Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/293

 that we shall be obliged to do, would probably be attended by worse effects than the bold and straightforward acceptance of polygamy as a necessary remedy for the excess of feminine population, which a writer of letters to the shocked and astonished newspapers of this city recently proposed. Neither expedient is capable of being adopted: nor does there seem much likelihood that public morality can be improved by legislation, though it is certain to be much improved by the spontaneous amelioration of public sentiment,sentiment. [sic] No doubt in one or two particulars the marriage laws will gradually undergo amendment. It will be realised that it is much more immoral to compel unwilling couples to live together matrimonially, than to set them free to remedy one of the most hideous of all possible mistakes. The difficulty of determining what shall be done where one party wishes for divorce, while the other does not, is greater: but on the whole it will probably be considered more conducive to morality to dissolve the marriage here, after a precautionary and experimental period of provisional separation, than to insist upon its perpetuation. That age will only be ripe for such a reform as this, which, by moral progress, has rendered intolerable the position of a libertine capable of entering into matrimony with the deliberate intention of getting out of