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liable as co-respondents. There are improved provisions as to the custody and maintenance of the children and for preventing the parties from getting rid of their property during the proceedings. A British subject domiciled in England or Wales but resident in any other British possession who has obtained a divorce there may apply to the High Court in England to register the decree as a decree nisi. The wife whose husband has deserted her or been deported and whose domicile was at the time of desertion or deportation in England or Wales shall be considered so domiciled for the purposes of matrimo- nial causes. In cases where the wife so domiciled has married a foreigner and the marriage has been declared null and void by the Court of the husband s domicile, the High Court may pronounce the marriage null notwithstanding that the marriage was valid according to the law of the place where it was celebrated. This is to meet the very hard cases of French and other laws. In France the want of the parents' consent makes an otherwise valid marriage which has taken place in England void, so that the English subject so married re- mained tied in England though unmarried in France. The rule that refusal to comply with a decree for restitution of conjugal rights is " desertion " it is proposed to abolish, but on the other hand refusal of marital intercourse without reasonable cause is to be deemed desertion, and if one party has in good faith requested the other to return to cohabitation the refusal so to do within "a reasonable time " is to be deemed desertion. Neither desertion nor cruelty without adultery was to be a good ground for divorce (see below). The bill further proposes to regulate separation and maintenance orders by Courts of Summary Jurisdiction to be granted for cruelty, habitual drunkenness, or venereal disease. The bill provides for the orders to last two years only unless converted into decrees for judicial separation in the High Court. The applicant who obtains one of these summary orders is to have police protection against the defendant, and maintenance is to be collected by a court official. An important proposal of the bill is to make it contempt of court to publish any report or pictorial representation of the matrimonial proceedings until the conclusion of the case, and to exclude the public but not the reporters in the discretion of the judge.

This bill was almost uncontroversial as originally introduced but the advocates of divorce insisted on desertion being made a sole ground, and the bill (May 1921) was so printed in the House of Commons. This produced a reaction and the increase of di- vorce cases in 1920-1 accentuated the differences of opinion.

The reasons for the recommendations of the Commission on other points also demand more notice. The most serious problem raised is the question of allowing adultery by the husband to be the sole ground for divorce. This was treated by the majority very superficially as a question of the equality of the two sexes before the law; but in reality it is a much more serious problem. The idea of divorce by mutual consent is rejected by the majority, not so much on principle as on the ground that there is no demand for it. But divorce by mutual consent is already de facto in exist- ence, and if the husband's adultery is made a sole cause it will be greatly extended. This is a point on which, among those well acquainted with the facts, there is no great difference of opinion (see Minority Report p. 180: evidence Mr. Justice Bargrave Deane, p. 848). It has been recognized law in England for a generation past that refusal by the husband to obey a decree to return to his wife, coupled with proof of adultery, entitles the wife to an immediate divorce. It has therefore become the common practice, where both parties desire a divorce, for the husband to leave the wife, who writes him a letter asking him to return. He refuses. She brings her suit. An order is made on the husband to return in 14 days, which he disobeys. He lets the wife know where proof of adultery can be found and a divorce is the result. This is not " collusion " in law, but it is what the public mean by collusion, and the number of these cases was even in 1918 nearly as great as the whole number of divorces in 1857 and has been greater since. If there were any desire to decrease the number of divorces this should be stopped. But the 1921 bill on the con- trary proposes following the Majority Report that the husband's adultery alone should be a sufficient ground for divorce. No wife will ever commit adultery in order to get a divorce; because her adultery, if acknowledged, makes her a social outcast; but there is no such ostracism of the husband. At present the husband is deterred from seeking a divorce if he is obliged to admit cruelty. Desertion for three years, as proposed in both the bills, is not quick enough to be any temptation to collusion. But there could be no doubt that if the husband's adultery alone is made a suf- ficient ground it would greatly increase the number of divorces.

The increase in number was already enormous, as will be seen by the figures given below, taken from the official " Civil Judicial Statistics " (Part II, up to 1919).

The average number of petitions of divorce (apart altogether from suits for nullity and judicial separations, as to which there was no increase) for the years 1885 to 1900 was:

1885-90

1891-5

1896-1900

Petitions

541

543

650

Decrees Nisi

378

391

504

Restitution Orders ....

21

18

21

The number of petitions seems as important in considering the disturbance in married life as the number of divorces.

The annual number of cases between 1900 and 1919 was:

Petitions (Divorce)

Decrees Nisi

Decrees Absolute

Restitution Ordered

1901

750

60 1

477

30

1902

889

608

601

33

1903

825

614

606

31

1904

720

634

528

35

1905

752

623

604

45

1906

767

650

546

54

1907

734

598

644

49

1908

846

672

638

65

1909

787

685

694

72

1910

755

588

59

69

1911

859

655

530

90

1912

920

690

587

125

1913

998

870

577

135

1914

1-075

693

833

158

1915

I-H3

1, 060

668

136

1916

1,163

686

972

159

1917

1,423

946

683

159

1918

2,323

1,407

1,082

236

1919

5,085

2,610

1,629

310

It will be seen from the table that the number of petitions for divorce (apart from those for judicial separation) increased from 750 in 1901 to 2,323 in 1918, that is at a rate of over 224 % in 18 years. An even larger number was shown in 1919-21. The population of Eng- land and Wales in the same years increased by regular increments from 32,612,022 in 1901 to 36,800,000 in 1919. The latter year is taken to avoid complication as to demobilization. The increase is a little over 12 %, so that if the increase of population were the only cause the number of petitions would in 1918 have been about 840 instead of 2.323.

The rate of marriage is rather more variable. The number of marriages in England and Wales was:

1901

259,400

1902

261,750

1903

261,103

1904 257,856

1905 260,742

1906

270,038

1907 276,421

1908 264,940

1909 260,544

1910 .267,721

1911

274,943

1912

283,834

1913 286,583

1914 294,401

1915 360,885

1916 279,846

1917

258,853

1918 287,163

1919 369,411

The years 1915 and 1919 were abnormal years, and in both the number of marriages was much higher than in any previous year. This is accounted for by mobilization in 1914-5 and demobilization in 1919. If the rate be taken on the figures 1901-19 the increase was only a little over J8%. The increase of petitions in 1913 is almost exactly at the same rate as the increase in marriages. But the rate of increase in petitions in 1919 was more than double the increase in the marriage rate. If the petitions continue to increase at the same rate for another 18 years there will be 5,152 of them in 1936. The proportion of petitions to marriages in 1901 was less than one-third of I %. It was nearly two-thirds of I % in 1919. The registrar-general of births, deaths and marriages in his Report for 1919 (Cmd. 1017) says " the number of divorces obtained in 1919 was about 50% greater than in 1918, which was itself the highest up to that date, and with the increase in divorces there has been a corresponding increase in the number of persons who on remarriage described themselves as divorced." He adds that the war is " largely responsible for the sudden increase of the last two years, but as the frequency of divorce as recorded in the table has been increasing for many years it can hardly be expected that the pre-war level will be restored." The warning of the Minority Re- port is illustrated by these figures. In 1918 the number of divorce petitions exceeded the number in 1917 by 900, and in 1919 rose to a total of 4,317, or an increase of 1,994. Petitions by husbands have largely increased since 1910. Petitions by wives have fallen off since 1914. The figures as to " poor persons' " suits under the system ini- tiated in 1914 show that nearly five-sixths of these cases were for divorce. There were no fewer than 10,108 applications in the five