- In domestic society
- Marriage
- General Considerations on divorce
"The repudiation tolerated among the Jews, was a hard law , to the benefit of the husband against the wife and one of which was a despot, the other a slave. It is therefore not suitable for Christian people, whose charity is the first law, and in whom marriage, returned to the institution of beginning, because of the woman, not a being equal to man, but a using (or Minister) like him. Divorce is a tough law and wrong at once, allowing not only the husband may divorce his wife but she gives the woman against her husband.
Divorce is now more than ever a weak law or oppressive to both sexes, because it delivers them to the depravity of their inclinations, precisely the time when the passions, heightened by the progress of the arts, most need to be contained by the severity of the laws.
Divorce is tolerated among trading nations, because they Represented domestic society and even political society, as a trade association, a social contract. This is a pun, which the slightest attention is enough to dispel the illusion.
The company is developing a domestic trade association, where the partners come with being equal, and where they can retire with equal results. It is a society where the man puts force protection, the woman needs the weakness of one power, the other duty; society where man is placed with the authority of a woman with dignity , where the man comes out with any his authority, but where the woman may not leave with any dignity because of what she wore in the company may not, in case of dissolution that his money back. And is it not unjust that the woman entered the family with youth and fertility, may emerge with the sterility and old age, and that belonging to the domestic state, it is decommissioning of the family to whom she gave life to the age at which nature denied the ability to form another?
Marriage is not an ordinary contract, since the resilient, both parties can not recover the same state they were before training. I say more: what if the contract is voluntary when it was formed, it may not be and do is almost never at its termination, since the two parties who wished to dissolve it, removes the other free to refuse, and has too many ways to force her consent.
And admire the inconsistency here which falls the draft civil code. It is not, "he said, whether the possibility of divorce is good in itself, but" whether it is appropriate for laws to intervene in the coercive power that is naturally something so free, and where heart must have an equal part. " And elsewhere, "conjugal society like no other, the mutual consent can not dissolve the marriage ( note: the Civil Code provides for the dissolution of marriage by mutual consent of spouses) , although it may dissolve any other company. Thus the law itself recognizes so little freedom in this thing naturally so free and so little power to dissolve the parties, even with their consent, formed a union of their consent, that the evidence of their mutual agreement to dissolve their union is a cause which prevents the dissolution and their collusion on this point is a crime that the law punishes by a fine, sure, to form the association, it was necessary to prove the mutual consent of both parties, and for the break must prove that the two parties do not consent, as if to want their concert split was not the strongest proof that the law could be desired from the absence of any disorder, and the need for separation.
Divorce can be favorable in some cases to a family life, is contrary to the conservation of the human species because of divorcing spouses who wish to have no children, to acquire a ground divorce, and abandonment when he leaves Too often, children at night to conserve them, even when a second marriage would not expose their lives and society as a form of what remains, and not what is born, if polygamy raises more children, monogamy canned more.
But if nature does not want the bond of marriage is ever dissolved, the company does claim she sometimes it can not dissolve?
A society that is in its infancy has no other passion than war. This is a child grows, and whose taste is dominant exercise necessary for its physical development. So dissolubility of the marriage bond is safe, because its dissolution is unprecedented, and sometimes, as among the Jews, dissolubility is allowed to promote the growth of a nascent people.
But the age of puberty happens to society as to man, the passions and take on another character. In the first age, the man was at war with the man in the second, he made war on women, and oppresses the pleasure of sex, as the war destroyed the other. The progress of civilization awaken the taste of pleasure, and the arts are competing for the care of embellish everything becomes art, and even the nature and the very necessities of humanity are only dummy enjoyment, that man pursues with zeal and often at the expense of his fellows. In this age of society, allowing dissolubility of the marital bond, it ordered the dissolution. While the law can not permit divorce without introducing an unlimited polygamy for both sexes. To a nation that has public pleasures, and to public women must be public as a brake and public law, all general any imperative to maintain the general order among all, and not private acts, in somehow, ruling solely on a particular sequence of circumstances; laws waiver, optional for the passions and some weaknesses.
Thus, the side that looks human, the law is straightened, and she must now prevent the dissolution of dissolute men, as it forbids, a few centuries ago, the private vengeance fierce and vindictive men: and only in the improvement of laws and not in the progress of the arts, that is the perfectibility of mankind, which is discussed only want to hear.
