For a considerable period proceedings in the High Court of Justice have shown that there is a real need of reform in the law relating to women. Judges have been outspoken recently on the subject, but there seems to be a conflict, as Mrs Rutherford pointed out in a well-reasoned letter which we published yesterday "between Church and State." It is hard to see what social or religious purpose can be served by refusing to sever a matrimonial bond between an insane murderer and his wife. It is equally hard to understand what benefit there can be to the community in fettering a woman to a man who by reason of disease - undisclosed at the time of marriage - is incapable of becoming the father of healthy children. This is not a question of rendering the law of divorce so lax as to encourage a disrespect for the marriage bond. There is a serious social issue which involves the well-being of the nation. If Mrs Rutherford be right in her estimate that there are "sixty thousand men and women tied to lunatics confined in our asylums" and "innumerable thousands of silent sufferers" it is difficult to comprehend how there can be any public-spirited opposition to an alteration of the law. Women have been given rightly a part in the governance of the country. They have been recognised, after a long struggle, as having important duties to fulfil in our social system. They deserve, therefore, to receive better treatment under the law, and they should be made aware, at the same time, of the responsibilities of their new status.
But there is another side to the question - a side on which Judges have often commented. The action for breach of promise of marriage is a constant source of criticism. It cannot be said that it could be in the public interest that a couple should be married when one of them has lost all love for the other. There are cases, no doubt, in which the woman suffers by loss of the opportunity of making another match, or by expenditure in contemplation of matrimony, but, as Mr Justice McCardle said in a case yesterday, such actions raise a serious social question. A contract to marry cannot, or ought not to, be compared with a purely commercial agreement. As the Judge said, it is different from a bargain made in the counting-house, and an action based upon what amounts to "a life-long contract" is in many ways "a degrading one for the woman, because she was asking a jury to assess the commercial value of the man whose affection she had lost". We do not quarrel with the verdict in the action which led to these remarks by Mr Justice McCardle. We must agree, however, with the dilemma which was put in the summing-up. Either a defendant has to marry a woman whom he has ceased to care for, or he had to face the ordeal of an action in the High Court. Of recent years the Divorce Court has been overburdened with work. Its task would be greater were men and women to marry without affection merely to avoid legal proceedings. As Mr Justice McCardle said, one must picture "the married life which would follow when the woman had been led to the altar by a man under the threat of an action for breach of his promise of marriage".
