Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/294

 it again when it ceases to be attractive, and in which the social estimate of a person who acted in the same manner through instability of character would be not much better. In any reform of the kind suggested, it would no doubt be arranged that pecuniary liabilities, allocated to the support and education of children, would follow the party insisting on divorce; and this also would act as a check upon dishonest contracts of marriage.

Thus, for any radical improvement in the system of matrimonial connections, we must look to a corresponding improvement in the spirit of the age, and the first step in advance will have been taken when marriage ceases to be the only legal contract which is enforced notwithstanding the ignorance of a contracting party as to the engagement. entered into. The frequency of divorce petitions will be greatly diminished from the time we get rid of the idiotic and almost incredibly wicked convention by which we take every possible precaution we can think of to ensure that a girl, when she marries, shall have no possible means of knowing to what she is committing herself. No more ingenious contrivance for obtaining marital infelicity could be imagined, The next step will have been taken when it is recognised as disgraceful for parents to put pressure upon the inclinations of their children