now a reasonable conservatism is the safer course. Yet divorce is sanctioned by the state as an individual right; and there may be occasions when the exercise of the right becomes a social duty. The right is, of course, capable of serious abuse. Loose divorce laws may even invite crime. Nevertheless, it is fallacious to represent the institution of divorce as in itself a menace to social morality. It is not helpful to allege, as is often done, that with the increase of divorce certain crimes wax more frequent, thus insinuating the effect for the cause. It is just as illogical to assume that the prevalence of divorce in the United States is a proof of moral decadence as compared with other countries in which divorce is prohibited or more restricted. To forbid the use of a remedy does not prove that there is no disease. Is there any good reason for believing that what Tocqueville said fifty years ago is not true today? "Assuredly," he declares, "America is the country in the world where the marriage tie is most respected and where the highest and justest idea of conjugal happiness has been conceived."[837] It is remarkable, says Lecky, "that this great facility of divorce should exist in a country which has long been conspicuous for its high standard of sexual morality and for its deep sense of the sanctity of marriage."[838] Bryce passes a similar judgment: "So far as my own information goes, the practical level of sexual morality is at least as high in the United States as in any part of northern or western Europe (except possibly among the Roman Catholic peasantry of Ireland)." There "seems no ground for concluding that the increase of divorce in America necessarily points to a decline in the standard of domestic morality, except perhaps in a small section of the wealthy class, though it must be admitted that if this increase should continue, it may tend to induce such a decline."[839] Even more emphatic is Commissioner Wright. After eloquently describing the relatively high place which woman has reached in our land, he continues: "I do not believe that divorce is a menace to the purity and sacredness of the family; but I do believe that it is a menace to the infernal brutality, of whatever name, and be it crude or refined, which at times makes a hell of the holiest human relations. I believe the divorce movement finds its impetus outside of laws, outside of our institutions, outside of our theology; that it finds its impetus in the rebellion of the human heart against that slavery which binds in the cruelest bonds of the cruelest prostitution human beings who have, by their foolishness, by their want of wisdom, or by the intervention of friends, missed the divine purpose, as well as the civil purpose of marriage. I believe the result will be an enhanced purity, a sublimer sacredness, a more beautiful embodiment of Lamartine's trinity,--the trinity of the father, the mother, and the child"--to