judgments for personal debts have no force outside of the jurisdiction of the court granting the judgment.

In other States, however, it is held that decrees of divorce, obtained in the sister State after service of process by publication, are effective because a provision of the Constitution of the United States" requiring that full force and effect be given to the judgments and decrees of sister States is held to apply to judgments concerning the domestic relations which fix the status of the parties.

The Supreme Court of the United States recently affirmed in Haddock v. Haddock a decision of the New York Court of Appeals founded on the principles which have always prevailed there. In this case it was held that the wife, who continued to live in New York, was entitled in 1899 to a separation from her husband with an award of alimony when the husband had gone to another State, procured a divorce there in 1881, and married another woman. The court points out that by any different rule the marriage ties would be less protected than any other civil obligation, and that individual rights would be destroyed without a hearing and by tribunals having no jurisdiction over the defendant.

Apart from the Constitution, the determination of the law is left to the State court, and the Supreme Court holds that it will not interfere with the decision of the State court, because of the provision of the Constitution requiring that full force and effect be given to judgments of other States when, in fact, the court of the other State had no actual jurisdiction over the defendant; but the court expressly refuses to question the authority of the courts of States other than New York to give full force and effect under this provision of the Constitution to decrees of divorce obtained in other States, as many State courts have done, on the ground that a decision on a matter of domestic relations is as binding as a judgment in rem.3

In this particular case it appeared that the plaintiff had for some time been a bona fide resident of the State in which the action of divorce was brought. Four of the nine judges dissented from the decision, but expressly held that the decree of divorce would have no extra-territorial effect where the plaintiff had moved into the jurisdiction in order to obtain the divorce.*

Questions of inheritance and of the legitimacy of children and of

2 Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State.'

* The court says that the rule does not debar other States from giving such effect to a judgment of that character as they may elect to do under mere principles of State comity.

• The rule laid down by one of the dissenting judges was, 'That the courts of one State may not grant a divorce against an absent defendant to any person who has not acquired a bona fide domicil in that State. The same rule applies if he has removed thither solely for the purpose of acquiring a domicil and obtaining a divorce for a cause which would have been insufficient in the State from which he removed.' Such a rule would leave the law very uncertain.

rights over children are involved in the discussion. The decision of the Supreme Court has somewhat cleared the horizon in New York State.

This conflict of jurisdiction produces some curious results. One resident of New York moved to Connecticut, and, after living there some little time, found a lady who pleased him more than his wife. He procured a divorce in Connecticut. The wife paid no attention to the service of process by publication and mailing, probably hailing with delight the prospect of freedom from the bonds of matrimony. He then married the newly discovered affinity. She, not being familiar with New York decisions, supposed that a marriage acknowledged in Connecticut by law and by her friends was legal anywhere. On her husband's death some years later she found, however, that neither she nor her children had any share in his real estate in New York.

The wife of a New Yorker took up a residence in Rhode Island and obtained a divorce there. The husband refused to accommodate her by having an attorney appear for him in the action. She, being the richer of the two, was able to take the children to Europe. After some years she returned to New York with one of her children for a temporary visit, and the New York court determined that her husband had an equal right in his children without respect to the Rhode Island decree.

In numerous cases men and women have obtained decrees of divorce in Western States for trivial causes, and after marrying again have found themselves defendants in an action of divorce for adultery in the State of New York. Married couples living in New York, weary of the matrimonial bond, find it a simple matter, if both are of the same mind, to procure a divorce by having one move to another State, where failure to support is a ground for divorce. A story is told of one man who paid a double fee to an attorney in Newport, Rhode Island-one for services in having his wife bring an action of divorce against him in Massachusetts, an adjoining State, and another for services in procuring the divorce in Rhode Island of another lady from her husband so as to enable him to marry her soon after the two decrees of divorce had been granted.

It can readily be understood that it is necessary for anyone taking a divorced man or woman as a husband or wife to have his, or her, right to re-marry examined into by a lawyer as a purchaser would have the title to a house examined into before he accepts the deed.

The two most important considerations in any discussion of divorce are the future of the children and the support of the wife. When a woman marries she has a right, as a rule, to look to her husband for her future support. This is amply provided for by the statutes of the various States. Although a wife can only procure a divorce in New York by proving adultery on the part of her hus

band-a matter far from easy to prove, however aroused her suspicions may be she can procure a separation 5 in that State for various causes, and the decree of separation can be made to provide suitable support for herself and her children."

