The number of divorced women to be met with here, especially among the more affluent classes, exceeds any moderate calculation. Nothing can more clearly manifest the necessity of erecting some dike against the torrent of immorality, which has almost inundated this capital, and threatens to spread over all the departments.
Before the revolution, the indissolubility of marriage in France was supposed to promote adultery in a very great degree: the vow was broken because the knot could not be untied. At present, divorces are so easily obtained, that a man or woman, tired of each other, have only to plead incompatibility of temper, in order to slip their necks out of the matrimonial noose. In short, some persons here change their wedded partner with as much unconcern as they do their linen. Thus, the two extremes touch each other; and either of them has proved equally pernicious to morals.
Formerly, if a Frenchman kept a watchful eye on his wife, he was reckoned jealous, and was blamed. If he adopted a contrary conduct, and she was faithless, he was ridiculed. Not unfrequently, a young miss, emerged from the cloisters of a convent, where she had, perhaps, been sequestered, in order that her bloom might not eclipse the declining charms of her mother, and who appeared timid, bashful, and diffident, was no sooner married to a man in a certain rank in life, than she shone as a meteor of extravagance and dissipation. Such a wife thought of nothing but the gratification of her own desires; because she considered it as a matter of course that all the cares of the family ought to devolve by right on the husband. Provided she could procure the means of satisfying her taste for dress, and of making a figure in the beau monde, no other concerns ever disturbed her imagination. If, at first, she had sufficient resolution to resist the contagion of example, and not take a male friend to her bosom, by way of lightening the weight of her connubial chains, she seldom failed, in the end, to follow the fashion of the day, and frequent the gaming-table, where her virtue was sacrificed to discharge her debts of honour.
But what have these would-be republicans to allege as an excuse in their favour? They have no convents to initiate young girls in the arts of dissimulation; no debauched court to contaminate, by its example, the wavering principles of the weak part of the sex, or sap the more determined ones of those whose mind is of a firmer texture; nor have they any friendly, sympathizing confessors to draw a spunge, as it were, over the trespasses hid in a snug corner of their heart. No: every one is left to settle his own account with heaven. Yet the libertinism which at present reigns in Paris is sufficient to make a deep impression on persons the least given to reflection.
Il matrimonio, says the Italian proverb, è un paradiso o un inferno. In fact, nothing can be compared to the happiness of a married couple, united by sympathy. To them, marriage is really a terrestrial paradise. But what more horrid than the reverse, that is, two beings cursing the fatal hour which brought them together in wedlock? It is a very hell on earth; for surely no punishment can exceed that of being condemned to pass our days with the object of our detestation.
If the indissolubility of marriage in France was formerly productive of such bad consequences; now that the nuptial knot can be loosened with so much facility, there can no longer exist the same plea for adultery. Is then this accumulation of vice less the effect of the institution of divorce in itself, than that of the undigested law by which it was first introduced?
The law of divorce was, I find, projected in 1790, under the auspices of the last Duke of Orleans, who, utterly regardless of the welfare of the State, wished to revolutionize every thing, solely with a view to his own individual interest. His object was to get rid of his wife, who was a woman of strict virtue. This law was decreed on the 20th of September 1792, without any discussion whatever. On the 8th of Nivôse and 4th of Floréal, year II, (29th of December 1794 and 24th of April 1795) the Convention decreed additional laws, all tending to favour the impetuosity of the passions. Thus the door was opened still wider to licentiousness and debauchery. By these laws, an absence of six months is sufficient for procuring a divorce, and, after the observance of certain forms, either of the parties may contract a fresh marriage.
It is not difficult to conceive how many hot-headed, profligate, unprincipled persons, of both sexes, have availed themselves of such laws to gratify their unruly passions, their resentment, their avarice, or their ambition. Oaths, persons, or property, are, in these cases, little respected. If a libertine finds that he cannot possess the object of his desires on any other terms, like Sir John Brute, in the play, he marries her, in order to go to bed to her, and in a few days sues for a divorce. I have been shewn here a Lothario of this description, who, in the course of a short space of time had been married to no less than six different women.
"Divorce," says a judicious French writer, "is a separation, the necessity for which ought to be supported by unquestionable proofs; otherwise, it is nothing more than a legitimate scandal."
The French often wish to assimilate themselves to the Romans, and the Roman laws sanctioned divorce. Let us then examine how far the comparison can, in this respect, be supported.