Page:The Feminist Movement - Snowden - 1912.djvu/238

 the sexes in the causes of divorce, and even the minority of three—the Archbishop of York, Sir William Anson, and Sir Lewis Dibdin—are agreed upon the essentially Christian character of the equality principle.

But the Majority Report goes much further, and here comes the division between it and the distinguished churchmen who form the minority. The number of the causes of divorce is recommended to be increased. In addition to adultery, desertion for a period of three years and upwards, cruelty, hopeless insanity, incurable drunkenness, and imprisonment under a commuted death sentence are to constitute cause of divorce, should either party desire it. In all probability tens of thousands of people justly entitled to take advantage of one or more of these causes will decline to do so on religious, sentimental, or economic grounds. Experience in Scotland has not shown that there is a rush of injured wives to the Divorce Court because it has been placed within their power to divorce a faithless husband. Family ties and money considerations have probably exerted their restraining influence, and will continue to do so. Nor will those wishful of observing the canon law, who hold deep convictions concerning the indissolubility of marriage, be under any obligation to spare themselves one atom of suffering which may arise from an unhappy