Reform the Marriage Laws

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Reform the Marriage Laws is an article written by Arthur Conan Doyle published in the Daily Mail on 30 june 1919.


Reform the Marriage Laws

Daily Mail (30 june 1919, p. 7)

To prevent revolutionary contagion in this country it is most necessary to do away with those legitimate grievances which rankle in a man's heart and make him bitter and dangerous. The want of housing accommodation is one such grievance the marriage laws are another.

The latter case has been thoroughly examined by a very strong commission, who reported six years ago in favour of reform, yet on account of that wretched obsolete ecclesiastical influence which has impeded every reform in this world, the matter has been shelved, and the men or women concerned are wearing out their lives with a bitter sense of injustice.

The measures demanded are already in force in nearly every other Protestant country in the world, and in several Catholic ones. These measures simply require that the recommendations of the Royal Commission be put into law, and that the immorality arising from the separation laws be ended by allowing these people, after a term of years, to remarry.

Our descendants will look back at our present marriage laws with the same amazement with which we regard our old criminal laws before Romilly, against the opposition of the majority of the bishops, brought them to a more civilised standard.