Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/191

179 could be contradicted. They could only, in such a case, look to the character of the witness, the probability of the story, and the credit to which it was entitled. If a charge of want of chastity was brought against the purest of women, and that no one but the accuser was said to be present, she must rest her defence on her own innocence, the improbability of the story, and the character of the accuserIn the Ecclesiastical Court, time, and place, and circumstance, must be proved; but here, there was nothing definitive; the evidence ranging over a period of four or five years, and excluding all evidence of what occurred within the last two or three yearsWhat family, he would ask, could be safe, if at the distance of years, discarded servants could come forward and make such statements, concealed for so long a period, and which they themselves admit excited no suspicion while the circumstances were recent, and while they were there to make their observations? If they were to be brought forward at the end of years,—excited with the hopes of reward, and of making their fortunes,—what safety could there be, what protection for innocent persons? He could not approve of the manner in which the witnesses had been carried off from their homes to Wonersh. He cared not who was offended, but he would say, that the system of carrying off the witnesses, such as had been detailed that day—of giving them large sums of money—of exciting these extravagant expectations, that had been detailed, if their evidence proved successful—was one which could not be defended, and was a mode of conducting a case, reflecting very little credit on those resorting to it. No case had ever been conducted as the present had beenIt was the duty of the plaintiff to have laid before them the circumstances under which the quarrel and separation had taken place between Mr and Mrs Norton; when it might have been seen to demonstration, that Lord Melbourne had no more concern in the matter than any indifferent bystander then in Court; that bringing such a charge against Lord Melbourne was a mere after-thought; that it was what had never entered into the head of Mr Norton himself, but was put into his head by others; he would not say ,—he would not insinuate who,—but it must have been some insinuating rogue who had devised the slander.

"It had been asserted that every servant in the service of Sir Norton would be produced: but Mrs Gulliver, whose testimony was most material, had been withheld. If truth only was the object of the other party, why had she not been produced? And why had not Fitness been called, who was at that moment living at Storey's Gate? They had not dared to call him, because he was there at the time of the separation; and if it had not been that Mrs Morris had been called to prove the handwriting of Mrs Norton, the circumstances which led to the separation would have remained a secret and a mystery. Nay, it would have been left for them to surmise, that Mr Norton had actually separated from his wife in consequence of discovering her intimacy