Apart from questions of immature age and near relationship, marriages in the United States are generally contracted without restriction. The young of both sexes are usually conceded full liberty to make their own selection, the burden of the support of both being generally assumed by the husband. The consequence is that such unions are frequently entered upon with slight real acquaintance of each other, the wife is wholly dependent, and the husband has a heavy load to carry,――conditions calculated to intensify the struggle for existence and diminish the happiness of home. From considerable observation of family life in both countries, I believe that the French system is superior to ours. In a French family of the middle or upper classes, the parent who desires to marry a daughter, for instance, takes pains to introduce and recommend young men of suitable station. No coercion is used on either side. Only when an affection naturally springs up is the union decided upon. A marriage-settlement is drawn by which each of the young couple receives a certain amount of property, wholly independent of the control of the other. Thus they are freed from the severest pressure of monetary anxiety, and, what is especially valuable, the wife has a recognized place of power, and secures her rightful prestige in the family circle. I have often observed how superior is the position of the wife in France to what it is in this country. The reason is in the better method of forming marriages. A sympathetic marriage is the happiest condition of human life; but one without sympathy is a hateful servitude. How distressing to be obliged to live _for_ those whom we cannot bear to live _with_! The number of unhappy marriages in the United States may be guessed from the records of the divorce courts, which register only some of the most unhappy. The divorces granted annually sever nearly thirty thousand couples, and this although in many States such separation is costly, slow, and difficult. These figures represent, therefore, but a small fraction of the marriages which are galling the backs of one or both of the parties concerned. When we reflect what the true foundations of the marital relations should be,――love, affection, sympathy,――it would appear wholly foreign to its character that it should be made an obligatory fetter and a continued curse by any law, civil or religious. The moral sense, personal affection, parental feeling, and the sentiment of society, would seem to be sufficient to preserve all those unions which should be preserved. Their severance should be left to the option of the parties concerned alone. Surely the happiness of the individual would be better consulted by such an arrangement than by that which now prevails.