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sanctionedand which 730 TIB LEA D El. i&...
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NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. During tfce S...
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SA.TUEDAT, ATJGUST 8, 1857.
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There is noth.in.gao revolutionary, beca...
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THE DIVORCE BILL. The general Divorce Bi...
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THE BENGAL TERROll. The Bengal mutiny ha...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Sanctionedand Which 730 Tib Lea D El. I&...
730 TIB LEA D El . i & o . 385 , August 8 , 1857 .
Notices To Correspondents. During Tfce S...
NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS . During tfce Session of Parliament it is often impossible to flndroom for correspondence , even the briefest . at is impossible to acknowledge the mass of letters we receive . Their insertion is often delayed , owing to a press ^ m atter ; and when omitted , it is frequently from reasons quite independent of the merits of the communication . . No notice can be taken of anonymous correspondence . Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenticated by the name and address of the writer not necessarily for publication , but as a guarantee of his good faith ; "We'cannot undertake to return rejected communications . Communications should always be legibly written , and . one side of the paper only . If long . it increases the difficulty of finding space for them .
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Sa.Tuedat, Atjgust 8, 1857.
SA . TUEDAT , ATJGUST 8 , 1857 .
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There Is Noth.In.Gao Revolutionary, Beca...
There is noth . in . gao revolutionary , because thereis nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world isby thevery law of its creation in eternal progress . — De . Aenoli * — . .
The Divorce Bill. The General Divorce Bi...
THE DIVORCE BILL . The general Divorce Bill Las caused a stir in the public mind which the particular Divorce Bills have never aroused . For our readers must bear in mind that the bill now passing through the Commons is in the main merely calculated to make more easy and therefore more general the divorces which peers and other wealthy persons now occasionally obtain from the House of Iiords . This caution is necessary , for one hears in society vague talk about the multiplicity of divorces for any and every cause under * the makes the adul
new bilL' The new bill tery of the wife and ' adultery and cruelty' by the husband the only grounds of divorce . There is thus no increase , but there is an extension of the facilities , of divorce , for instead of the three suits ( criminal conversation , suit in the Ecclesiastical Court , and special Act of Parliament ) now necessary , one suit in a new Court will be sufficient for the puspose . This will simply make divorce easy to those who have as good grounds for asking it as the wealthy persons who now obtain it by special privilege . N " o practical man denies that this is a real ' law reform . '
Men not practical , men who seem to set the Church above both God and man , object on principle to the dissolubility of marriage , and object in practice to the extension of divorce . But these men of religion confound two essentially distinct things—marriage as a religious sacrament or institution , and marriage as a civil bond . Marriage is a religious institution—not as Lord StowelIj , quoted by Mr . Gladstone , lays down , * when religion is received into a State ^ ' but when religion is recognized by the individual conscience . When a man and
woman , loving one another , seek the consecration of the Church to their union in marriage , it is made a religious bond by the force of their own consent to its sacred character . Society has in nearly all countries consented to recognise the sacred ceremony as a civil contract ; but this recognition is a secular consequence established for the convenience of the State . It neither adds to nor
diminishes the value of the rite in the eyes of tlje religious person , who regards the rite as indissoluble , and who says , " Come what may , my marriage cannot be dissolved ; the Church has bound and the civil law cannot
loose . " If any legislation attempted to coerce the conscience of this man- —attempted to make him regard his marriage as dissolved —attempted to force him into a second marriage , which to his mind would be adulteryevery man in England would protest against the oppression . But no law of divorce ever enacted has interfered with the religious obligations of any married persons ; it simply deals as becomes it with tne secular consequences of marriage . It dissolves the
marriage ; but its dissolution cannot touch that bond which the priest may have imposed on the conscience of the man and wife . This is no imaginary case . Roman Catholics may be divorced by law , but no religious Roman Catholic considers himself divorced in conscience . It is open to the High Church party , represented by Mr . Gtladstone , to fly to a similar refuge—a hiding-place into which no Attorney-General can penetrate . The new Divorce Bill is an enabling , not a
compulsory , act . It does not prevent that forgiveness of the guilty wife which Mr . Deummobd and Mr . Gladstone contemplate ; it does not prevent the injured husband from taking her back to his heart and home ; it does not even prevent the divorced parties from marrying each other again . But it says to the husband wronged by the adultery of his wife , " You can separate yourself from this woman , and thus prevent her imposing upon your heart and home a child not yours ; " and
it says to the woman who suffers from the ' adultery and cruelty , ' or the ' incestuous adultery * of her husband , " You can obtain your freedom , and seek elsewhere for domestic happiness . " But it forces no conscience ; it releases no man or woman from any religious obligation they may entertain . It simply enables those who hate each other to avoid the secular consequences of their union . We may take higher ground , and discuss the dissolubility of marriage in its purely reat the altar
ligious aspect . The man swears to love and to cherish , ' the woman to c love and obey , ' until death ; when love and obedience have ceased , the marriage vow is broken . God instituted marriage as an ordinance of love , not as a legal contract compel ling the man to give bed and board to a profligate woman , or to pay for the support of children the offspring of adultery . Even according to High Church teaching , God must regard with as much anger the
undissolved marriage of unloving persons as the dissolution of marriage where there is no love . The ends of marriage in the eyes of statesmen may be the security of property to legitimate heirs and the maintenance of the fabric of civil society ,, but the priest expressly regards it as a holy ordinance ' instituted " in the time of man ' s innocency' ( before suits for alimony , or separation , or wife ' s debts , were discovered ) to prevent profligacy and to preserve the purity of religion . No
Attorney-General can touch this sacred rite , but the High Church party , feeling , we suppose , that through their own feebleness they are losing their hold on the conscience of the laity , call in , as of yore , the secular arm to give to the secular consequences of marriage a legal * indissolubility , and thus bind together by fear of the gaol and the hulk the married couples who would contemn the ordinances ot the Church .
