THE DIVORCE QUESTION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 9419, 17 June 1882, Page 3

THE DIVORCE QUESTION.

A Bill lor cheapening the process of divorce is one of the measures that will come before the Legislature during the present session. The question of what facilities should be given to enable a man to separate from the individual who he has solemnly declared shall be bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh is one of the most difficult ones that can be discussed. On the one hand there is the case of the man who finds himself bound to an uncongenial partner foxlife, and whose career is blasted because in his inexperienced youth he fancied the girl of his choice other than she really was, or of the woman who was onco entrapped by a smooth tongue, and discovers that her home can never be anything but a miserable one. At the other extreme there is the lesson taught by what takes place in many parts of America where the divorce laws afford- fatal facilities for either husband or wife separating whenever the fancy strikes them, The state of morality induced by such laws is certainly not pleasant to contemplate, any more than is the feeling engendered by them in reference to the seriousness of married life. This latter point is, perhaps, the most curious of the phenomena attached to the state of affairs we have alluded to. For a woman to talk affably to a cast-off husband in a ballroom is not an uncommon occurrence in some States, or for her to meet two or three quondam “ partners for^Jj^”, “ Lightly come and lightly go,” seems to be the motto in vogue, and the man or woman has acted freely on this principle. It is not this sort of thing that we wish any law of divorce to attend to. Teutonic nations have from all time held the marriage tie in the greatest reverence, and it is difficult to understand how the Americans have departed so widely from the traditions of the stock from which they mainly sprang. It may probably be accounted for by the mixture of races that has taken place in settling the States, but is certainly a new departure in the wrong direction. What is wanted in New Zealand is not so much an alteration in the causes which should make divorce legal, but the possibility of the law being equally within the reach of the poor and rich. Divorce costs ft good deal of money under present legal arrangements, and it is with a view of cheapening the process that a reiorm is principally required. And still when thorough uncongeniality of temper has caused a couple to live miserably for years, and there appears to be no hope that matters will mend, it seems hard that the tie may not be severed. Some means enabling such people to part might, perhaps, be admissable, but the greatest caution would have to be adopted in frariiing any legislation tending in this direction.—Eaugiora Standard •