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The History of Divorce in Scotland 47
expressed how, under the Scots law, marriage can be regarded as
a permanent contract. This view ignores the fact that divorce is
a remedy for an abnormal state of matters, arising after marriage,
which is never contemplated by the parties themselves at the time
of marriage, and is never alluded to in the marriage service, any
more than in the marriage contract, if there be one. It is a
remedy for a position which cannot come into existence, except
through the
Accordingly,
voluntary wrong-doing of one of the parties.
from the Reformation, both Church and State in
Scotland, in unison with the feeling of the people, have dealt with
the relation as a permanent one. After the parties accept
each
other as spouses, both Presbyterian ministers and Episcopalian
clergymen always pronounce the words, ' What (or whom) God
hath joined together, let not man put asunder.' The permanency
of the relation between married is people no more impaired by
the existence of reasonable divorce laws than is the permanency
of the tenure of ministers, professors, judges and town-clerks by
the knowledge that, in their deeds of '
appointment, the words ad
'
vitam' are followed by
aut culpam.' In no country is there a
stronger sense than in Scotland of the sacredness of the marriage
tie. Divorce may, or may not, be a justifiable remedy for
grave matrimonial wrong, making it reasonably impossible, in
the interests of the innocent spouse and the children, that the
tie should continue. I
express no opinion. But
marriage
the case of Scotland proves that its existence and enforcement,
for desertion as well as for adultery, does not in any way
deteriorate the public view of the importance and obligations
of the married relation. It may be added that the Scotch
statistics of divorce for both causes (which include a certain
number of cases where the defender, who cannot be found, is,
in fact, dead), furnish no ground for alarm. In relation to the
increase of population, they may be called stationary. The
numbers of divorce cases brought in Scotland from 1898 to
1908
are as follows :
1898 153 1904 193
1899 175 1905 182
1900 151 1906 174
1901 171 1907 203
1902
-
223 1908 201
1903
- 201
Lord Fraser's views in reference to Scotland, expressed at page
1141 of his second volume on Husband and Wife, are still