Page:Annie Besant, Marriage A Plea for Reform, second edition 1882.djvu/15

 168), Justice Park said: "Confirmation by the wife is, in this case, really no confirmation at all. The wife and the accomplice must be taken as one for this purpose. The prisoners must be acquitted." They may, however, be severally called as witnesses by the prosecution and the defence, in order that they may contradict each other. Where the wife has suffered personal violence from her husband she is permitted to swear the peace against him, and in divorce suits husband and wife are both admissible as witnesses. A wife who sets fire to her husband's house may escape punishment, as in the case of Rex. v. March: "March and his wife had lived separate for about two years; and, previous to the act, when she applied for the candle with which it was done, she said it was to set her husband's house on fire, because she wanted to burn him to death. Upon a case reserved upon the question whether it was an offence within the 7 and 8 George IV., cap. 30, sec. 2, for a wife to set fire to her husband's house for the purpose of doing him a personal injury, the conviction was held wrong, the learned judges thinking that to constitute the offence, it was essential that there should be an intent to injure or defraud some third person, not one identified with herself" (Ibid, p. 899). Identification with one's beloved may be delightful in theory, but when, in practice, it comes to being burned at pleasure, surely the greatest stickler for the "twain being one" must feel some twinges of doubt. The identity of husband and wife is often by no means advantageous to the husband, for he thereby becomes responsible, to a great extent, for his wife's misdoings. "For slanderous words spoken by the wife, libel published by her alone, trespass, assault and battery, &c., he is liable to be so sued, whether the act was committed with or without his sanction or knowledge. . . . . And wherever the action is grounded on a tort, committed by the wife, it no way affects the necessity of joining the husband, that the parties are living apart, nor even that they are divorced a mensâ et thoro, or that the wife is living in adultery" (Lush's "Common Law Practice," 2nd ed., p. 156). Pleasant position for a man whose wife may have left him, to be suddenly dragged before a court of justice for some misdeed of hers, of which he may never have heard until he finds himself summoned to answer for it! A large amount of injustice arises from this absurd fiction that two are one; it sometimes injures, sometimes protects the