Literary Cadet, And Saturday Evening Bulletin

DIVORCES.—The facility with which the marriage contract is dissolved in this State, has long been cast at us by foreigners, as a reproach and as disgraceful to our institutions and laws. At the present term of the Supreme Court of this State, sixteen applications for divorce have been filed, and it is not improbable that all of them will be granted.

It certainly does appear to a reflecting mind, that the evil can, and ought to be remedied; and the longer it is allowed to exist, the more difficult will be its eradication, and the more common will be the family discords, jarrings, and heart-burnings.

The marriage-institution is a solemn one, it is one on which the prosperity of society and the nation mainly depend, and if it be not protected and revered, we may anticipate a state of society, at once the most revolting to our senses, and hideous in its consequences.

Under the present existing state of our laws on this subject, the man whose affections become alienated from his first love, and are conferred on some worthless courtezan, can easily obtain a dissolution of his obligations to his wife, and take to his embraces, the fiend who seeks his ruin rather than his happiness. A fond and confiding wife is shipwrecked in her hopes, her heart is rent in twain, and a progeny of children are thrown upon the world, to receive its scorn, its contempt, and to fall victims to dissipation, wretchedness and crime.

The evils arising from divorces are incalculable, and the remedy of them is left to the sober consideration of the philanthropist and christian.

Divorces, in nine cases out of ten, originate in the incontinence and dissipation of the one party, or in the moral depravity of the other. It is not common that the parties are mutually willing to separate, though they are certain that they cannot live happy together; and no law should divide them, whilst the wife wishes to cling to the husband, or the husband to the wife; nor should any thing save positive crime, be considered a sufficient cause, to absolve the union into which they mutually entered. It becomes the Legislature to take the subject up immediately, and to devise means which will secure the State against an evil which has too long existed. It has been suggested by an eminent jurist, that if petitions for divorce were required to appear before the Legislature, instead of the Supreme Court, the evil would be measurably eradicated; for hundreds who feel no delicacy in preferring their petitions to the Judiciary, would not venture before the Legislature.

Divorces are now so easily obtained among us, that citizens from other States resort to ours to accomplish their ends, and we doubt if five of the sixteen of those who have preferred their petitions to the Supreme Court, are natives of Rhode Island. The subject of divorce is one of vast importance; it is one on which legislation might be profitably spent, and we hope it will meet the early attention of the Legislature at the October session.

Something must be done, or we might as well destroy the marriage institution, and encourage crime and adultery.