These few facts suffice to prove how often the ideas which to one epoch and to one civilisation seem the most natural, the most evident, and the most simple, are, on the contrary, complex and difficult ideas, at which mankind has arrived only after a long effort, and weary struggles. Is there anything which seems to us more reasonable than to leave to young people, who wish to found a family, ample liberty of judgment and of choice in the matter of the person with whom they will have to pass their lives? Fathers, it is true, often help their sons by giving advice. They readily place at the disposal of their children their own experience. But it is only in very rare instances that they maintain a struggle _à outrance_, to withhold their children from a marriage on which their hearts are set, or to force on them a repugnant alliance. We consider that the individual’s happiness may depend to some extent on his marriage. It is, therefore, just that everybody should have ample liberty of choice. If the law purported to restore to fathers the right to make or unmake their sons’ marriages, we are convinced that at the present day the vast majority of fathers would refuse to assume such a responsibility, and would consider such a power unjust, excessive, and tyrannical. There is not a father to-day who, however averse he may be to a marriage desired by his son or daughter, does not end by telling him or her, provided a little firmness is shown in resisting his arguments, that after all it is not he, but his son or daughter who has to take the husband or wife in question. Indeed, this inclination to pliability on the part of fathers towards their sons is increasing every day. Every day sees a growing disinclination on the part of fathers to fetter, in a matter of such delicacy and of such importance to the personal happiness of the young, the freedom of the latter’s inclinations, the spontaneous rush of their feelings. Besides, what would be the use of having conquered liberty in so many other spheres, if it were withheld in this which, especially to the young, seems the most important of all: the liberty of yielding to the impulse of that passion which at a certain moment of life is the strongest of all, love?