of the individuals, and the various contracts they may enter into with respect to it.  I should not be deterred from the adoption of this principle by the fear that all family relations might be disturbed, for, although such a fear might be justified by considerations of particular circumstances and localities, it could not fairly be entertained in an inquiry into the nature of men and States in general.  For experience frequently convinces us that just where law has imposed no fetters, morality most surely binds; the idea of external coercion is one entirely foreign to an institution which, like marriage, reposes only on inclination and an inward sense of duty; and the results of such coercive institutions do not at all correspond to the intentions in which they originate.”

A long succession of distinguished thinkers—­moralists, sociologists, political reformers—­have maintained the social advantages of divorce by mutual consent, or, under guarded circumstances, at the wish of one party.  Mutual consent was the corner-stone of Milton’s conception of marriage.  Montesquieu said that true divorce must be the result of mutual consent and based on the impossibility of living together.  Senancour seems to agree with Montesquieu.  Lord Morley (Diderot, vol. ii, Ch.  I), echoing and approving the conclusions of Diderot’s Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville (1772), adds that the separation of husband and wife is “a transaction in itself perfectly natural and blameless, and often not only laudable, but a duty.”  Bloch (Sexual Life of Our Time, p. 240), with many other writers, emphasizes the truth of Shelley’s saying, that the freedom of marriage is the guarantee of its durability. (That the facts of life point in the same direction has been shown in the previous chapter.) The learned Caspari (Die Soziale Frage ueber die Freiheit der Ehe), while disclaiming any prevision of the future, declares that if sexual relationships are to remain or to become moral, there must be an easier dissolution of marriage.  Howard, at the conclusion of his exhaustive history of matrimonial institutions (vol. iii p. 220), though he himself believes that marriage is peculiarly in need of regulation by law, is yet constrained to admit that it is perfectly clear to the student of history that the modern divorce movement is “but a part of the mighty movement for social liberation which has been gaining in volume and strength since the Reformation.”  Similarly the cautious and judicial Westermarck concludes the chapter on marriage of his Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (vol. ii, p. 398) with the statement that “when both husband and wife desire to separate, it seems to many enlightened minds that the State has no right to prevent them from dissolving the marriage contract, provided the children are properly cared for; and that, for the children, also, it is better to have the supervision of one parent only than of two who cannot agree.”