One of the wonders that we lost with the web was the gorgeous beauty of the Liberty Fund book catalogue. It may still exist, but with their stock now all available for online ordering, and even searchable online, I can’t justify asking for a free copy any more.

Their books are equally beautiful in the care that goes into their publication, or more so. I used to own quite a few. They always offered them both in hardback and in cheaper paperback. I could only afford paperback but I always longed for the day I would be able to buy the hardback and display it in my library. Sadly, at one point in our lives, Jennifer and I 1) lacked shelf space and 2) lacked cash. This began the age of “books for daydates” in our lives. We would take a box of books and go up north to the half-price books store and get enought cash to take the family to a restaraunt. Good-bye Fisher Ames. Good-bye Ludwig von Mises. Good-bye Lord Acton. Hello Souper Salad!

One book I never parted with, however, was Liberty, Equality, Fraternity by James Fitzjames Stephen. This was partly because, as a small paperback, it would not net me much cash and partly because it was an extraordinary little book. I bought it more on impulse than anything else–it was cheap and the idea of a Millian pragmatist responding to John Stuart Mill really intrigued me.

I was well-rewarded. Stephen is the only secular public philosopher I remember ever reading to deal with the Church state question with honesty and courage. That was one of many things that made his book amazing. One other small part of this was Stephen’s objection to no-fault divorce laws as he felt Mill had proposed them:

If the parties to a contract of marriage are treated as equals, it is impossible to avoid the inference that marriage, like other partnerships, may be dissolved at pleasure. The advocates of women’s rights are exceedingly shy of stating this plainly. Mr. Mill says nothing about it in his book on the Subjection of Women, though in one place he comes very near to saying so, [155–56/290–91 SW] but it is as clear an inference from his principles as anything can possibly be, nor has he ever disavowed it.  If this were the law, it would make women the slaves of their husbands.  A woman loses the qualities which make her attractive to men much earlier than men lose those which make them attractive to women. The tie between a woman and young children is generally far closer than the tie between them and their father. A woman who is no longer young, and who is the mother of children, would thus be absolutely in her husband’s power, in nine cases out of ten, if he might put an end to the marriage when he pleased. This is one inequality in the position of the parties which must be recognized and provided for beforehand if the contract is to be for their common good. A second inequality is this. When a man marries, it is generally because he feels himself established in life. He incurs, no doubt, a good deal of expense, but he does not in any degree impair his means of earning a living. When a woman marries she practically renounces in all but the rarest cases the possibility of undertaking any profession but one, and the possibility of carrying on that one profession in the society of any man but one. Here is a second inequality. It would be easy to mention others of the deepest importance, but these are enough to show that to treat a contract of marriage as a contract between persons who are upon an equality in regard of strength, and power to protect their interests, is to treat it as being what it notoriously is not.

I will demur from James and say that the word “equals” does apply to men and women–though of course, I speak that way beause I’m not a pragmatist but an “essentialist” of sorts. But the bottom line is James knew what would happen, as anyone should have.