should be taken to make them more effective. Unemployment has been more general and rife than was expected in this industry, and the idea of a scheme for unemployment insurance, which was considered unnecessary three years ago, would now be welcome and considered with favour. If there is any scheme for 'insurance ' by industries,' agriculture should be included. The relief works adopted in agricultural districts during the last two years are merely palliative and grossly inadequate even as such, and the time has passed when the farm-worker could be expected or forced unwillingly to become a ' pauper' for reasons which are outside his own control, without dire effects on his character ensuing.

At the present moment the indications are that the financial position of agriculture is not so bad as it has been, or as it is said to be. A new equilibrium between the cost of labour, the prices of requirements, and the prices of produce is being established, and when things settle down, even at a lower level than formerly, farmers will know where they are' and will begin to deal with their own difficulties. When they forget about the State they will have both time and energy to deal with the situation as it is found on their own farms and in their own markets. If they give the public too many lectures on its duty to their industry, or give the State too many invitations to share their responsibilities, they may find the Government again taking a share in control. That may be a consummation devoutly to be wished' by some persons, but certainly not by farmers, in spite of what they say of the rewards they receive for their endeavours, and of their sufferings. British farmers have a genius of their own, and when they start to solve their problems the solutions they adopt will not be copies of those of other countries, but they will be equally effective.

ARTHUR W. ASHBY

VOL. 237. NO. 484.

Y

WHI

THE PROBLEM OF DIVORCE

WHILE we remember that hard cases make bad law, let us not forget that the badness of any law is most surely ' certified by the number of hard cases which it ought to but does 'not relieve.'

So writes the Bishop of Durham in a weighty letter to the Times. His view is supported on the lines of practical morality by General Bramwell Booth, who out of a wide experience expresses the anxiety of the Christian State with regard to the working of the Divorce Law as it now exists. He suggests a conference of divines and others to see what reforms can be attempted.

Lord Buckmaster's Bill, which was based on the Report of the Royal Commission, was passed by the Lords, but was defeated in the Commons. Meanwhile Lord Buckmaster had undertaken to sit in the Divorce Court and deal with cases which had accumulated there. He subsequently gave to the public in a letter to the Times the reflections which that ordeal had impressed upon his mind. This letter called forth a correspondence which has never quite died down.

It is now more than ten years since the Divorce Commission sat, and published a mass of evidence and a considered report. Perhaps it is as well that the war prevented any action being taken upon the report. For during the past ten years the number of cases which have congested the Divorce Court has risen by leaps and bounds. Collusion and the consent to do evil' have become more outrageous and flagrant every year. The columns of the press are filled with the squalid details of these cases in order to gratify the prurient curiosity of the public mind. Had any Bill been passed on the lines of the Commissioners' report, the ecclesiastics would certainly have said: 'See what comes of easy 'divorce; see what follows the careless treatment of the marriage contract. You have destroyed the sanctity of the marriage vow. 'You have set aside God's law and broken down that raised by < man.'

As matters stand to-day, it is under the old dispensation that these things are done. Men and women have combined to set

the law of the Church and the law that governs Christian society at defiance. The organized Christian Church still consents to seal these contracts, though it must know that in many cases the contracting parties have little chance of matrimonial fidelity. The Church ties them up, and is quite content to take the risks, believing that the word 'indissoluble' will act as magic on those who are married. And yet this contract is the most important, and indeed vital, which does or ever can bind human society. If it is a failure men and women are forsworn; the home is broken up and the children are reared in the midst of what is at its best a ruined ideal, at its worst a sink of iniquity.

The Church of Rome calls marriage a sacrament, and declares that it is under all conditions indissoluble. But Rome has not been able by using these high words to prevent the actions which can take place beneath them. Because of the hardness of the human heart, certain things are allowed. Under political pressure the Vatican has consented to divorce, provided it is called by another name. Marriages can be dissolved by declaring them to be null and void. The Reformed Church concurs in proclaiming that marriage is indissoluble, while admitting (reluctantly) that it can be dissolved by unfaithfulness.

It is not the purpose of this article to enter into any theological argument. In the correspondence above alluded to, and also in the evidence taken before the Commission, it is made clear that divines and theologians differ. The various branches of the Reformed Church have different practices, if not ideals. All profess to be bound by the words recorded in the New Testament. From that position they are not to be moved, and no one would wish to make them sin against their consciences.

