It has sanctioned the desertion of women by their seducers, and what is even worse, the desertion of children by their fathers and mothers, for, of course, if the parents were not priest-joined, the offspring must be of the devil. A man may, according to this dogma, have lived the life of a fiend, ruining women, bringing children into the world to live or die as the poor law or hunger should order; but this is no hindrance to his obtaining the blessing of "the Church" should he one day take it into his head to submit to be married to one woman--for gain, for any reason, or none. Scoundrel and saint are alike welcome to the priest's services and blessings if the marriage fees be paid; and with the full concurrence and blessing of any sectary in the world, a man may disjoin himself from a woman or women he has lived with for years in order to take another, if there was no marriage uniting him to these he deserted. God, of course, could not be expected to "join" those who never sought a priest's help. The whole basis of this treatment of the sexes is grossly and blasphemously immoral, and the fruits of it are visible on every side. To it we owe the highly nourishing character of the "social evil" quite as much as to man's inherent depravity, and we shall never really begin to overcome that evil until the whole of the teachings and assumptions of the sects, as applied to marriage and divorce, are swept clean out of the public mind. Who is there to whom the history of some poor woman betrayed and deserted is not known--a woman, it may be, tender-hearted and true, as worthy of wifehood as any of her sex? Did society pity that woman? Have you pitied her? Perhaps, but would you not also gather up your garments and pass by on the other side, if you met her in public? Habit is so strong, you will say in excuse; yes, yes, habit is strong, and the woman is weak. Why should one heed her? She brought her fate on herself. Leave her to perish. The man she loved has left her, and the world treats her no worse than he. If her own sex spits upon her and hisses at her, what can man do? These be the thoughts of most men over broken lives, and most readers may therefore feel impatient that I should linger over the ruin and fall of a poor peasant lass. Yet what can I do? my task is to write the history of this family; its sorrows and failings, its burdens and tears, are all that it has wherewith to claim the world's attention. And to my thinking, they mean much. Their lives were real to them, as yours, reader, is to you, and they had a part in making up the pitiful social life of this decrepit old England possibly just as high as yours.