IS MARRIAGE A CONTRACT?
Even among those who hold most liberal views with regard to divorce, but few can free themselves from the old conception that marriage is a contract. A liberal American paper expresses this idea in the following words:
"Marriage is a civil contract. It is not indissoluble, for the law has provided for divorce. They decide only in extreme cases, which as a rule decide themselves. The marriage contract, like all other contracts, ought to be dissoluble with the consent of the contracting parties. We go even farther: it ought to be dissoluble on the mere application of one of the two parties, for as soon as it becomes oppressive for one it becomes ruinous to both, and ought to cease at once."
If marriage were, as this paper says, a relation of contract, that which constitutes the essence of marriage would have to be created with it by the contract, which nobody would maintain; but if it is only a personal relationship, it requires, like other personal relationships, for instance friendship, neither an "application" for a divorce, nor any other formal separation, not even an agreement between the married parties, but both parties are actually free at any moment to discontinue the relationship.
