onor and renown; national prosperity
and universal respect, than can ever be ours, while fettered and bound,
by the galling chains of an entangling, unwise, and unfair treaty.

* * * * *

THE DIVORCE LEGISLATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.

By Chester F. Sanger.

There evidently exists just at the present time a great and increasing
interest in the old and much debated subjects of divorce, and divorce
legislation; an interest which is intensified as the population of our
younger states with their widely varying laws governing this matter
increases and the dangers and opportunities for fraud grow more
apparent. Naturally enough, therefore, public attention is invited to
these different laws of the several states of our Union, some allowing
divorce for one cause, others refusing it upon the same ground, and one
state, at least, refusing to grant a divorce for any cause whatever. The
remedy for this seems to many to be a national divorce law, establishing
in all the states a uniform mode of procedure and a uniform basis upon
which all petitions for divorce must be grounded; it must also fix the
status of the parties in every state and prescribe the several property
rights of each after the entry of the judicial decree which separates
them from a union, not of God, as some would try to teach, but often
from fetters, the weight and horror of which are known to the parties
alone, or to those, who, unlike our theoretical reformers, have had some
practical experience in the actual operation of our divorce courts.

While it is a fact, overlooked by the enthusiasts on this subject, that
no such national law can be passed without an amendment to the
constitution, since the passage of such an act would be an invasion of
the rights reserved to the several states; yet in view of this
widespread interest in the question, the development and present
condition of the laws regulating divorce in our own Commonwealth becomes
an interesting matter of inquiry. While such a discussion has little or
nothing to do directly with the moral aspects of the subject, it is well
to note in passing that the doctrine of the indissolubility of the
marriage relation was not made a tenet of the church until as late as
1653. The Mosaic Law made the husband the sole judge of the cause for
which the woman might lawfully be "put away," and many Bibical scholars
of great attainments have maintained that when rightly interprete