Moreover, if there were grounds for divorce, this would be those that come from nature, like bodily infirmities which are outside the field of human wills, and that man has no way to stop, and for this reason that the law of the Jews was grounds for divorce. But allow the husband to leave when delivered by the hope of divorce, the inconstancy of their tastes and their violent tendencies, they also formed the adulterous love, dissolve their union, because they unwilling to control their mood, or because the law does not watch over their conduct, they can break the link, when they have released a voluntary absence: it weakened the will, deprave the action is in the wrong man (and he does not need more laws to deregulate that a plan to destroy) is to place the family and the state in a false and against nature, since it is necessary that the family opposes the force of his manners to the weakness of the law, instead of finding in the force of law support the weak against his morals. But where the law is weak, the rule of manners is distorted, and there is no remedy for their inevitable corruption, and where the law is strong, the public authority has a rule fixed, immutable, which it can still maintain the customs and bend.
If dissolution of the marriage bond is allowed, even for adultery, all women who want divorce will be guilty of adultery. Women are a commodity in circulation, and the accusation of adultery will be commonplace and the agreed means of all trade for it is so corrupt that the man reached in England. And in the debates that took place there not long ago in parliament on the need to restrict the right to divorce, the Bishop of Rochester, responding to Lord Mulgrave, argued that ten applications for divorce because of adultery, because we do not get divorced in England for other reasons, there were nine in which the seducer had agreed in advance with the husband, give evidence of infidelity his wife ( note: the same speaker posited that men who had shown in England, the most lenient to divorce, there were shown the most outraged supporters of the French demagoguery. The civil code prohibited the divorced wife for adultery to marry again with his accomplice. This restriction affects the life of the husband: nothing more dangerous than dealing with the passions as well, to let them go to a certain point to stop thereafter) .
This is the place to observe that, in a case of adultery between persons of the highest rank, argued recently in England ( note: Mr. Sturt, member of parliament of England against the Marquess of Blandford, eldest son of the Duke of Marlborough, for adultery with Anne Sturt, daughter of Count Schafftesbury. Meanwhile, another lawsuit by the Honourable Mr. Windham, Minister of SMB in Florence, cons Count Wycombe, eldest son of the Marquess of Lansdowne) , Lord Kenyon, the oracle of the law who presided over the trial in the summary of the case that 'he presented to the judges, attenuated the wrongs of women and even those of her seducer, for the consideration of similar wrongs from the husband, and, by way of compensation, reduced the claim for damages that it had filed against the seducer to 100 pounds.
Nothing better proves that such a decision how the ideas of social justice and even of honor, are perverted in this mercantile nation. Indeed, it assumes between husband and wife natural equality of wrongs, and therefore duties. But the infidelity of the wife dissolves the domestic link, because it puts children in the family of strangers instead of her husband disorders, some serious they may be, are without consequence for the family, and can afflict that the heart of the wife (note " We see, "said the abbot of a cannon Rastignac in the second letter of St. Basil Amphilochius," as in the usual canonical penalties were less severe than to the men towards women, even in cases where men and women were guilty of the sin ") .
Ruling proves I'm talking about the extreme debasement of morals in England, where a husband, even in the highest ranks and the conditions most opulent, do not blush to receive the price of his disgrace, and may from advance speculate on his wife's infidelity and deal with the fortune of her seducer ( note: this is roughly the same among many savage peoples, where the husband is paying a pig roast at the lover caught with his wife, and eats with them. The principle is the same, the currency of payment makes no difference. We find in the English, under the guise of politeness and brilliant progress in the arts, many characters from savages. The flight, the passion for strong drink, taste the meat half and flood-free bread, imperfect laws, etc.. etc.. " A son, barely into adolescence, " said E SSAI on the paternal , " was called as a witness against his father completed his testimony the evidence of a capital crime, and stop his father's death is almost out of his mouth. The ruling was handed down to the last sitting of Carriker-Fergus: the accused's name was William Mowen " ) . It's the same principle in cases of dual intent, the law in England did give both parties deposit cash than they will not fight, and there is one recent example . It was in France, more just ideas, and more particularly of the manners noted: the individual defendant of intent to duel gave bond in honor of his deference to the law and an outraged husband, even in lower classes, had been noted with infamy if he had sued for monetary relief.
