Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/215

Rh in sacramental grace, if the man declare at the altar of the Lord that he is a Catholic, but a state of shame and sin if he should afterward change his mind and say he is a Protestant; a good marriage if a man give his name John Daniel Jones, but a bad one if it is discovered that he has abstracted a syllable, and that his name is John Nathaniel. As the British marriage law now stands, a man may have three wives legal in different parts of the United Kingdom. This was stated in the House of Commons when the Yelverton case was discussed in Parliament, and a reform in these laws was pronounced absolutely necessary. Of course, this feat of three wives requires a little contrivance. But with good lawyers, and a good fortune to back him, a man might not only set a prosecution for bigamy at defiance, but claim the property of the most richly-endowed wife. When we come to consider the amount of domestic misery occasioned by this patchwork marriage law—falling chiefly on the weaker portion of society, women and children; when we see the wear and tear, the gnawing and corroding effects of litigation for honor, virtue and social status; when we see the broken hearts of wives, deserted in the first marriage, and dishonored of the second, the weary mother claiming legitimacy for her offspring, the down-trodden, shame-branded children vainly claiming the honorable heritage of their parents—all these things filling the land with wretchedness and sorrow, and that from generation to generation—have no hesitation in saying that there needs a thorough and radical reform in the marriage laws of Great Britain.