The distinction between the New York rule and the more liberal rules of other States brings us to the question whether it is advisable to give people who are unhappily married the opportunity of remarrying after they have agreed that they can no longer live together. If there are no children, it seems to be to the interest of morality that the courts should allow re-marriage—that is, give a decree of divorce rather than one of separation.

It is odd that in no State has the question of existence of children made any difference in the statutory provisions.

If people have entered into marriage with the prospect of having children, they give a pledge not only to each other, but to their children. The parties should be allowed to release each other from the pledge as far as they are concerned, but they should not be allowed to release each other from the pledge to the children for the causes, sometimes trivial, which are considered valid in some States of the union.

A

A less important consideration in divorce is that of alimony. motion was recently made in court by a husband to be relieved from paying alimony, as since his divorce his former wife had married four other men and was about to marry a fifth. He claimed that, as he was the first victim of the divorce habit, he should be relieved from paying alimony. There is ample room for improvement in the law by providing that alimony should cease when the wife marries again. A woman may be entitled to have one man toil for her support, but not to have two.

The evil effects of easy divorce are perhaps more noticeable in the society of Newport, where a comparatively few people meet frequently at dinners or other entertainments where a divorced expartner is likely to appear. One can see there a daughter who is not on bowing terms with her own father. A clever young woman there,

The provisions are as follows: An action may be maintained by a husband or wife against the other party to the marriage, to procure a judgment separating the parties from bed and board for ever, or for limited time, for either of the following

causes:

1. The cruel and inhuman treatment of the plaintiff by the defendant.

2. Such conduct on the part of the defendant towards the plaintiff as may render it unsafe and improper for the former to cohabit with the latter.

3. The abandonment of the plaintiff by the defendant.

4. Where the wife is plaintiff, the neglect or refusal of the defendant to provide for her.

In New York a marriage may be annulled for the following causes existing at the time of the marriage: (1) That one of the parties had not attained the age of legal consent. (2) That one of the parties was at the time legally married. (3) That one of the parties was a lunatic. (4) That the consent of one of the parties was obtained by force, duress, or fraud. (5) Where one of the parties was physically incapable of entering into the marriage state.

on being asked which Miss X. she was, answered, 'Oh, I am the only Miss X. who has two fathers and two mothers.'

Divorce granted between parents must have a bad effect on the children, and too liberal divorce laws for parents are sure in future generations to prove injurious to the community where they are too readily granted.

G. WILLETT VAN NEST.

PARADISE LOST appears likely to last as long as the English language, possibly on account of that very fault which the legendary wrangler is said to have found with it-that it proves nothing.' Perhaps it is for exactly the opposite reason to this-viz. because they prove far more than most people at all want to believe-that Milton's four pamphlets on divorce have been allowed to lie in the decent obscurity of the student's shelves, glanced at perhaps by the examinee who is aiming at a degree in literature, but generally regarded as regrettable incidents in the life of an otherwise admirable man. Anyone, however, who brings an open mind to the study of these little-known works will probably come to the conclusion that Milton's genius is as fully apparent in them as in anything he wrote. It is, of course, absurd to compare the stately music of the organ voice of England,' as it peals through his verse, with the somewhat crabbed and occasionally turgid style of his polemical works, but when we consider the matter rather than the form, there can be no question that the ideas contained in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce are more calculated to benefit the human race than all the pseudo-theology and anachronistic metaphysics of the greatest English epic.

Milton's clearness of sight and freedom from conventional trammels are as evident in his divorce tracts as in either of his better-known prose works, the Areopagitica, written in favour of the freedom of the Press, and the Eikonoklastes, an exposition of the fallacies inherent in the theory of the divine right of kings. The Press to-day is as free as any reasonable man can wish to see it (though whether it makes an entirely honest or wise use of its freedom is quite another matter), and the doctrine of divine right is, except in the imagination of a few amiable and quite harmless poseurs, as dead as the monarchs who maintained it. Both these steps on the road to perfect freedom are due in no small degree to Milton's outspoken championship; but the third great cause which he had at heart has in its essentials made but little progress during the last 250 years. The reason is not far to seek; indeed, Milton, in the address to Parliament which he