Trade is, in society, what man in the natural need to eat and drink. The man can do, of eating and drinking, his principal business, without falling into the deepest degradation and a total forgetfulness of duty. A nation that puts trade at the level of social institutions, which sees it as a duty, not a need, which gives him every way possible an unlimited extension, rather than confine within the bounds of the indispensable need, can be dazzled by the brilliance of its businesses and the greatness of his success, but his physical overweight cache souls debased and vile manners: a people any material and it will sooner or later, driven by a moral people. In France, the fury of trade was restrained by institutions that prohibited the practice in some classes of society ( note: hence some people in France could not, without dishonor, to sign undertakings that might subject them to imprisonment for debt, because their persons already engaged in the service of society, could not be alienated in particular) , and maintained the spirit of detachment from riches and a willingness to leave everything to fulfill his duties. There was the strength of France, and if the revolution had destroyed the principle, the French would be sufficiently punished and avenged their enemies enough.
As in England, adultery is the only way to divorce: incompatibility of temperament, as grounds for divorce decreed by existing law, and encored by the Court of Cassation, would in France, means trivial to those who do not have the other, and already we see the inconsistency alleged by all couples who want to separate, and even those alleged by the public who has to criticize the excessive compatibility of their tastes and infamous for their mutual convenience disorders.
It should be noted that the drafters of the Civil Code, which amounted to right against the ground of incompatibility of temperament , enough today to bring about the dissolution of the marriage bond, the permit usual when driving of one spouse to the other makes this one life unbearable ; pattern that strongly resembles that of incompatibility, and that spouses may always assert, because no one can contradict them.
And note here the impropriety, to say nothing more, the law, which allows the formation of new nodes to the woman convicted of adultery by having violated its commitments first, and rewards and oblivion assignments, and infringement of laws: because in a well-regulated state, marriage licenses to all men, should be allowed to divorced spouses, for the same reason that the career of government service, accessible to all citizens, is closed for ever to those who were negligent or dishonest in the performance of their duties.
Thus, in early times, the prohibition of marriage among the canonical penalties that the church inflicted on the murderer and incestuous, and, that sentence could still be used successfully by a vigilant administration. Even if we consider celibacy as a sentence, a spouse who would have a woman away from him guilty, unable to marry another, would not always be unfairly punished, because the faults of women are too often the husband's and almost always accuse their choice of interest or lightness, humor tyranny, his conduct of weakness or bad example. The project
civil code removed, it is true, with one hand what he gives with the other: while it allows the possibility of divorce, it interferes with the exercise. But it is here especially that the law appears to be faulty, and the remedy inadequate and derisory. The legislature declares
marriage dissolvable: finishing his action. It is for people to be servants to one another under the law. Only they can be judges of domestic crime, because only they can have knowledge, and that inner conviction that is born for each one, even his suspicions and fears, is equivalent to a misdemeanor domestic to conclude that the magistrate for the Prosecution of public offenses must seek in testimony outside.
Indeed, the five cases that the draft civil code assigned to the divorce, only two public slander and the abandonment of some of the other may be subject to public evidence, because these crimes out of both domestic enclosure, and this is so true that defamation before domestic use only, or abandonment that would take place between spouses who remain in the same enclosure, separated and without communication between them, which is possible and even common, would not be admitted as grounds for an application for divorce, both parties they dwell at both ends of a park several miles in extent, if they were in the same enclosure, because in this case, libel or abandonment, though real, are not public. But for the other three cases, the most common and most serious of all: 1 the usual driving which makes living together intolerable 2 attempt on the life of a spouse by the other; 3 ° adultery: "where is," asks with good reason, in its opinion, the Court of Cassation, which, therefore its principles, is that if the law allows divorce, the will of a party sufficient for it; "where is that a husband, a woman may ask? where they can prove is that? where is that one can judge? A woman will have proved his innocence victorious in court, it will be irretrievably condemned by her husband, and often by the public. The judges have not acquired the evidence of the mood of an annoying husband, while his wife will have the conviction that it is intolerable that they will sometimes soft and tender, where he will attempt to design and homicide; the sacred character of virtue to shine them on the forehead of a secular adultery. And certainly there is no tyranny under both reasonable and more laughable than a magistrate interposing between husband and wife, dissatisfied with each other, just ask their mutual arrangements, to judge coldly of their degree of mutual estrangement, advises hatred to love and to soften the fury, the time required to impatience and delays to passion, jealousy denies her suspicions ( note: Molière has twice what about the scene in George Dandin and the Tartuffe, where Ms. Pernelle stubbornly deny that ensures qu'Orgon have been so pleasantly ) and the heart his wound, and seems to tell of husbands who accuse each other of murder and adultery: "Wait, you are not yet enough to split between you and me. "We wanted
hinder the possibility of divorce by the long and expensive forms which accompany the request and delay the decision. But do we carefully consider the disadvantages of a voluntary act, which, because of difficulties of its implementation will be optional for the passions, and weaknesses of the rich, that is to say, those who were generally less violent passions and moods more compatible, because education decorum and taught them to force them? The possibility of divorce will she like those shows, where between the rich at great expense, and conveniently located, and where the poor, who also wants to see, besieged the windows and roofs, and Is not obvious that where one divorced by dint of money, the other divorced dint of crime?
