Here is another picture--John married Catharine in 1896. There was one child. When the infant was nine months old Catharine was forced to leave her husband on account of his drunken habits. The child went to its grandmother and Catharine went to service for seven years. After that time she met Charles, a widower, with one child. Being a brave and sensible woman she went to live with him as his wife. They have two children of their own now, one is three years old and the other six months. They have a good home and are very happy, and would like to be married if the law allowed it. Now all that religion has to tell us about these cases is that marriages are made in heaven and that heaven having once made these two utter messes of human affairs, it is impious for human hands and minds to try and mitigate the evil for which heaven is responsible. I wish those for whom these old-world blasphemies have merely a folklore interest would leave this so-called religion mumbling in its outer darkness and apply their practical minds to so reforming the law that the lives of Alfred and Anna and Catharine and Charles and their innocent babies, and hundreds of other good men and women and innocent children, might no longer have to live in this civilised country under any legal disability or under any social shadow of ignominy or shame. In practice these folk very often do marry again without the blessing of Church or State, as in the last-cited case, and live useful and virtuous lives, bringing up happy children in good homes. The law should assist such citizens in the interest of the State, for the community want good homes and healthy children leading happy lives. The recommendation of the Majority Commission in this matter is a very conservative one. It is that habitual drunkenness found incurable after three years from a first order of separation should be a ground for divorce. This, coupled with divorce for cruelty or desertion for three years and upwards, would certainly cover some of the sadder cases that were brought to the notice of the Commissioners.