d the
words of Christ do not restrict divorce to the single cause of actual
adultery, while elsewhere in the New Testament divorce for desertion is
expressly sanctioned.

The Roman Catholic Church, while it pronounced the marriage tie
indissoluble, at the same time reserved to the Pope the right to grant
absolute divorce, a right which was often exercised for reward, while
her Ecclesiastical Courts in the meantime declared many marriages null
and void upon so-called impediments established solely upon the
confession of one or the other of the parties seeking divorce. This
course is hard to explain satisfactorily if we admit a sincere belief in
the justice of her own dogma. It was from this practice of the Church
that came the custom of granting partial divorce, or, as it was termed,
divorce from bed and board--a divorce which was one only in name, and
made a bad matter worse, surrounding both parties with temptations, and
being, as it has been said, an insult to any man of ordinary feelings
and understanding. It was, to be sure, an attempt to comply with the
established doctrine of the Church, but it was a compromise with
common-sense. To this same source may be traced the curious procedure in
England, known as a suit for the restoration of conjugal rights, wherein
a husband or wife, who, being unable to obtain a a genuine divorce, had
separated from his or her partner for cause, might be compelled by the
power of the law to return to the "bliss too lightly-esteemed."

There is one state in our Union in which, as one of her Judges puts it,
"to her unfading honor," not a single divorce has been granted for any
cause since the Revolution. But the fact remains, not so much to her
unfading honor, perhaps, that she has found it necessary to regulate by
statute the proportion of his property which a married man may bestow
upon his concubine, while at the same time adultery is not an indictable
offence. Another of her Judges has said from the bench, "We often see
men of excellent characters unfortunate in their marriages, and virtuous
women abandoned or driven away houseless by their husbands, who would be
doomed to celibacy and solitude if they did not form connections which
the law does not allow, and who make excellent husbands and wives
still."

This judicial utterance makes an excellent basis for the statement that
it is better to adapt the law to facts as we find them, than to proceed
on the principle that as there is