What it is really founded on is the morality of the
tenth commandment, which English women will one day succeed in
obliterating from the walls of our churches by refusing to enter
any building where they are publicly classed with a man's house,
his ox, and his ass, as his purchased chattels. In this morality
female adultery is malversation by the woman and theft by the man,
whilst male adultery with an unmarried woman is not an offence at
all. But though this is not only the theory of our marriage laws,
but the practical morality of many of us, it is no longer an
avowed morality, nor does its persistence depend on marriage; for
the abolition of marriage would, other things remaining unchanged,
leave women more effectually enslaved than they now are. We shall
come to the question of the economic dependence of women on men
later on; but at present we had better confine ourselves to the
theories of marriage which we are not ashamed to acknowledge and
defend, and upon which, therefore, marriage reformers will be
obliged to proceed.
We may, I think, dismiss from the field of practical politics the
extreme sacerdotal view of marriage as a sacred and indissoluble
covenant, because though reinforced by unhappy marriages as all
fanaticisms are reinforced by human sacrifices, it has been
reduced to a private and socially inoperative eccentricity by the
introduction of civil marriage and divorce.
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