OCR Text |
Show Of all portions of the Union, New England affects the greatest abhorrence of plural marriage. Her press had people affect a higher degree of personal purity than common mortals, reared in a less favored moral atmosphere, are supposed to possess; But if the facts relating to her moral status were seen by the world as God sees them, even the natives of the Sandwich Islands would feel shocked at her immorality. In an edition touching this subject the San Francisco Chronicle says: "Boston is a highly moral city, but its divorce count is an ugly ulcer, which shows that there is bad blood under the smug and sanctimonious exterior. The court opened there on Monday last with 126 cases on the docket, of which thirty-seven were uncontested. Twenty-six more women than men are asking for freedom from the marriage bonds, and several of the parties are of high social standing and large fortune. Boston, in this respect, is a type of the Bay State and Connecticut, in which the marriage laws are now very loose. The venerable ex-President Woolsey of Yale College recently published a sarcastic article on this subject under the head, "Polygamy in New England." He held that freedom of divorce, especially in Connecticut, had produced a state of morals which in many towns was scarcely above Salt Lake City. From the facts and cases that he cited, it seems that the New Englander need not go west to secure an easy divorce, as Connecticut affords him every facility which he could obtain in the most popular courts of Indiana. Instances are given of men and women who have been divorced three and four times and are now entered upon new matrimonial ventures. Many of these people have not moved from their original homes, and the result is a complication of the social state which is alarming." The divorce system of New England has been termed "consecutive polygamy," and is a thousand times worse than the marriage system of the Latter-day Saints would he separated entirely from all religious motives, influences and restraints. |