Robert Dale Owen's Marriage Protest

We desire a tranquil life, in so far as it can be obtained without a sacrifice of principle. 

Since it was on the same page of the Boston Investigator as Eliza Sharples’ speech which I covered a few days ago, here’s the famous Robert Dale Owen - Mary Jane Robinson marriage contract. I’ve copied the entire document — others cherry-pick the items that interest them, like the women’s rights issue, and leave out the remarks about religion. They don’t want to consider, perhaps, how the issues all fit together for people like Owen and Robinson.

New York, Thursday Morning, April 12, 1832.

This afternoon I enter into a martimonial engagement with Mary Jane Robinson, a young person whose opinions on all important subjects, and whose mode of thinking and feeling, coincide, in so far as I may judge, more intimately with my own, than those of any other individual with whom I am acquainted.

We contract a legal marriage, not because we deem the ceremony necessary to us, or useful, in a rational state of public opinion, to society; but because, if we became companions without a legal ceremony, we should either be compelled to a series of dissimulations which we both dislike, or be perpetually exposed to annoyances, originating in a public opinion, which is powerful though unenlightened; and whose power, though we do not fear nor respect it, we do not perceive the utility of unnecessarily braving. We desire a tranquil life, in so far as it can be obtained without a sacrifice of principle.

We have selected the simplest ceremony which the laws of this state recognize, and which, in consequence of the liberality of these laws, involves not the necessity of calling in the aid of a member of the clerical profession; a profession the credentials of which we do not recognize, and the influence of which we are led to consider injurious to society. The ceremony too, involves not the necessity of making promises regarding that over which we have no control, the state of human affections in the distant future; nor of repeating forms which we deem offensive, inasmuch as they outrage the principles of human liberty and equality, by conferring rights and imposing duties unequally on the sexes.

The ceremony consists simply in the signature, by each of us, on a written contract, in which we agree to take each other as husband and wife, according to the laws of the state of New York; our signatures being attested by those of all our friends who may be present.

Of the unjust rights which, in virtue of this ceremony, an iniquitous law gives me over the person and property of another, I cannot legally, but I can morally divest myself. And I hereby distinctly and emphatically declare, that I consider myself, and earnestly desire to be considered by others as utterly divested, now and during the rest of my life, of any such rights; the barbarous relics of a feudal and despotic system, soon destined, in the onward course of improvement, to be wholly swept away; and the existence of which is a tacit insult to the good sense and good feeling of the present comparatively civilized age.

I put down these sentiments on paper this morning, as a simple record of the views and feelings with which I enter into an engagement, important in whatever light we consider it; views and feelings which I believe to be shared by her who is, this afternoon, to become my wife.

Robert Dale Owen

I concur with these sentiments.

Mary Jane Robinson