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. Theoretically, our
civilly married couples are to a Catholic as unmarried couples
are: that is, they are living in open sin. Practically, civilly
married couples are received in society, by Catholics and everyone
else, precisely as sacramentally married couples are; and so are
people who have divorced their wives or husbands and married
again. And yet marriage is enforced by public opinion with such
ferocity that the least suggestion of laxity in its support is
fatal to even the highest and strongest reputations, although
laxity of conduct is winked at with grinning indulgence; so that
we find the austere Shelley denounced as a fiend in human form,
whilst Nelson, who openly left his wife and formed a menage a
trois with Sir William and Lady Hamilton, was idolized. Shelley
might have had an illegitimate child in every county in England if
he had done so frankly as a sinner. His unpardonable offence was
that he attacked marriage as an institution. We feel a strange
anguish of terror and hatred against him, as against one who