Similarly in Germany, Wanda von Sacher-Masoch, who had suffered much from marriage, whatever her own defects of character may have been, writes at the end of Meine Lebensbeichte that "as long as women have not the courage to regulate, without State-interference or Church-interference, relationships which concern themselves alone, they will not be free." In place of this old decayed system of marriage so opposed to our modern thoughts and feelings, she would have private contracts made by a lawyer. In England, at a much earlier period, Charles Kingsley, who was an ardent friend to women's movements, and whose feeling for womanhood amounted almost to worship, wrote to J. S. Mill: "There will never be a good world for women until the last remnant of the Canon law is civilized off the earth."
"No fouler institution was ever invented," declared Auberon Herbert many years ago, expressing, before its time, a feeling which has since become more common; "and its existence drags on, to our deep shame, because we have not the courage frankly to say that the sexual relations of husband and wife, or those who live together, concern their own selves, and do not concern the prying, gloating, self-righteous, and intensely untruthful world outside."
Hobhouse, op. cit. vol. i, p. 237.