If Society cannot without iniquity enter the domain of individual liberty, it cannot lawfully, validly prescribe duties that pertain only to the jurisdiction of the conscience, and annul moral liberty.
Now draw your conclusions.
READER. From these principles, it follows that man and woman should remain free and equal in Marriage; that Society has no right to intervene in their association except to render them equal; that it has no right to prescribe to them duties which proceed only from love, nor consequently to punish their violation, that it cannot in principle grant or refuse divorce, because it belongs to the husband and wife alone to know whether it is useful for their happiness and progress to be separated from each other.
AUTHOR. Your conclusions are right, but if Society has no right over the body or the soul of the husband and wife in their capacity of spouses, if it cannot without abuse of power interfere in any of their intimate relations, it is its right and duty to intervene in Marriage as regards interests and children.
READER. In fact, in the union of the sexes, there is not merely an association of two free and equal persons, but also a partnership of capital and labor; then, from the marriage, children are born for whose education, occupation and subsistence it is necessary to provide.
AUTHOR. Now, the general protection of material interests and of the rising generation devolves of right upon Society. In the sight of the law, the husband and wife ought to be regarded only as partners, engaging to employ a certain share of capital, together with their labor, for a definite purpose. Society takes note only of a contract of interests, the execution of which it guarantees like that of any other contract, and the breach of which it makes public, should it take place by the wish of the parties interested. On the other hand, the education of the rising generation is a question of life and death to Society. The children being free with respect to development, and liable to be useful or injurious to their fellow citizens according to the training which they have received, society has a right to watch over them, to secure their material support, their moral future, to fix the age of marriage, to entrust the children to the more deserving parent in case of separation, and if both are unworthy, to take them away entirely.
READER. Do you not go a little too far; on the one hand, do not children belong to their parents, on the other, may not Society err with respect to the choice of the principles to be instilled in them?
AUTHOR. Children do not belong to their parents because they are not THINGS: to those who obstinately persist in believing them property, we say that Society has the right of dispossession for the public good. Then the social right over children is limited so far as principles are concerned to those of morality. Society has no right over religious beliefs which belong to the domain of spiritual jurisdiction. The power that should take away children from their parents because they were not of a certain religious faith would be guilty of despotism, and would merit universal execration. If you say that Society has no right to impose a dogma upon children, you speak truly; but I cannot conceive how you can entertain the thought of forbidding it the right to teach them, even against the will of their parents, enlightening science, purifying morality. Is it not the duty of society to secure the progress of its members, and can any one have a right to keep a human being in ignorance and evil?
READER. You are right, and I condemn myself. Let us return to Marriage. I see with pleasure that you differ in opinion from a number of modern innovators who deny the lawfulness of social interference in the union of the sexes.
AUTHOR. If the union were without protection, who would suffer by it? Not men, but rather women and children.