more radical
Protestants turned over the whole matter to the state. In New England
desertion and cruelty were accepted alongside adultery as sufficient
grounds for divorce, and the legislature sometimes granted it by
special enactment.

81. =Investigation and Legislation in the United States and
England.=--The divorce question provoked some discussion in this
country about the time of the Civil War, and some statistics were
gathered. Twenty years later the National Government was induced by
the National Divorce Reform League to take a careful census of
marriage and divorce. This was published in 1889, and revised and
reissued in 1909. These reports aroused the States which controlled
the regulation of marriage and divorce to attempt improved
legislation. Almost universally among them divorce was made more
difficult instead of easier. The term of residence before divorce
could be obtained was lengthened; certain changes were made in the
legal grounds for divorce; in less than twenty years fourteen States
limited the privilege of divorced persons to remarry until after a
specified time had elapsed, varying from three months to two years.
Congress passed a uniform marriage law for all the territories. It was
believed almost universally that the Constitution should be amended so
as to secure a federal divorce law, but experience proved that it was
better that individual States should adopt a uniform law. The later
tendency has been in this direction.

At the same time, the churches of the country interested themselves in
the subject. The Protestant Episcopal Church took strong ground
against its ministers remarrying a divorced person, and the National
Council of Congregational Churches appointed a special committee which
reported in 1907 in favor of strictness. Fourteen Protestant churches
combined in an Interchurch Committee to secure united action, and the
Federal Council of Churches recorded itself against the prevailing
laxness. The purpose of all this group action was to check abuses and
to create a more sensitive public opinion, especially among moral and
religious leaders.

In Great Britain, on the other hand, divorce had always been
difficult. There the strictness of the law led to a demand for a study
of the subject and a report to Parliament. The result was the
appointment of a Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes,
consisting of twelve members, which investigated for three years, and
in 1912 pr