the divorce
given up. It was done in this way: the man got his married sister to go
with her husband to an hotel, personating him and a woman, and signing
the hotel book with his name as Mr. and Mrs. ----. Now the strange fact
is that though there was no kind of similarity of appearance between the
brother-in-law and the husband, one being very dark and the other very
fair, one being short and the other tall, identity was established and
sworn to by the servant in the hotel where the night had been spent. How
this was arranged I do not know, but the decree_ nisi _and the decree
absolute were granted without any difficulties arising._

Now, none of these cases are unusual, with the possible exception of No.
4; similar divorce suits are heard each session, only that the way in
which the details have been arranged is carefully hidden, to prevent the
losing of the case on a charge of collusion. _The one absolute barrier
in this land to the breaking of a marriage is that both parties want it
to be broken._

It is obvious, surely, without any further argument, that laws making
perjury necessary, which demand the committing of acts of, often
pretended, infidelity, are immoral; nor is their immorality lessened by
the fact that through the rather heavy costs of these "arranged
suits,"[99:1] only the richer and more fortunate classes, as a rule,
are able to bring them.

I ask if this state of things is to be allowed to go on: are decent
people to be driven by the law to make use of such vile trickery? I say
"decent people" advisedly, for those who bring this kind of suit _are
decent_, wishing to act honorably and kindly, and carrying out the
always difficult severing of the marriage bond with as little pain as
possible. There are, I know, other divorce suits in which vindictiveness
and jealousy and anger are the ruling motives, but undefended and
"arranged" suits, more or less on the lines of those I have given, are
becoming more and more frequent. Each law session their number is
increasing. Personally, I regard this as an extraordinarily healthy
sign.

V

I hope I have now sufficiently proved that our unclean divorce laws can
do nothing to preserve the sanctity of marriage. If we know the facts,
to go on pretending that we believe this is to mark ourselves as
hypocrites. We need to get rid of a system that is as immoral in theory
as it is evil in practice.

But, unfortunately, the probability of the law being reformed