I frequently compared in the course of this work, divorce as practiced among Christians practiced polygamy in the East, because divorce is indeed a real polygamy. The authors themselves Protestants do not consider otherwise; and Theodore Beza begins his treatise De polygamy and divorce printed in Deventer
"I urge the plurality of polygamy marriages there are two kinds: either a man marries several women at once or previous marriage dissolved, he married another woman. "
In the early days of the Reformation, the courts regarded the divorce as a tacit tolerance of polygamy. Found in a collection of stops after the fact, cited in abbreviated form in the Journal of Jurisprudence to Brown: "T. Gautier and Jacquette Swine, husband and wife after separation in fact, married their separate ways. The governor of La Rochelle sentenced them to be exposed for two hours before the palace, each attached to a collar, the man with two cattails, the woman with two hats. They were ordered to return together, and forbidden to live or to remarry with others under pain of death. This sentence was confirmed by order given to the Board of the edict, November 23, 1606. "And this ruling adds the Editor, was so moderate, expected that the defendants were from the RPR . The newspaper reported the Brown and thereby or a similar one: "In the report of a previous ruling," he said, 'N. and his wife, convinced of bigamy, the parliament of Paris, were sentenced only to exposure, since they were Calvinists, and that the law allows divorce, "which means that bigamy or polygamy, that our laws punishing a penalty, the court seemed more worthy of apology in men who allowed their religion to the dissolution of the marriage bond. So the police would not tolerate the Orientals, established in France, including public practice polygamy, but the laws do not punish them for having used, and there would be a consequence of their manners and their laws.
But if polygamy is the Orientals as disruptive to the family as divorce, divorce is usually more dangerous to the state. Indeed, polygamy leaves children with those who have given birth, divorce separates necessarily one or the other. Polygamy, enclosed in the secrecy of the family, practiced without trouble and without scandal sounded the divorce courts of his complaints, and amuse the idleness of the circles of his indiscreet revelations. Turks buy their neighbor's daughter and we, with divorce, we remove the wife of our friend. In the East women are reserved: "Nothing equals, "Says Montesquieu," the modesty of Turkish women and Persian. "Wherever the possibility of divorce allows a woman to see a husband in every man possible, women are shameless, or at least without delicacy, because the plurality of men is the result of divorce, is more contrary to the nature and public morals, the plurality of wives as polygamy allows men from the East. "If we leave," said Madame Necker, "married women the freedom to make a new choice, and soon their eyes will wander over all men, and soon the only privilege of perjury the distinguished actresses, who are entitled to preferences and taste changes. "What are
with these natural reasons for the indissoluble marriage bond, all human motives that can claim to justify the power to dissolve? No matter, after all, some people suffer in the course of this transitory life, provided the reason, nature, society, are not in pain? And if man is sometimes with regret that a string can not break, does he suffer not at all moments of his life, his passions he can not tame, his inconstancy it can be determined, and lifetime of the good man is anything other than a continuous struggle against his inclinations? Man is to match the wedding moods and characters, and to prevent disorder in the family, by the equality of its humor and wisdom of his conduct. But when he decided in an election against all laws of reason, and only on grounds of caprice or interest, when he founded the happiness of his life on what does the fun a few moments when he poisoned himself the pleasures of a union reasonable conduct by a weak or unjust miserable by his fault, he is entitled to require the company to report its mistakes or its wrongs ? Should we dissolve the family, to save new pleasures to his passions, or new opportunities for its fickleness, and corrupt an entire people because some are corrupt?
