CHAP. XV.
Of Divorce and Repudiation.
Book XVI.
Chap. 15.THERE is this difference between a divorce and a repudiation, that a divorce is made by a mutual consent occasioned by a mutual antipathy; while a repudiation is made, by the will and for the advantage of one of the two parties, independently of the will and advantage of the other.
The necessity there is sometimes for women to repudiate, and the difficulty there always is in doing it, render that law very tyrannical, which gives this right to men, without giving it to women. A husband is the master of the house; he has a thousand ways of keeping his wife to her duty, or of bringing her back to it; so that in his hands it seems as if repudiation could be only a new abuse of power. But a wife who repudiates only makes use of a dreadful kind of remedy. It is always a great misfortune for her to go in search of a second husband, when she has lost the most part of her attractions with another. One of the advantages attending the charms of youth in the female sex, is, that in an advanced age the husband is led to complacency and love by the remembrance of past pleasures.
It is then a general rule, that in all countries where the laws have given to men the power of repudiating, they ought also to give it to women. Nay, in climates where women live in domestic slavery, one would think that the law ought to permit women the right of repudiation, and to husbands only that of divorce.
