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THE LAW OF DIVORCE . A Roval Commission is about to enquire into that delicate and most important subject—Divorce . That the present law needs simplification , if not entire reconstruction , is beyond a doubt . But the question of the indissolubility of marriage is one which creates alarm even in liberal minds , seeming to strike at the very foundation of social life by loosening the bonds that unite the Family . And in so grave a matter it is requisite to proceed with extreme caution ; an error there would
produce instantaneous and wide-spread evil . Nevertheless , although the ground be perilous it must be traversed . Our age is labouring to clear itself from all the errors of ancient legislation . We are looking every social question steadily in the face , and must not avert our eyes from that of marriage . On the necessity for permanence in all moral relations—on the necessity for restricting the vagrant
errant tendencies of our capricious nature within well-defined limits , thus subordinating our impulses to law—we are entirely in accordance with the sternest advocates for the indissolubility of marriage . We see also the excessive complication of the matter arising from children . The arguments against divorce are weighty and far-reaching . But the arguments in favour of divorce must not be set aside .
Looking at our criminal courts , from the brutal exhibitions of the lowest classes to the scandalous cases brought before the House of Peers , and questioning our own personal experience of what goes on daily in society , we are forced to doubt whether the present indissolubility ^ of marriage does not occasion more crime , more immorality , more misery , than a prudent relaxation of the law would produce . What is it produces the excessive amount
of bigamy—especially among the working classes ? And we here allude , not only to the bigamy in law , but the bigamy in fact—the double family which leads to so much misery and to so much crime . What is it produces the frequent cases of murder among the lower orders , —and that moral murder of daily accumulating hatred both among the higher and the lower classes ? Would not a relaxation of the law of divorce prevent a large proportion of this misery and crime ?
The inconsequence of the present law is so great as to call for the Royal Commission . We admit Divorce for one crime , and one only . But the expense , delay , and scandal involved in the process are such as to prevent all but wealthy , reckless , or very bold people from seeking it . The great mass of the people , including the middle classes , are shut out from it by the mere expense . So that when a cause exists which the law declares sufficient to . justify Divorce , the law forces men and women into the crime and misery just indicated because they cannot afford the expence of obtaining Divorce !
not being considered a sufficient cause for release from the bonds of matrimony , whereas adultery on the part of the wife , because it " disturbs successions , " is considered ample cause . The Lords also feel that a Law Court is the best to get at the facts . Therefore , they will not give a bill before an action has been brought . An action at law must ( in this case ) be one for damages . Now the absurdity of the law comes into play . Suppose Mr . Smith has a liaison with
Mrs . Jones , and Smith ' s outraged wife wishes for a divorce , she must bring an action ... But , how ? By means of her husband ! Against whom ? Mrs . Jones ? Oh , no ! Against the husband of Mrs . Jones ! Thus the gay , adulterous Smith , brings an action for his wife , as a preliminary to a bill against himself ! And he brings it against Jones on account of the crime which he Smith had induced Mrs . Jones to commit ; and the " injured husband " finds himself in court as a defendant ,
with the seducer for plaintiff ! That one anomaly is sufficient for the present . The Royal Commission will elicit abundant evidence on this as on other matters . What we wish to suggest is the desirableness of obtaining evidence from those countries wnere facility of divorce has been for some time in operation . Instead of wasting time in declamations and conjectures as to the probable effect of any relaxation of the present lawinstead of arguing with prospective terrors of a total dissolution of society—it will be necessary to
examine carefully the operation of any proposed alteration by comparison with Prussia and some of the states of America , where divorce is easy and simple . If statistics and the evidence of grave , authoritative men , should prove that in Prussia the facility is not attended with evil consequences , all alarm will be dissipated , and arguments of ' * what will be " shattered by the evidence of * ' what is . " Prussia is a considerable kingdom , quite on a
par with England in morality , quite on a par with it in immorality—Prussian men and women are open to the same temptations as English men and women ; and a comparison of the actual facts will do more towards eliciting a reasonable conclusion than quartos of argument . In so grave a matter we must not argue carelessly or passionately . Where abundant evidence exists , it will be shameful to disregard it . The actual truth can be got at , if the Royal Commission will but seek it .
Moreover , we are forced to violate our theory of indissolubility , and permit Separations—the most immoral of all equivocations , for it annihilates Marriage as a bond of union , and preserves it as a chain ! It says that two persons , whose tempers anil dispositions render their living together impracticable , shall , nevertheless , be married in theory , though in fact divorced . Now , either separations ought not to be suffered , or they ought to be made complete . We arc pointing here to the necessity for a simplification of the present law : many gross absurdities call for it . To name one , let us note the
extreme difficulty , almost amounting to the impossible , of a woman's obtaining a Bill in the House of Lords cttcM'ting a divorce a vinculo matrimoniifrom the bonds of matrimony . The Lords are very jealous of collusion between husband and wife in such cases ; adultery on the part of the husband
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A WARD IN POOR LAW . The case of Sloane is not so difficult to account for as the wonderment about it would imply . It is far more difficult to account for the state of the law , which leaves human beings , as Jane Wilbred was left , exposed to tyranny so very possible , 8 nd indicated by such striking precedents . We do not even finally presume that Mr . Sloane is guilty to
the full extent of the story against him : however improbable , it is not impossible , that he may have something to say which would explain away , or extenuate , the frightful charge , and that he withholds it with the exercise of that reserve upon which the legal mind piques itself . Thus far , indeed , circumstances tend to corroborate the girl ' s statement , and might be supposed to indicate that the defendant is conscious of having no valid explanation .