How is the wisest Christian religion! It prohibits men the love of riches and pleasures, because spawning bad marriages, and directs the children to follow the advice of their parents in this most important action of their lives. Once the union is formed, it controls the media at the height, softness at the lower, virtue at all. It intervenes constantly to prevent discontent, or terminate the discussions. But if, despite his exhortations, defects and vices of any change link life into a misery every day it released, but without breaking it. It separates the body, but not dissolve the partnership and leaving the sour mood of mellow time, it spares the hearts of hope and ease to meet: and this religion, which forbids all the passions, and forgive all the fragility and this religion, which commands man guilty of hope in the goodness of its Creator, do not want the woman reckless despair or mild tenderness of her husband. Philosophy student divorce between spouses as an impenetrable wall; religion separation space between them like a veil Informal. Philosophy, which rejects human society as religion all the means of grace ( note: the philosophers who inspired or governed the revolution in France, giving the people the right to condemn, had deprived the king of the pardon) and remission, with no return withers lower than a woman guilty by the indelible stamp of divorce which she prints on her forehead, and taking away the dignity of a second wife union can not make it, and with which, as Tacitus said, we deal once and for life, cum spe votoque uxoris soles transigitur it the book without any defense inconstancy of his inclinations: but the doctrine of the one who forgave the adulterous woman, the more indulgent to human weakness, the party retains the name of his unfaithful husband, when, by the separation, the men take off the rights of a woman, and still watches over the honor of one who did not care for her happiness. It
civil law to the rest, and separations have become so common recently, are far less frequent, if the law required the husband separated conditions that would do the punishment for all, not a complacency for any of them.
And, for example, a woman separated her husband, even to violence and abuse, should in the future, retire to the bosom of the religious society, only society to which she still belongs. This refuge is open to repentance, weakness, misfortune, he would offer a more intimate union with the Godhead, the only consolation that should look and taste to a virtuous woman deserted by husband unjust, it would remove the society scandal of a being who is out of its natural place, a wife who is no longer dependent on her husband, and a mother who is no more authority over his children, and whose driving, often ambiguous, as the existence, carries in the family and other trouble she has in hers. It would also be necessary and extremely useful for public morality, that every man separated from his wife was forced to surrender, and forbidden to aspire to any public office, because it is indispensable for the family that the head carries the authority by itself when no longer Minister to exercise in his place and especially because it is important to teach men that the public office does not exempt domestic virtues. This law, very natural, would be more effective against the abuse of separations the possibility of divorce.
Perhaps the law should be considered as separated spouses of dead relatives, and then she would appoint a guardian for their children if they had property or, if they did not, she would entrust their education to the administration, the gathering in public, to wrest the misfortune of being torn between estranged parents, to be reared in hatred of a father or a mother's contempt, heirs of their mutual resentments,
and sentenced to perpetuate hatred in fraternal.
Reply to some objections. It opposes the example of Poland where the Catholic religion allows divorce, and the Protestant countries that practice it, they say, without inconvenience, we will even claim that morals are better than in countries where divorce is forbidden.
1 is denied, as far as the cause, the dissolution of the marriage bond, formed with all the conditions for its validity, is permitted in Poland, and not to interrupt the light of these reflections by lengthy quotations, it refers to the end of the book supporting documents formally establish the falsity of a belief that educated men can no longer afford support.
It follows that marriage is indissoluble in Poland as in other Catholic States, but that the grounds for revocation are slightly more frequent or more pronounced, and is, in my opinion, a final proof, but conclusive and decisive, the principle so often repeated in this book, and the homogeneity of the two companies, domestic and public, religious and physical, and the similarity of their constitutions in any nation. Indeed, as Poland is the only state of the monarchical Europe that has not been able to reach its natural constitution, the Catholic family itself is less strongly constituted than in other states of the same religion, and Christianity itself is overdue by a mixture of Greeks, Jews, Socinians, Anabaptist, or even suspected occult sects have arisen in this unhappy country, and still be home. Unfortunate nation, who fell back several centuries in the state of childhood, died while trying to return to manhood!
2 ° Manners said, are better in Protestant countries than in Catholic states. This assertion, repeated a thousand times by the many enemies of Christianity, some application development and it is here that IFS must distinguish weak the man of weak laws.
