Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/154

142 of his wife; by a new law (the necessity for which has been abundantly proved by the daily police reports). Why should it seem grievous and shocking to make new laws of restraint for gentlemen, as well as for poor men? We have an idol; our idol is traditionary custom; and great is that Diana of the Britons! If we make legal changes, it is rare that we make them boldly. We seldom supersede. We add and we take away. Refusing to reform, we endeavour to compel men to hold that sacred, being imperfect—which, reformed and perfected, would be held sacred without any compulsion at all. It is not authority that offends; but anomaly; a patch- work in the raiment of Justice, so that when men would cling to her robe it gives way in their hand. Now, if there is one law men are naturally more jealous of altering than another, it is the law between husband and wife; yet surely the power of protection is the proudest privilege of Superiority; and in these modern and enlightened days, that privilege may be better defined, than in the phraseology of the ancient law of Baron and Feme, which I have seen thus naively laid down—" Now the Baron shall have remedie against one that beateth his Feme—for she is his ." The amount of anomaly in the law on this subject, is startling; but I confine myself to the notice of points affecting positions like my own.

We will take then, first, the law as to divorce.

The Roman Catholics have one clear unvarying rule on this subject. They make marriage a sacrament. They have laws that apply to cases of dispute,—"separation de corps et de biens,"—provision for the wife,—award as to children,—but the marriage itself is simply indissoluble; lasting, as the words of the Church ceremony imply, "till do us part."

We do not make marriage a sacrament. It is difficult to say what we hold it to be. Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act, of 1754, declared null, all marriages not celebrated by a priest in orders; and made it indispensable that the ceremony should