There was one theologian of great repute, the Very Rev. Professor Paterson, who gave evidence before the Commission. He granted all that the Church claims of scriptural authority. When, however, that ground had been cleared, he gave his views on the Christian conscience, which are well worth being read in their entirety. He said :—

'A distinct feature of the Christian religion is that it is a religion of maxims which lays the responsibility on people of doing a lot of hard thinking as to how the principle works out in certain cases. That is the distinction between the Christian religion and, say, Mahomedanism and the Old Testament, and it is clear that we have much

thinking to do in relating Christ's maxims to the concrete world. He says: Swear not at all,' yet we require witnesses to take the oath in a court of law. We are told in the New Testament that we are not to go to law with our brother, and I believe the Christian ideal is we should not go to law, and that we should suffer the spoiling of our goods gladly; but we have courts of law where people can go to redress their wrongs. And one might refer to the case of war. There is nothing more certain than that our Lord inculcated the principle of nonresistance, and yet we do take steps in practical life in self-defence. I mention that to illustrate our Lord laid down principles and put a good deal of responsibility on us in other cases in the way of thinking matters out and applying those principles.'

That 'hard thinking,' Church and State have done during the Christian age. Presumably there were many things which we now think inhuman and cruel, which of old time were not considered to conflict with the Christian law of charity. The upholders of slavery and the slave-trade were wont to defend the institution of slavery on scriptural grounds. The savage punishments inflicted for crime, the persecutions of religion, the inhumane treatment of prisoners and captives, all these things were done in a country professing to be under the Christian dispensation. In later generations we have seen the treatment of our neighbour under another light. The responsibility of the criminal is felt to be shared by the community in which he has been reared. Justice and mercy have met, and, though by no means yet perfect, the Statute Book is now freed of certain pagan and cruel customs.

Has the Canon law kept pace with this Christian enlightenment? Has the Statute law? Do the statutes which govern the marriage contract between man and woman provide rules that can be justified by the hard thinking' that Christian belief and practice call upon us to use?

On the contrary we find that the Statute law-the Church being a consenting party-is a manufacturer of sin. To secure divorce the woman must prove cruelty as well as adultery against her husband, while he can get rid of her for adultery alone. The excuse offered in the House of Commons for this inequality was that a man does not bring a bastard into the family, while a woman does.' Is this the excuse of a Christian conscience? What havoc to other families than his own does the faithless husband bring? The living Church, which is the whole body of

believers, shuts its eyes to the cruelty to the wife involved in the knowledge that her husband has broken his vow to 'forsake all others,' a vow that the Church administers almost mechanically, and afterwards refuses to regard as part of the contract. So long as the parties remain married, all is well.

Let us apply the Christian argument throughout the existing law of divorce. There is another crime,' which is distinctly manufactured, namely, collusion. An undefended suit is more full of manufactured vice than is a defended one. The two parties come together, the collusion is agreed upon. Perjury and hard swearing lose all their meaning, and apparently their sinfulness in the eye of the law, when they are practised in the divorce court. It may be that one or the other party has deserted during long years. It may be that the taint of inherited and hopeless lunacy appears after marriage. It may be that the lusts of the flesh have triumphed, and then man or woman may be bound to what is no better than a rotten carcase; then divorce can only be gained by proving unfaithfulness,' and the Church turns its back, and says 'indissoluble.' How often the pages of divorce proceedings are just records of offences manufactured to suit the necessities of the case.

Is there any other form of justice which is so administered? If a person steals property, the State condemns him for the crime, and does not require of him that he should be a forger as well. The Church is willing that there should be an equal moral standard as between the sexes, but it has never introduced a Bill to right this blot on the justice administered by the State. Others, who are waiting for an Act which will include wider reforms, do not wish that this acknowledged wrong should be dealt with alone.

Judicial separations are another instance of the compromise effected between the law of the Church and justice as it is administered by the State. They were devised to do away with 'hard thinking.' Neither Church nor State can force people to live together. Judicial separations are mostly used by those who fear personal violence, or the intolerable conditions produced by habitual drunkenness. They are often the resort of those who are too poor to seek divorce. A few couples are brought together again by the efforts of philanthropic agencies, but the majority are living immorally. Separation, judicial, or by wilful desertion, renders null and void the marriage contract. Yet it is sanctioned by