Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf/268

 Some Notes on Divorce. years, and at this time kept a public-house and dancing-rooms for the reception of com mon people, was proved in court, by the evidence of two witnesses, to have had a criminal connection with a drummer. The prosecutor was allowed, it is true, to part with his wife, but then she was exempted from all further punishment; while he, on the contrary, was flogged and sent to Batavia without being suffered to receive the least benefit from his property." In France, in 1792, during the Reign of Terror, the National Convention tried the experiment of allowing divorce at the free will of the parties concerned. The result was shocking. During the twenty-seven months immediately following the enact ment of the new law, no less than six thous and divorces took place in Paris alone, and the matter grew steadily worse until in 1797 the divorces actually outnumbered the mar riages. In 1798 the act was amended. Writ ing of this period, the historian Duval says, "Couples divorced for a ' yes,' for a ' no'; they divorced under the least provocation, without any more ado than they wouldhaveto go and gather lilacs in the meadows of Saint Gervais, or to eat cherries at Montmorency." Judge Cowley tells us that the first act under which marriage could be dissolved by judicial decree in any dependency of the Eng lish Crown, was passed by the general court of Massachusetts in 1639. The new " court of assistants " appointed by that act did not have long to wait before exercising its new prerogative, for at its first meeting the fol lowing case was decided : " James Luxford, being presented for having two wives, his last marriage was declared void, or a nullity thereof, and to be divorced, not to come to the sight of her whom he last took, and he to be sent away for England by the first op portunity : and all that he hath is appointed to her whom he last married, for her and her children; he is also fined one hundred pounds, and to be set in the stocks an hour upon a market day after the lecture."

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In Rhode Island, in 1665, Peter Tollman obtained a divorce from his wife who had been guilty of adultery. The woman was sentenced to pay a fine of ten pounds and to receive fifteen stripes at Portsmouth on the ensuing Monday, and on the following week another fifteen stripes at Newport, and to be imprisoned until sentence was fulfilled. In almost all the states of our Union divorces may be obtained for cruel and in human treatment. It is interesting to see what has sometimes been so considered. In one case a court granted a divorce to a wife because her husband would not wash him self. In a second case it was allowed the plaintiff because the defendant had said to her, after they had been married twentyseven years, " You are old and worn out; I do not want you any more." In another instance a woman who was subject to sick headaches which grew worse when she smelled tobacco, was allowed a divorce be cause her husband smoked. The amusing plea was made by another woman that her husband would never cut his toe-nails, and so every night she was severely scratched. A fifth instance is where the plaintiff secured a divorce because her little man insisted on quoting to her passages of Scripture, and re minding her in the language of the Apostle Paul, that she should be obedient to her husband. Some years ago a Kentucky victim of man's inconstancy set forth her plaint in a petition for divorce in this style : " Dark clouds of discord began to lower over the sky of wedded felicity, and the minacious lightning of disunion began to dart its lurid flames across the gloomy clouds of atramental blackness, obscuring every star of hope and happiness whose resplendent glory illuminated the dawn of the first few brief years of her wedded life, when she gave her hand and an undivided heart to the defen dant, who in the sultry month of July, 1876, after havingbeen warmly and snugly wintered within the fond embraces of her loving arms,