ecclesiastics who condemn divorce, and who go on repeating that the contract of marriage is indissoluble. The sex impulse is a powerful element in human nature, and though human nature should be under control, no power in the world can dispose of the sex instinct by insisting on the theory that the marriage contract is indissoluble.

Look which way we will, the present law is a whited sepulchre and a blot on our Christianity: it sets at nought all the facts of life; it is a menace to the good order of the State. It is apparently easy to defeat in the House of Commons any Bill which gives relief from the chaos at present existing. The opponents of reform proclaim their fear of easy divorce. Yet divorce is easy to-day for people who are rich and willing to perjure themselves to satisfy the requirements of the Statute law. A writer in the Times, Mrs. Lyall, in upholding the present divorce law, says: We live in an age in which the greater part of the population is not attached to any Church. The question, therefore, that states'men and social workers have to ask themselves is this, "Apart 'from religious belief is a strict marriage law for the good of the 'nation?" If it were a strict and just marriage law, that might be a matter of interesting debate; but the law, as it at present stands, is neither strict nor just; at any rate, it does not give Christian justice. There is no law administered in this land which is so set at nought, so treated with contempt, as the law which governs the unsavoury proceedings of the divorce court. Could any change in the law fill the divorce court fuller than it is to-day? But a change might at least relieve that court of the trickery and perjury for which it now provides a daily platform.

The defenders of the present state of things argue that the law is for the many, and must not be altered for the sake of the few. But the many-if by many is meant the majority-are in no case concerned. The happiness or unhappiness of the vast majority of homes is outside the range of the divorce court. There are countless marriages which have brought complete content to both partners. There are many others where the two partners agree to make the best of what to outsiders may seem a bad job. It is only in a minority of cases that the marriage contract needs revision, and the fact that these cases are a minority provides no argument whatever for the maintenance of a law

which forbids revision, except upon lines involving cruelty, fraud and injustice.

Nor does the fact that many people belong to no Church provide any reason for the State to encourage a low standard of morality by arranging that married persons can get release from an 'indissoluble' marriage, if only they will perjure themselves sufficiently. Why should the divorce court be the one court where common honesty is flouted, and where false swearing is rife? Here the Bishop of Durham touches the very root of the matter. He puts the keeping of the marriage covenant in the forefront of the essentials of good citizenship. He speaks of the immemorial association of the Church with the State in this matter. It is the outward and visible sign in daily use of the 'alliance between a Christian Church and a Christian State.' One of the strangest manifestations of this is that we find the guilty parties continually butting their heads against the closed doors of the Church, and clamourously demanding that the blessing of the Church they have betrayed and insulted should be pronounced on their new adventures on matrimonial seas. The Bishop of Durham sees clearly that the Church has remained stationary and has not really set itself to think out this hard problem. It takes its stand on the written word, pronounced in the midst of a society very different from our own, and on the reading of that word by the early fathers, whose views on marriage are not as high as the Church holds to-day.

The State cannot safely remain with this outlook. It travels along the road of human progress towards ideals which come from the Christian spirit. Its problems are governed by general maxims, but they have to be applied in a complex and constantly shifting world. In other matters we do not aim at being stationary. The Church never led in the great movement for the emancipation of slaves. Its conscience tardily responded to the lead of the Christian State, and it then revised its judgment that slavery was supported by the gospels. If it cannot conscientiously go forward in this question of divorce, then the conscience of the State will have to go forward alone. It may come about that all marriages will need the civil sanction of the State, and that only the faithful will seek the blessing and authority of the Church. That will be an evil day for the people who are left without. It will loosen the closest tie that binds the hearts, the customs and

the life of the family to the visible Church in the midst of the nation.

Lord Buckmaster's Bill of 1920 embodies only those reforms which were proved before the Commission to be most needed. It was carried through the House of Lords by considerable majorities in the presence of a large body of the 'lords spiritual.' Debate was conducted with all the gravity and weight which so momentous a question demanded, and, on the whole, with a fairness that one would expect from so distinguished an assembly. The argument in its breadth and conclusiveness remained with those who sought not to make divorce easy, but who wished to provide a sound remedy for a serious disease, and who desired to make the laws of England just.

Much was said about the law as it is established in Scotland. In that country ever since the Reformation, the law of divorce has been equal between the sexes. Divorce has also been granted for persistent and wilful desertion. The majority of Scottish divorces are, indeed, for this cause. It was in vain that one English law lord flung himself passionately against the facts of the case. He asserted that Scotland was under Presbyterian government, and he clearly read Pagan for Presbyterian. He further stated that there was in Scotland a larger proportion of illegitimate births than in England. The argument was scarcely relevant to divorce, but by that time close reasoning had grown thin. He was reproved and set right by a Scottish Archbishop, and a fair survey of the law of Scotland was set before the House.

