In that reconstruction of laws, threatened by the movement in behalf of female suffrage, it is not probable that the patriarchal[267] institution of polygamy will be regarded otherwise than as debasing to both sexes; but perhaps a greater latitude of divorce will be sought as not inconsistent with public morality. Looking at the question abstractly, and apart from all religious and social prejudice, it certainly seems the height of cruelty and absurdity to compel parties to keep up the relations of man and wife when one of them feels towards the other either a physical repugnance or a moral dislike. The impediments often raised by our courts in the way of divorce are gross relics of barbarism, and will be abolished by a higher legislative morality.

[267]

"Whoso," says Milton, "prefers either matrimony or other ordinance before the good of man and the plain exigence of charity, let him profess Papist or Protestant or what he will, he is no better than a pharisee, and understands not the gospel; whom, as a misinterpreter of Christ, I openly protest against." And, in another passage, he rebukes those who would rest "in the mere element of the text," as favoring "the policy of the Devil to make that gracious ordinance (of marriage) become insupportable, that what with men not daring to venture upon wedlock, and what with men wearied out of it, all inordinate license might abound."

Mr. J. A. St. John, editor of the Prose Works of Milton, remarks in reference to the marriage law as it now stands in England:—

"Having been invented and established by men, it is calculated to bear with extreme severity on women, who are daily subjected to wrongs and hardships which they would not endure, were the relief of divorce open to them. Those who take a different view descant upon the encouragement which would, they say, be given to immorality were divorce made easy. But the contrary is the truth.

"It is in behalf of morals, and for the sake of imparting a higher tone to the feelings of society, that the present unnatural system should be abolished. Where, what Milton calls, an unconjugal mind exists, there must be unconjugal manners; and to what these lead no one need be told. Where marriage is indissoluble, people presume upon that fact to transgress its laws,[268] which they would not do were it legally practicable to obtain immediate redress.

[268]

"However, there is a great indisposition in mankind to innovate in 

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