If the same ratio continue, the ratio of multiplied divorce and multiplied causes of divorce, we are not far from the time when our courts will have to set apart whole days for application, and all you will have to prove against a man will be that he left his slippers in the middle of the floor, and all you will have to prove against a woman will be that her husband's overcoat was buttonless. Causes of divorce doubled in a few years, doubled in France, doubled in England, and doubled in the United States. To show how very easy it is I have to tell you that in Western Reserve, Ohio, the proportion of divorces to marriages celebrated is one to eleven; in Rhode Island is one to thirteen; in Vermont is one to fourteen. Is not that easy enough?
I want you to notice that frequency of divorce always goes along with the dissoluteness of society. Rome for five hundred years had not one case of divorce. Those were her days of glory and virtue. Then the reign of vice began, and divorce became epidemic. If you want to know how rapidly the Empire went down, ask Gibbon. Do you know how the Reign of Terror was introduced in France? By 20,000 cases of divorce in one year in Paris.
WHAT WE WANT
in this country and in all lands is that divorce be made more and more and more difficult. Then people before they enter that relation will be persuaded that there will probably be no escape from it except through the door of the sepulchre. Then they will pause on the verge of that relation until they are fully satisfied that it is best, and that it is right, and that it is happiest. Then we shall have no more marriage in fun. Then men and women will not enter the relation with the idea it is only a trial trip, and if they do not like it they can get out at the first landing. Then this whole question will be taken out of the frivolous into the tremendous, and there will be no more joking about the blossoms in a bride's hair than about the cypress on a coffin.
What we want is that the Congress of the United States at this present session move for the changing the national Constitution so that a law can be passed which shall be uniform all over the country, and what shall be right in one State shall be right in all the States, and what is wrong in one State will be wrong in all the States.
HOW IS IT NOW?
If a party in the marriage relation gets dissatisfied it is only necessary to move to another State to achieve liberation from the domestic tie, and divorce is effected so easy that the first one party knows of it is by seeing it in the newspaper that Rev. Dr. Somebody, on April 14, 1884, introduced into a new marriage relation a member of the household who went off on a pleasure excursion to Newport or a business excursion to Chicago. Married at the bride's house. No cards. There are States of the Union which practically put a premium upon the disintegration of the marriage relation, while there are other States, like our own New York State, that has the pre-eminent idiocy of making marriage lawful at twelve and fourteen years of age.
The Congress of the United States needs to move at the present session for a change of the National Constitution, and then to appoint a committee—not made up of single gentlemen, but of men of families and their families in Washington—who shall prepare a good, honest, righteous, comprehensive,