An objection to the new bill conies from another side : Lord Lynjuhubst asserts that adultery by the husband should be as legitimate a cause of divorce as adultery by the wife . Leaving out of the question the practical consideration that adultery by the wife imposes a material wrong on the husband , while adultery by the husband imposes only a sentimental wrong on the wife , we take our stand on the principle which religion in all
ages has indirectly sanctioned , and which the moral instinct of mankind has always asserted , that adultery by a man is not so sinful as adultery by a woman . One might discover some recondite reason for the difference , but we rely on the universal sense of society , which forgives in a man social sins it cannot forgive in a woman . Whether it is that a woman to be pure at all must be entirely pure ; or whether it is that man , with a stronger mind , may make vice a' tiling apart , ' while woman , more sensitive , is thoroughly tainted with one great sin , it is the
fact ( and against facts we cannot fight ) that an unchaste woman is , in the eyes of every man and woman in the kingdom , tenfold more guilty and abhorred than an unchaste man . But while laying down this as true , we would accept Lord Lyndhttkst ' s amendment as embodying a principle that would have indirectly a beneficial effect . It would arm a wife persecuted in many ways with a power of release . The Scottish wives possess the Sower , they seldom use it ; but we have no oubt that it gives a dignity to their position which must have a good result .
Leaving the arguments of priests and women we come to the arguments of ' men of the world . ' They assert that the indissolubility of marriage has a good effect on persons of restive tempers ; that it induces them to bear and forbear when they know that escape is out of the question . We do not deny that there are couples on whom this consideration has an influence in establishing
a decorous if not a happy household ; but we must not forget that there are many who would wear with ease a chain that might be taken off at any hour who bear with irritation an irremovable yoke . We know also that the sense of an everlasting bond tempts many husbands and wives into cruelties and provocations they would never dare to exercise were there any prospect of the punishment of divorce . For it must not be
forgotten ( while the religious party are strangel y enou gh always talking of divorce as a privilege ) that to many husbands , and to nearly all wives ' , divorce would be , to speak most lightly , a serious inconvenience . Many a husband of the middle class who now by repeated petty annoyances persecutes his wife , would hesitate to do so were he aware that any slip on his . part would arm her with power to obtain a release from his control , and thus deprive him of a helpmate who may be useful though not openly esteemed , and convenient though not respected . To the provisions of the Jbill which secure to her own use the earnings of a wife deserted
for a year , and which enable her to obtain judicial separation when the desertion has extended for two years , we cordially assent . It is also satisfactory that judicial separation ([ equivalent to the divorce a mensd ot thoro ) is to be obtainable for all those causes which now are visited with partial divorce in the Ecclesiastical Court .
The Bengal Terroll. The Bengal Mutiny Ha...
THE BENGAL TERROll . The Bengal mutiny has already been traced to a hundred separate sources by writers and speakers , each of whom , having dotected a real or imaginary flaw in our Indian system , has triumphantly connected it with the revolt of the native regiments . Mr . Dishaeli has compounded a curious theory , attributing the
late events to our extensive annexations , our religious meddling-, and our tampering with the ancient institutes of property . This view , with many others equally plausible , may be disposed of by a reference to the single fact that the rebellion is military , instead ot national . It is wot Bengal but the Bengal army that has sprung into insurrection , we
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 8, 1857, page 12, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_08081857/page/12/
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