Page:Annie Besant, Marriage A Plea for Reform, second edition 1882.djvu/43

 II.

DIVORCE.

proposed reforms in the marriage laws of England would be extremely imperfect, unless they dealt with the question of divorce. Marriage differs from all ordinary contracts in the extreme difficulty of dissolving it—a difficulty arising from the ecclesiastical character which has been imposed upon it, and from the fact that it has been looked upon as a religious bond instead of as a civil contract. Until the time of the Reformation, marriage was regarded as a sacrament by all Christian people, and it is so regarded by the majority of them up to the present day. When the Reformers advocated divorce, it was considered as part of their general heresy, and as proof of the immoral tendency of their doctrines. Among Roman Catholics the sacramental—and therefore the indissoluble—character of marriage is still maintained, but among Protestants divorce is admitted, the laws regulating it varying much in different countries.

In England—owing to the extreme conservatism of the English in all domestic matters—the Protestant view of marriage made its way very slowly. Divorce remained within the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, and these granted only divorces a mensâ et thoro in cases where cruelty or adultery was pleaded as rendering conjugal life impossible. These courts never granted divorces a vinculo matrimonii, which permit either—or both—of the divorced persons to contract a fresh marriage, except in cases where the marriage was annulled as having been void from the beginning; they would only grant a separation "from bed and board," and imposed celibacy on the divorced couple until one of them died, and so set the other free. There was indeed a report drawn up by a commission, under the authority of 3 and 4 Edward VI., c. ii., which was intended as a basis for the re-modelling of