Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/164

152 The speech of Lord Thurlow converted Lord Chancellor Eldon, who declared that until he heard it, he had intended to oppose the measure; and ex-Chancellor Lord Rosslyn also gave his vote on the principle so laid down; namely, the impossibility of a reconciliation; on account of the peculiar atrocity of the case, which left no ground for pardon, as common inconstancy might have done. The bill passed both houses, and received the royal assent; that miserable marriage was broken; and the opinion of Lord Thurlow so far obtained, that in one or two cases of enormity, a divorce a vinculo has since been granted by Parliament on the wife's petition.

Very jealously, however, has the privilege been guarded; and the strange contrast between the laws in two countries which form but one kingdom,—(England and Scotland),—is in nothing more salient than in this; divorce in Scotland, being, as I have said, granted at the wife's suit as a matter of usual and undisputed justice. In what a different spirit the English law contemplates the fact of a husband's inconstancy, we may judge by the recommendation of the commissioners appointed two years since, to examine and report upon law reform. In the report made, they recommended,—amongst other "improvements,"—that even the nominal right of petition should be taken away from the woman: that the husband should retain his right to divorce his wife on proof of her infidelity,—but that the wife should not, under any circumstances, have a right to claim divorce a vinculo: that in short, instead of justice being, as at present (as it always is for women), merely improbable, it shall be impossible; and that all the gentlemen in England who are so inclined, shall live in legalized infidelity to their wives; the, slender remedy left to the wife, being that she may obtain permission to "live apart" from her unfaithful husband. "But the crime of the man is nothing, in comparison with the crime of the woman;" say the objectors. Why? Because— (and here we come to England's merchant spirit again,—property, not morality, being the thing held sacred), "because the wife's adultery may give the husband