We need only to reflect in order to comprehend that voluntary dissolubility, without social intervention, would render unions better assorted, for it would be for one's interest, for his own reputation, to enter into them only with the moral conviction of being able to preserve them; then only would no excuse be found for infidelity; loyalty would make part of the relations of the spouses. The law of perpetuity has perverted everything, corrupted everything; on the side of the woman, it favors, yes, necessitates stratagem; on the side of the man, it favors brutality and despotism; it provokes on both sides adultery, poisoning and assassination; and leads to those separations which are daily increasing in number, and which, by giving the lie to the indissolubility of marriage, place the partners in a painful and perilous situation, and bring in their train a host of irregularities.
In fact, if the spouses are separated while young, concubinage is their refuge. The man in this false position finds many to excuse him; but the woman is forced to conceal herself, to tremble at the thought of a pregnancy and to make it disappear. Legal separation leads the spouses not only to concubinage, to mutual hatred, but causes the birth of thousands of children whose future is compromised, destroyed by the fact of their illegitimacy. Let the spouses be free in accordance with their right, and all will fall into its proper order, for all will be done openly and truly.
READER. But the future of the children?
AUTHOR. The morality of the children is better insured under the system of liberty than under that of indissolubility, for they will not be witnesses for years of the bitter contention and licentiousness which now render them deceitful and vicious, and inspire them with contempt or hatred for one of the authors of their being, sometimes of both, when they do not take them for models; if life in common becomes impossible to the parents, which will be more rare under the law of liberty, the children will not be subjected to the power of those who violate the law of received morality; they may see these parents contract a new alliance as now, but this alliance will be honored by all.
From these unions children may be born as now, but these children, instead of being cast into the hospital, will share with the first the affection and inheritance of their father or mother. The so-styled legitimate children will lose in fortune, it is true; but they will gain in good examples; many children who are now in the category of the illegitimate will be ranked among the former, and will be no longer condemned by desertion to die young, or else to grovel in ignorance, vice and misery; to see their brow branded with the fault of their parents as of their own by a host of imbeciles and men without heart, who have no other guarantee for what they call their legitimacy than the presumption accorded them by the law.
III.
READER. It will be long yet, perhaps, before collective Reason comprehends liberty in the union of the sexes as you do, and men will ascribe to themselves the right not only of binding the interests, but the souls and bodies of the spouses.
AUTHOR. As far as we can foresee, Society must necessarily? pass through two stages to realize our opinion; it must first grant divorce for a declared cause; later it will grant divorce decreed in private on the petition of one or both of the spouses. We will not take up this last form of the rupture of the conjugal tie, but that which is nearest us—divorce for a declared cause.
What are the reasons which you would consider valid for a petition for divorce?
READER. First, those which now give rise to separation from bed and board: adultery of the wife, cruelty, grave abuses, condemnation of one of the spouses to punishment affecting the liberty or person, the fraudulent management of the property by the husband; next, infidelity of the husband, qualified adultery, incompatibility of temper, notable vices, such as drunkenness, gaming, etc.