The license in the manners of man was born, it is true, in Italy, the progress of the arts, a necessary consequence of the progress of commerce, favored by princes had been made rich and high, but the license rules same customs, or laws, the North began with Luther's views, supported by news-hungry princes and wealth. Unrest in Italy were personal and sought the shadow of mystery in Germany, they were public or licensed, and while the Italian was weaving a plot to seduce the wife of his neighbor, the German took away under a judge's sentence, and married by a notary, and that's what the Germans called it the blessed reform, as we said, 90, our wonderful constitution . Soon, if we believe the most zealous followers of Luther, the dissolution of morals, the inevitable sequel of such laws was at its height in Germany and comparable to the license of Mohammedanism and we have already seen that Luther even allowed polygamy to the Landgrave of Hesse, but in great secrecy, and even under the seal of confession, sub signet confessionis ( note: Visiting extremely curious the Landgrave of Hesse, and the decision no less curious about Luther and seven other famous doctors of his party, was published in 1679, the duly certified by the Prince Palatine, with the instrument's second marriage. They are found in the history of changes ) .
Christianity was therefore appeal to both ends of Christianity both in the manners of man and the laws of society, when Christendom itself was under attack in its territory with weapons so formidable, so the Ottoman Empire. These two causes of disorder, the license in the arts and weakness in the laws have, since then, market parallel in society until modern philosophy, which consists in both views on the weakest laws, and most decided taste for art, combined in France, as in a home located in the center Europe, these two principles of domestic and public disorder: terrible combination, whose violent explosion reacted against both the North and the South cons, like those terrible shots, suddenly produced by mixing two liquids.
Arts du Midi had penetrated to the north, albeit slowly, following the wealth that trade product, but political causes and religious in the south had prevented the public propagation of the principles of the Reformation. There was therefore a principle Protestant Europe license more than in Catholic Europe, and how reason could she admit that in many cases produced less effect, especially if one considers that Catholicism, with its cult sensitive and embarrassing practice, imposes a barrier to our passions more present and more severe, at the same time it offers us in the austere rules of some institutions, still higher than men, models of posting all the fun?
I fear not to say there had long been more of disorders of the kind mentioned here, among the peoples Protestants in Catholic states: I tell people, because where, as in France, there are only individuals involved in a large population of Catholics, we do not distinguish the difference in habits. I cite in support of my assertion, Major Weiss, Senator Berne, known by its attachment to the French Revolution, which he wanted, too late, to prevent progress in his country, and that shows in his writings a extreme prevention for Protestant nations: "The two most males ( note: this is a compliment that Mr. Major Weiss to address two nations, one of Switzerland's enriched guineas, and the other gave his protection to the canton of Bern. The nations most males are the strongest nations and better, and this is in Europe or the English or Prussian) of Europe, "he says in his Principles of philosophy," the English and Prussian, are those where the weaknesses of love are dealt with more leniently. "In English, the theater is a revolting indecency, and Hugh Blair, a famous professor of belles lettres in Edinburgh, says that the French, particularly, are shocked. Berlin is the city of Europe's most corrupt. Long, Geneva, licensing principles had prevailed on the strictness of form, and there were more disturbances than any city in France the same rank. Manners in France were good in the countryside, and at least decent in the big cities. There are departments where, even now, divorce is unheard of, and where the people would do the first example with horror. Finally, where the identity of climate, productions, food, the same political institutions, the same domestic habits, ignorance equally agreeable arts, can establish between the peoples of the two communions parallels perfectly true, I mean in Switzerland, the advantage is entirely to the Catholics, and morals were as pure as they were dissolute in Fribourg to Bern. I rely here again the authority of the writer Oberland. "I do not know," he said, "countries in Europe where most of the people is less continent than in the canton of Bern," and he cites examples of very strange, reminiscent of the Sami to use their hosts or those of the islanders of the South Sea.
Moreover, it should be noted that even at equal disorders, weakness mores is more apparent where it contrasts with the more stringent laws. Drunkenness, which is not even noticed in England, is a phenomenon in Spain and in all countries where divorce is permitted, it is a good household as one where the husband also does not form new connections.
"In vain," said Madame Necker, "we would argue in favor of divorce, a good understanding of the spouses in Protestant countries, and the purity of home life in the early centuries of Rome. This argument seems invalid, because it only proves that the permission of divorce does not affect dangerous places where they do not benefit. In a word, given the good manners of a people to the possibility of divorce, which he does not wear it to honor the good health of the inhabitants of a country, a doctor in the neighborhood who does there would never be called.