The Bill did not reach the Commons, and a new Bill was introduced into the House of Lords by Lord Gorell in 1921. This did not go so far as Lord Buckmaster's Bill of 1920, but he gave his support and his name to it after it had been amended on an important question. This Bill also passed the Lords by large majorities, but did not reach the Commons. Lord Buckmaster's Bill in its original shape must come again and again before Parliament, for it is vain to think that the people will wait indefinitely for reforms that have long been needed.

In the opinion of the present writer marriage, as an institution, will be strengthened by such reforms as Lord Buckmaster's Bill proposes. The family lies at the root of all that is best in the State, and its existence should be protected by just, equal, and humane laws.

FRANCES BALFOUR

THE GOLD STANDARD

1. Monetary Reconstruction. By R. G. HAWTREY. Longmans, Green. 1923.

2. Currency and Credit. By R. G. HAWTREY. Longmans, Green. 1919. The Bank of England and the State. By Sir FELIX SCHUSTER, Bt. Longmans, Green. Manchester University Press. 1923.

3.

4. Money Credit and Commerce. By ALFRED MARSHALL. Macmillan & Co. 1923.

5. Currency Inflation and Public Debts. By Professor E. R. A. SELIGMAN. New York: Equitable Trust Co. 1921.

6. Inflation. By Professor J. SHIELD NICHOLSON. P.S. King & Son. 1919. 7. The Paper Pound of 1797-1821. By Professor EDWIN CANNAN. P. S. King & Son. 1919.

ONE

NE of the few satisfactory features of the present financial situation of our country is the rapidity with which the value of our paper money is approaching to the value of the gold coins which it nominally represents. The best measure of this approach is to be found in the comparison between the English paper sovereign and the American gold dollar. Barely eighteen months ago the paper pound would purchase only 3.72 dollars; in March of this year the same paper pound was quoted at 4.70 dollars. Gold parity is 4.86. This means that we are very near indeed to the possibility of re-establishing the gold standard on which our currency was for so many decades before the war successfully based.

It might have been imagined that everyone would welcome this approach to gold. Unfortunately currency movements affect different individuals and classes in the nation in different ways. Many classes temporarily derive profit from the process of currency inflation, and conversely are injured by currency deflation. For the increase in the volume of currency, other things remaining unchanged, tends to lower the value of the monetary token in relation to goods and services; in other words tends to raise prices. People who have goods to sell are naturally pleased, for momentarily at any rate they can obtain larger profits. Conversely the process of deflation or restriction of the currency means, if other things remain unchanged, that the value of the monetary tokens is relatively enhanced, or in other words that

prices fall. This is naturally irritating to people who have stocks of goods on hand or in process of manufacture. Consequently one always finds a certain number of people who temporarily welcome inflation, and who even more strongly resent the process of deflation. As Mr. Hawtrey says in his new and interesting book on ' Monetary Reconstruction':—

'Traders and business men have a deadly fear of dear money, and this fear is not to be explained as an exaggerated dislike of paying an extra two or three per cent. per annum for a period perhaps of much less than a year. It is a dread of the consequences which experience has shown to follow from a diminution of the money income of the country; the depreciation of assets in comparison with liabilities, and the fall of prices, which is perpetually turning a profit into a loss-these are the consequences which assail the prosperity of every one and threaten the actual solvency of those who trade with borrowed money.'

Nor is this attitude confined only to persons who approach the problem solely from the point of view of their own personal interests. For example, even so distinguished a financial authority as Mr. McKenna, formerly Chancellor of the Exchequer and now head of a great bank, in addressing his shareholders in January last, strongly urged that the Government should do nothing more in the direction of deflation, arguing that deflation would tend to check trade and thus increase unemployment. He was careful to insist that he was not in favour of inflation, but merely objected to deflation-a contrast of statements which implies that by some accident the country had at the moment at which he spoke arrived at a state of absolute perfection in its currency system. But if there is anything in the argument that deflation is bad for trade, parity of reasoning clearly leads to the proposition that inflation is good for trade. Thus with more logic if less prudence than Mr. McKenna, certain socialist groups in this country frankly demand inflation. They insist of course that inflation must be accompanied with simultaneous increases in wages for manual workers. Subject to that condition they argue that inflation would improve the relative position of the workers by diminishing the effective incomes of the rentier classes, namely the owners of land, houses and other permanent invest

ments.

This indeed is exactly what has happened in countries where the process of inflation has been allowed to go ahead unchecked. In Austria and Germany many owners of house property, who