All this can be seen in the laws regarding marriage and divorce. These, as well as our prejudices in such matters, are still largely determined by the dead hand of the Middle Ages. But the Teutonic ideal of the equality of the marriage partnership has survived the accumulation of dogma. Our release from its grip has not depended on the divorce of an English king, nor the accompanying religious schism. There is in us that which was destined to carry us up through the pains of changing social conditions to more satisfactory relations between the husband and the wife and society. {72} In our efforts to attain our ideals we are using many local laws. The British Isles have three: English, Scottish, and Irish. If the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man were considered, there would be six. Besides this, members of the royal family are subject to special restrictions. Newfoundland and New Zealand have marriage laws of their own. Canada has eleven, the Union of South Africa has four, and Australia six.[72-1] In the United States there are forty-eight. This makes a total of seventy-four sets of laws in the seven self-governing nations regarding who may marry and divorce and how. These seventy-four different sets are not, however, strange and dissimilar. As in the case of suffrage, each one has many points identical with many others, and the range of variation is small. All are monogamous; all allow freedom of choice to the marrying parties; all hold marriage and divorce to be civil matters, and consider ministers and priests of religious denominations as civil officials for the legalizing of marriages. All prohibit marriage within certain degrees of relationship, the tendency being not to include among them the relationship-by-marriage impediments surviving from medieval practice, such as the various deceased spouse's brother or sister laws. The majority allow divorce, although in some, like Newfoundland and South Carolina, marriage is by law indissoluble. The trend at present seems to be towards safe-guarding marriage, but to make easier the means of divorce. Men and women are coming more {73} nearly to an equality before the law. Such enactments as that of New South Wales permitting a husband and wife to contract financially with each other shows the trend of our beliefs in the rights of any individual to be a distinct personality.