"I suppose another reason for that is that originally marriage and divorce were entirely in the hands of the church, weren't they?" ruminated Tutt.
"Exactly. From very early days in England the church claimed jurisdiction of all matters pertaining to marriage, on the ground that it was a sacrament."
"Did the ecclesiastical courts take the position that all marriages were made in heaven?"
Mr. Tutt shrugged his shoulders.
"'Once married, always married,' was their doctrine."
"Then how did people who were unhappily married get rid of one another?"
"They didn't—if the courts ruled that they had actually been married—but that left a loophole. When was a marriage not a marriage? Answer: When the parties were closely enough related by blood or marriage, or either of them was mentally incapable, under age, victims of duress, fraud, mistake, previously contracted for, or—already married."
"Ah!" breathed Tutt, thinking of Mr. Higgleby.
"The ecclesiastical law remained without any particular variation until after the American Revolution and the colonies separated from Great Britain, and as there was no union of church and state on this side of the water, and so no church to take control of the subject or ecclesiastical courts to put its doctrines into effect, for a while there was no divorce law at all over here, and then one by one the states took the matter up and began to make such laws about it as each saw fit. Hence the jolly old mess we are in now!"
"Jolly for us," commented Tutt. "It means dollars per year to us. Well," he remarked, stretching his legs and yawning, "divorce is sure an evil."