Whether the girl ' s story is true or not , however , that also is not impossible ; and her undeniably defenceless position in Mr . Sloane ' s house establishes a charge of gross defect in the law . She was a workhouse girl , delivered over to a master without instruction in her own right , and supposing herself without defence against treatment for which a Negro slave might obtain redress . She describes herself as subjected to starvation , less prompt , indeed , but more shockingly protracted and developed
extravagancy of cruelty ? People wonder at the fact , as if the motive were inscrutable ; the truth is , however , as we all know when once we thin k of it , that human passions , especially the more brutal sort , grow by indulgence , until they may be pampered into a madness . It is especially so when the victim is of a very abject order . Few men who have had to defend themselves against the lower animals , or even against degraded brutes in the shape of mankind , can have failed to experience the hot impulse which prompts you , not only to
repel , but to destroy , and even to seek a mad satisfaction in the fierce process of destruction . Miserliness may suggest a stinting of food ; and then the miserly impulse , once set up , would prompt a perpetual encroachment ; it would even take pleasure in the external evidences of its own excess , still more in the possibility of extorting toil from starvation . There is a delight in that triumph over an old adage which must be intoxicating . The
feebleness which casts a doubt upon that triumph would be a bitter offence ; the eloquence of a gaunt wretchedness would be a reproach ; and the maddened will would be piqued to rebuke , by some hideous indignity , the audacity of despair which could imagine any limits to torture—which could rest upon any " lowest depth "—which against the absoluteness of authority could appeal even to decency : decency itself is , then , to be crushed as the partizan of contumacy .
Such a slavery is not impossible , as we know by the illustrious precedents in the Brownriggs , the Drouets , and the Birds ; and yet the law exercises no vigilance over its helpless charges . While workhouse administrators let out servants , there should be some machinery to secure a perfect watch over the welfare , at least , of minors . Had there been any solicitude to perform the duties of humanity towards the miserable wards in Poor Law , they might most properly have been entrusted to the workhouse chaplain . But there is no such solicitude . The present case is one among the innumerable instances of the way in which our Poor Law watches over its charges .
than that which " Mother" Brownrigg inflicted on her parish apprentices ; her emaciated and enfeebled condition did not disarm , but provoked , repeated castigation ; and the horrors are crowned by indignity even more filthy and revolting than that with which Mrs . Brownrigg ground the faces of her little slaves , in her deliberate plan of worrying them to death . It is not to be supposed that
Mr . Sloane and his wife were actuated by Mrs . Brownrigg ' s motive—the desire to pocket the parish premium , without the cost of maintaining the apprentice : evidently , self-interest would have made him keep alive his cheap servant as long as possible . What on earth , then , could induce a man and woman , in a social position which implies respectability and education , to treat their servant with such
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A REAL CASE OF AGGRESSION . Every promulgation of opinions to those who do not share them is an aggression ; but there is a decorous and an indecorous manner of doing it , which distinguishes propriety from impertinence . A man is commanded by his own sincerity to choose all fitting times and places for the enforcement of what he holds to be the truth ; but he is also commanded by his own sense of decency , and respect for human freedom , not to thrust his opinions offensively and aggressively upon others . The great outcry against the recent " Papal aggression " has somewhat subsided , from an irrational alarm at the
presence of a Catholic hierarchy in England , into a confused sense of indignation at the " insolence " of the tone adopted by the Catholics . Calm heads begin to recognize that the assumption of territorial jurisdiction is not an assumption of territorial power , but simply the local limitation of each Bishop ' s sphere of authority—that the Bishop of Birmingham , for example , has one strictly defined locality , the Bishop of Nottingham another . But even those who admit the propriety of the recent change are exasperated at the language held by Wiseman and Newman—which , although by no means novel in Catholic documents , 6 eems unaccountably to
have acquired a novel force of insult , since men rise up against it as if it were a new manifestation of Papal arrogance . The Church of Rome always was arrogant ; and always will be . Its very pretensions to infallibility and supremacy force it to be arrogant . Holding the truth in its hand , it insists on your unhesitating obedience . But have we none of this arrogance at home ? Is there no " insolent aggression" vexing the peaceable Protestant in the shape of intrusive missionaries , and touters for Bible subscriptions ? You are engaged in some professional labour , — perhaps entertaining friends , just come from a disbefore
tance to see you , —the door opens , and your servant has time to announce him , in walks a sallow gentleman with a white necklock and unctuous demeanour . At once , by his look and snuffle , you detect his object . He is there to dun you for money in the cause of the " benighted heathen , or the " poor Irish . " Your thoughts wander to the wealth of the Church , which seems to you ample for all such purposes ; or you inwardly dissent altogether from the desirableness of the means employed for redeeming the Irish j but , bred in the courtesies of life , those thoughts find no utterance . You merely offer some vague excuse , and endea-
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SATURDAY , DECEMBER 14 , 1850 .
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There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by the very law of its creation in eternal progress . —Dr . Arnold .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 14, 1850, page 898, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1862/page/10/
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