claim the infallibility of the Papistical hierarchy?