The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday Morning Tuesday, November 5, 1889. DIVORCE LAWS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 373, 5 November 1889, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday Morning

Tuesday, November 5, 1889. DIVORCE LAWS.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’Bt at be thy oountry’e, Thy God's, and truth’s.

A QUESTION which is at present occupying much attention in the various Australian colonies is the condition of the divorce laws, and there are in each colony many people who urge that the stringency of the laws should be relaxed, The experience of America and France ought, however, to be a grave warning to those who wish a change to be made. Since the Divorce Law was passed in France in 1884 there has been an alarming advantage taken of it. In 1884 there were 3,657 divorces ; in 1885, 4,133 i in 1886, 4007 ; in 1887, 5,797. And in Paris and its neighborhood one marriage in every sixteen ends in a divorce. The American experience proves that there are more evils to be guarded against than marriages that result in unhappiness because of want of thought at the proper time. A San Francisco journal has the following tale to tell The frivolous character of the complaints in many cases of divorce recently granted and now on the docket leads thoughtful people to ask, “ What are we coming to ? ’ We do not know that the wives in a given number of cases are more blameable than the husbands, but it is the wives who suffer the most from such sundered relations. As a rule, they suffer more in their affections and in their reputations than the stronger sex. While there is something to be said in favor of a law of divorce which separates mismated couples there is no condemnation too severe for men or women who enter the marriage state with the idea in their minds that if they do not like it they will take advantage of the law that allows them to escape. Yet there is no doubt but that thoughtless young men and giddy girls often do approach the altar with that thought in their minds. In cases where the husband is very young the idea is apt to grow in strength as the years pass. He finds himself while yet on the sunny side of thirty with a wife who has possibly lost some of her girlish beauty, and children whose necessities absorb the greater part of his earnings. He compares the free and independent life of some of his bachelor associates, and imagination magnifies the pleasures he might participate in if he was unmarried. Some day the wife, who is ill-prepared to fight the battle of life alone, is stunned by the service of an application for divorce. Cases of this kind, we regret to say, are not uncommon. Almost everyone can recall one or more in his own circle of acquaintances. Of course if the real reasons were preferred in the application less harm would be done ; but the legal necessity of setting forth reasons often suggests a resort to falsehood. Trifles in the way of disagreements will be magnified, and baseless suspicions urged as matter of facts. The remedy for them M as for most other evils, lies with the people themselves. The law is not so much at fault as the facility with which it is evaded. The Church and society are too lenient in matters of this kind. It may be questioned if a man who divorces a wife for no other reason than that he prefers to live single is injured in his business or social relations by his act. If he has been a Church member he still remains one. And yet he has committed the most cowardly crime a man can commit. A woman thus divorced, unless she have powerful friends, has no future, and children are thrown upon the world without the character and instincts of right which are inculcated in well-regulated homes.