Arnold, Matthew, 1822-1888; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
But his "hedge of the law" had other thorns besides those with which he
pierced the Divorce Court and its hideous literature. He had shrewd
sarcasms for all who, by whatever method, sought to gratify "that double
craving so characteristic of our Philistine, and so eminently
exemplified in that crowned Philistine, Henry the Eighth--the craving
for forbidden fruit and the craving for legality." He poured scorn on
the newspapers which glorified "the great sexual insurrection of the
Anglo-Teutonic race," and the author who extolled the domestic life of
Mormonism. "Mr. Hepworth Dixon may almost be called the Colenso of Love
and Marriage--such a revolution does he make in our ideas on these
matters, just as Dr. Colenso does in our ideas on religion." He thus
forecasts the doings of a Philistine House of Commons in 1871. "Mr. T.
Chambers will again introduce that enfranchising measure, against which
I have had some prejudices--the Bill for enabling a man to marry his
deceased wife's sister. The devoted adversaries of the Contagious
Diseases Act will spread through the length and breadth of the land a
salutary discussion of this equivocal measure and of all matters
connected with it; and will thus, at the same time that they oppose
immorality, enable the followers of even the very straitest sects of
Puritanism to see life." All these various attempts to break down the
"hedge of the law" received in turn their merited condemnation; but
always we are brought back from the consideration of kindred evils, to
the proposal to legalize marriage with a wife's sister. Thus the
imaginary leader-writer of the _Daily Telegraph_ summarizes the
controversy: "Why, I ask, is Mr. Job Bottles' liberty, his Christian
liberty, as our reverend friend would say, to be abridged in this
manner? And why is Protestant Dissent to be diverted from its great task
of abolishing State Churches for the purpose of removing obstacles to
the 'sexual insurrection' of our race? Why are its poor devoted
ministers to be driven to contract, in the interests of Christian
liberty, illegal unions of this kind themselves, _pour encourager les
autres_? Why is the earnest Liberalism and Nonconformity of Lancashire
and Yorkshire to be agitated on this question by hope deferred? Why is
it to be put incessantly to the inconvenience of going to be married in
Germany or in the United States, that greater and better Britain--
Which gives us manners, freedom, virtue, power?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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