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    who have strangely misapplied to legal rind judicial divorce , that is , to release from a contract , publicly and solemnly obtained from the constituted authorities * on sufficient cause shown , that which our Lord said [ Matt . xix . 8 . ] of the private and irresponsible right of divorce which the Jew possessed under the law of Mode * . That admonition was a generous interposition on behalf of the

    defenceless and oppressed . It enjoined as a moral precept , not as a national law , the restriction of the individual privilege of divorce , which the law sanctioned without limitation * to that single case in which the law did not decree divorce but denounce death . It was the recommendation of an act of mercy . The spirit was , reserve the exercise of this despotic privilege ^ And a most despotic privilege it was , for the occ&feion on Which

    it enables you to save a human life from legal extinction . * By a far-fetched abuse not unworthy of them * Papal priests &iid Protestant bishops have transformed a charitable precept for private conduct , into a public restrictive law . And it is remarkable that we allow divorce de facto to ati unlimited extent * in the only case in which the Jew forfeited his privilege , in that of seduction . For though not recognised as such by the partial and pharisaical morality of the laws , yet , in a moral view , seduction id

    marriage . The poor , abandoned outcasts in our streets are , in fact , the repudiated wives of the men whom our laws allow to cast them off with a caprice and a barbarity worse than ever Btained the soil of Judea with all its divorces and polygamy . It would be seen that a simple contract essentially independent in its nature of priest , or ceremony , could be testified in various wdys ; in Scotland , it may be established simply by a vefrbal declaration , and conduct in this case should be final evidence . What the

    legal rights of tvifehood should be , we will not attempt to define , but however the law might describe them , it ought tt > recognise and sustain them , in every woman so circumstanced . Even a temporary toleration of polygamy would be better , infinitely better , than this eternal flood of prostitution * It is an evil which cries to heaven for redress , and that redress , by saving woman , would purify society .

    Should juster notions of marriage lead to the deliverance of fcociety from these and other evils , it would again become the ministry of happiness on which the Creator pronounced his primeval benediction . Mfty the Dissenters therefore persevere ; establish the principles which they affirm , as well as obtain the

    rights which they claim ; and no * longer hesitate to take such steps as may be necessary to secure the speedy passing of a decisive and effectual measure of redress for a grievance , which having long been oppressive and vexatious , has now become utterly intolerable . ' * See ( tiis matter most ably elucidated in Michaelii ' i Commentaries on the Lawiof Mote * , book 3 . chan . 8 ,

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    142 The Dissenting Marriage Question .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1833, page 142, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2608/page/74/