Page:English laws for women in the nineteenth century.djvu/35

23 publication fail to draw any permanent attention to the law itself, at least it will remain a curious record of injustice, in a country especially boastful of its liberal and magnanimous enactments. If the record appear unimportant as the mere history of a woman's wrongs, it may have interest as involving a passage in the life of one of England's Prime Ministers.

I have endeavoured to make the narrative as clear as possible, by dividing into three outlines,—1st, the strange mutual position of Mr Norton and myself with respect to money matters, both before and after our Separation,—2dly, the treatment I received as a wife; taken from the papers submitted at the time to lawyers employed for me—and,—3dly, Lord Melbourne's opinion of the affairs in which his name was involved; copied word for word from his own letters. I have had that, and all other correspondence, printed in Italics; that the interruptions may be more distinct, and that such persons as are already familiar with some of the letters, may omit them at pleasure and continue the narrative. I have taken counsel of no one; and no one is responsible for the mention of names, or of the part taken by friends in these miserable affairs. If any see cause to regret what I have done, let them blame the. This pamphlet addresses itself, not to private sympathy, but to English justice: it is an attempt to argue the reform which ought to be, from the abuse that has been:—a complaint of the exercise of irresponsible power, to the source of power:—an appeal from The Law, as it stands, to the Legislature which frames and alters laws.

I begin by an explanation of our mutual position as to money-matters; because Mr Norton has brought our disputes to a crisis on a pecuniary claim; because he has falsified the whole history of those matters; and because, from the first, our position in this respect was extraordinary and anomalous; inasmuch as instead of Mr Norton being, either by the exercise of his profession or patrimonial property, what Germans call the