Every modern State has wrestled with this problem, and for the most part ineffectually. Where there is no divorce, as in England before 1857,[10] or among the poorer classes who cannot afford divorce, irregular unions and prostitution undoubtedly flourish. Where a compromise is introduced, the permanence of marriage, and therefore of the home, becomes correspondingly impaired, while there are left a number of unhappy cases for which divorce is not allowed.[11] The English civil law is particularly unhappy in its compromise. It is based on the Protestant interpretation of the passage in St. Matthew already mentioned, namely that divorce is permissible where adultery has occurred, and it goes on to make it easier for the husband to sue for divorce when the wife has committed adultery than for the wife to do so in the reverse circumstances. Hence it places a premium on adultery, and exaggerates its importance as regards other sins. It deliberately incites an unhappy wife to commit adultery in order to obtain relief--she can usually evade the vigilance of the King's Proctor--and it singles out adultery as a worse sin than, let us say, cruelty or habitual drunkenness, for which divorce is not at present obtainable. In fact it is difficult to find any logical or moral defence for the English law as it stands. Let us first see how far the popular critics of the Catholic doctrine of indissoluble marriage are wrong. They regard marriage as simply a contract, from which it follows that divorce should be obtained by mutual consent, or even on the application of one of the parties. But this ignores, among other things, one vital natural law. Marriage begets parenthood, and between the parents of the same child there is a definite and permanent relationship. No Act of Parliament can make men and women cease to be the parents of their own children. Nor, even in childless marriages, is the sense of permanence an artificial convention which can be abolished by the decree of a court. The deeper the love, the more permanent must its nature tend to be. Love is not a contract; it is a spiritual bond. It is impossible, I contend, to think of a normally healthy marriage without realizing that both the man and woman naturally enter into it with the assumption that it will be a permanent relationship. The possibility of a family, the break-up of the maiden life--even the furnishing of a home, is evidence of a strong probability in the minds of the parties that the step which is being taken is something more than a temporary contract. Indeed, the marriage is only temporary if unhappiness arises. Men and women marry because they want to enter into as permanent a relationship as possible; they enter into it because, as they say, they wish to "settle down." The natural desire of man is that marriage should be permanent.