Basically, the goodness or moral corruption is less in domestic actions which result in the sense that they emanate. One people, delivered to the love of gain, as people are generally Presbyterians, is less accessible to any other feeling. There, if man is good, he is without virtue, because it is effortless, and there is no great disorders in human diseases, because there is little affection between men. Magis quam cum extra vitia virtutibus .
But how, after all, dare we argue in favor of divorce, the practice of Protestant nations, when they see themselves, tired of the license it has introduced a search in the manners remedy against the law of the Protestants themselves ( note: Madame Necker, and D. Hume, 18th Test) write against divorce, and the English Parliament, he is more confident today ' Today only one way to adultery, to keep oneself occupied disastrous a law which he was the first author?
And make no mistake about it; if you noticed yet, there are thirty or forty years, some rigidity of manners, or rather some strictness, among people who obey the reformation, it must be attributed solely to the jealousy of sects, which, in the presence of a religion more severe, kept people on the steep slope of corruption place where the imperfection of their dogmas. The Catholic religion in this sense ruled the Presbyterian faith, like the monarchies of Europe ruled by democracies. And we can not doubt that morals throughout Christendom from becoming worse than they were in paganism, or even in France, a time when it was put on the altars of the vice and virtue on the scaffold, if there was no other dam in their overflow the award of philosophy, or phylacteries of theophilanthropists ( note: These phylacteries were moral sentences that the Pharisees spread out on their chests and on their foreheads, and that our theophilanthropists display on the walls where they s 'assemble) .
Remove the Catholicism of the universe, and divorce will become worse than the polygamy of the East, this imperfect state of domestic society, and against nature the public company that produces slavery, children's exposure, the oppression of all the weaknesses of humanity, and is separated from the promiscuity of raw by imprisonment of one sex and maiming of another.
I am not afraid to say, if the divorce is decreed at the same time as the practice of the Catholic religion is established, the people will believe, or you want to destroy religious background, or religion can divorce, and either of these views can produce large disturbances. We can not emphasize enough: the divorce was in 1792 that Consequently, we could any order then, the time and enough men guarding against seduction. Today divorce is regarded as a principle , and the difference is incalculable.
I finish with an important thought. Marriages, which are made to unite the families of the same country, might become their dissolution, in a nation sensitive and delicate appreciation of the blessing and the offense, a fruitful source of hereditary hatreds, which would bring the company to age private wars and domestic condemnation, and there is no town in the province could not divorce one put in more confusion. The Journal de Paris raised, a few months ago, this question: If opposition in the legislature can be as vehement in France it is in England . He alleged, to establish the negative reasons that are much better all the question before us here, and argued with reason, that a people like the French, who eats bread and wine , contempt Staff does not go unpunished, and in many fortiori contempt home, for the vindication home, different from the personal revenge, was among the Franks, and is everywhere, that the additional to public scrutiny, and a sure sign of failure and weakness of political laws.
The public authority must never lose sight of that religion itself, at the same time she ordered the man to forgive, ordered the power to punish "for," she says, "it is not in vain that it bears the sword: " Non enim sine causa gladium Portat . Hence as before, where the courts could not judge or punish accordingly, the authority allowed the condemnation to the man in! E legal battle, and even today is more personal revenge common in countries such as Italy, public prosecution is carried on with less force. Our procedure by jury in criminal cases, is a remnant of the former ruling above the domestic public trial and the proper administration of justice; further evidence of rare discernment of our philosophers, who, in all, bring the Nation Europe's most advanced imperfect habits of his early years.
must therefore return to stronger legislation and prohibiting the passions hope to meet law.
must become convinced of this truth that laws are only suitable for small emerging nations, and they must be more stringent as "a society is more advanced and more relaxed man. So man has done duties to perform more extensive and far more binding than those to which the child is subjected.
It is time for the public to recognize that it has encroached on the domestic power, and can not restore decency in giving him his just rights, because morals are just watching domestic laws. The choices will be more cautious when the suites are more serious, the authority will be sweeter when no longer disputed and that the woman has no property of the person or the disposition of his property. Peace and sitting under the domestic households, where the law of the State will maintain between father, mother and children, natural relationships which are family, and there will be in domestic society, as in public company, or confusion of people, or moving power. "
Louis de Bonald, Du considered divorce in the nineteenth century in relation to domestic state and the state public company (1801) in Complete Works of M. de Bonald , Volume II
