[777] BRYCE, _Studies in Hist. and Jur._, 830.
[778] See WRIGHT, _Report_, 1030, 1033 ff.
[779] "Wenn der andere Ehegatte durch schwere Verletzung der durch die Ehe begründeten Pflichten oder durch ehrloses oder unsittliches Verhalten eine so tiefe Zerrüttung des ehelichen Verhältnisses verschuldet hat, dass dem Ehegatten die Fortsetzung der Ehe nicht zugemuthet werden kann."--_Reichsgesetzbuch_, Tit. 7, § 1568. For discussion see KOHLER, _Das Eherecht des bürg, Gesetzbuchs_, 42-46.
But the statistics seem to show that the law is conservatively administered. The number of divorces is decreasing. "For the years 1891-95, inclusive, the annual average was 7,258. In 1896 there were 8,601; in 1897 there were 9,005; in 1898 there were 9,143; and in 1899 they had become 9,563. But under the new law in 1900 they dropped to 8,934, and in 1901 they were 8,037."--DIKE, _Report_ (1903), 8, 9, on the authority of the Chief of the Statistical Bureau of Berlin.
The other grounds of divorce allowed by the imperial statute are adultery, attempt on the life of either spouse by the other, malicious desertion, and insanity (Geisteskrankheit) of three years' standing. Divorce for malicious desertion is decreed only after a preliminary suit for the re-establishment of marital relations and a year's delay to allow the deserter to return to conjugal duty: _Reichsgesetzbuch_, Tit. 7, § 1567.
The achievement of a wisely conceived and carefully drafted uniform law for the entire country, would be of great advantage, although it might not directly cause a very great decrease in the average divorce rate, and certainly would not produce the same rate for the individual states.[780] How may such a uniform law be secured? The method of procuring the enactment of a federal law under a constitutional amendment--once much in favor[781]--has for the present been almost abandoned by active workers. Instead, it is preferred, through the state commissions on uniform legislation, to urge the adoption of a model statute by the separate commonwealths. These commissions, now thirty-five in number, have prepared a bill for a law governing divorce procedure; and its temperate and practical provisions ought to gain its general adoption.[782] All this is well; but it is still more needful to strive for a common marriage law. In the end it may be found necessary, under a constitutional amendment, to appeal to the federal power. What service could a national legislature render more beneficent than the creation of a code embracing every division of the intricate law of marriage and divorce? Aside from its educational value as a moral force, such a code in material ways would prove a powerful guaranty of social order and stability.