THE MARRIAGE PROBLEM.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2671, 24 August 1889, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE MARRIAGE PROBLEM.

Tiik greatest and docpoHt of all human controversies is the marriago controversy. It appears to be surging up on all sides around us ; iind every book which helps definitely to map out it.s lines lias oh that account both interest and value. It is in America that, from whatever cause, this controversy has reached a stage of development more advanced than elsewhere. Moreover, the present social lifo of America offers at all points a profoundly important field of observation, towards which European eyes havo hardly yet begun to be turned. This social life, if it does not already embrace tho largest province nf.the entire social lifo of civilised man, will shortly embrace not tho largest only, but the largest beyond nil comparison, and will form, in constantly growing proportions, a telling rnemciit in tho general condition of Christendom, and even of humanity at larsje. The present social life of America may be slid to be a new formation, and t-i have begun at a date which would warrant our applying to it the alternative title of Wavnrly, ' Tis Sixty Ye.irs Since.' Mrs Stowo must havo drawn upon the experience of her early days in her admirable New EiiL'knd novels, such ris ' The Minister's Wooing ;' but thn Puritan life which -die describes appears to have vanished, at least from tho wealthier circles of American society. Tho true moaning of a discussion which calls into question tho ancient and upcciallr Christian constitution of the family is that it is a vast upthrow in tho world of thought and fact which, if consummated, will change iu tbo whole moral surface of the earth, and shift, in a revolutionary sense, the popularity of life. Tho chief spur thrown out laterally from this great upthrow is in Ainoric-i. Many a reader ou this side of tho water will be startled when ho learns that in tho old State of Connecticut one niarriug-e is dissolved iu every ten and in tho stiite of New California one in every seven. Ho m-iy loarn with equal surprise that in South Carolina there is (as I am informed) no legal divorce whatever, I mean, of course, divorce which leads the way to remarriage. Asrain, it is necessary to boar in mind that tho divorces as well as the marriages of any oue Stato arc acknowledged in tho courts of every other. I understand that the experience of America as well as of this country tends to show that divorce is largely associated with that portion of communities which is lacking- in solid and stable conditions of life generally. America may suffer specially from the shifting , of relative position and circumstances incidental to a forward movement in things material of mi unexampled rapidity ; and it may also be true that a Stato like Connecticut has to answer for many offences not her own, though she cannot be exempted j from full responsibility for tho laws she has choscr. to enact. We must beware of all sweeping and premature conclusions. But it seems indisputable that America is the arena on which many of tho problems connected with the marriago state aro in the course of being- rapidly, painfully, «nd seriously tried out. In so far she is entrusted, like a prajrogativa tribus, with the destiny of others, and may do much by her example to make or mar them.— Mr W. E. Gladstone, in the Nineteenth Century.