Surely in few parts of the wide world is the truth of these strong words more evident than in those parts of our own country where loose divorce laws have long prevailed. It should be noted that, while never allowing the dissolution of the marriage bond, the Catholic Church has always permitted, for grave causes and under certain conditions, a temporary or permanent "separation from bed and board." * "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," Milman's Ed., Vol. III., p. 236. ** "Divorce and Divorce Legislation," 2d Ed., p. 274. The causes which, _positis ponendis_, justify such separation may be briefly given thus: mutual consent, adultery, and grave peril of soul or body. It may be said that there are persons so unhappily mated and so constituted that for them no relief can come save from divorce _a vinculo_, with permission to remarry. I shall not linger here to point out to such the need of seeking from a higher than earthly power the grace to suffer and be strong. But for those whose reasoning on this subject is of the earth, earthy, I shall add some words of practical worldly wisdom from eminent jurists. In a note to his edition of Blackstone's "Commentaries," Mr. John Taylor Coleridge says: "It is no less truly than beautifully said by Sir W. Scott, in the case of Evans v. Evans, that 'though in particular cases the repugnance of the law to dissolve the obligation of matrimonial cohabitation may operate with great severity upon individuals, yet it must be carefully remembered that the general happiness of the married life is secured by its indissolubility.' When people understand that they must live together, except for a few reasons known to the law, they learn to soften by mutual accommodation that yoke which they know they cannot shake off: they become good husbands and good wives from the necessity of remaining husbands and wives: for necessity is a powerful master in teaching the duties which it imposes. If it were once understood that upon mutual disgust married persons might be legally separated, many couples who now pass through the world with mutual comfort, with attention to their common offspring, and to the moral order of civil society, might have been at this moment living in a state of mutual unkindness, in a state of estrangement from their common offspring, and in a state of the most licentious and unrestrained immorality. In this case, as in many other cases, the happiness of some individuals must be sacrificed to the greater and more general good."