Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 21.pdf/549

 518

The Green Bag

temporary Review, literary supplement, no. 23, Aug. 1909, p. 12. "The law of land is very elaborate, and likely to be of the greatest possible value in tracing the growth of English land law. We greatly doubt whether the Welsh word Maenor can be distinguished from the English word Manor. The meaning of the words is very nearly identical. The French origin may be due to the admitted early French influence in Wales. The use of the word in England may have come from Wales. There are other words of French or Latin origin, such as Canghellor (Chancellor) . We find very similar manorial customs in English and Welsh manors." Legislative Procedure. "Revisor of the Statutes." By Laura Scott. In "Notes on Current Legislation." American Political Science Review, v. 3, p. 421 (Aug.). "The Wisconsin legislature has enacted a law creating the office of revisor (Laws 1909, c. 546). The appointing power and super vision of the work is vested in the trustees of the state library. "It is the duty of such revisor: (1) to main tain a loose leaf system of the statutes, sepa rating those statutes in force from those repealed or superseded; (2) to maintain a loose leaf ledger of court decisions referring to the statutes; (3) to present to the com mittees on revision of each house of the legis lature, at the beginning of each session, bills providing for such consolidation and revisions as may be completed from time to time; (4) to keep an alphabetical, subject card-index to the statutes; (5) to formulate and prepare a definite plan for the order, classification, arrangement and printing of the statutes and session laws; and (6) to supervise and attend to the preparation, printing and binding of such compilations of particular portions of the statutes as may be ordered by the head of any department of the state." Marriage and Divorce. Of the month's contributions on this engrossing topic, the most valuable is distinctly the following, be cause of the ready applicability of its conclu sions to conditions in American Protestant churches :— "Marriage Law in the Church of England." By Rev. Charles J. Sherbeare. Nineteenth Century, v. 66, p. 257 (Aug.). If the contentions of this writer can be sus tained, and they are doubtless not to be challenged on the historical side, the wide spread denunciation of divorce, indulged in not only by a certain section of the Anglican Church but by some other Protestant bodies, is based on incorrect assumptions, which would be dispelled by more accurate and complete knowledge of the historical position of the Western Church with reference to marriage. "The courts," writes Mr. Sherbeare, "have been accused of dissolving an indissoluble bond in many cases where it can be argued on strict

ecclesiastical principles that no such bond ever existed. ... A very small collection of facts and quotations is all that is needed to show that neither in pre-Reformation nor in post-Reformation times did the church at large teach that peculiarly severe doctrine of marriage which finds favor in some Anglican circles at the present moment, the general marriage law of the Western church being in reality both far less simple and far less rigid than English churchmen are in the habit of supposing." Another writer's contribution to the subject is marked by a somewhat similar spirit of moral sanity :— "Problems of Marriage and Divorce." By Mrs. Anna Garlin Spencer. International Journal of Ethics, v. 19, p. 443 (July). "In so far as the increase in divorces is a testimony to this movement of women to refuse marital relations with unfit men, it is a movement for the benefit of the family and not for its injury. . . . "The social need is not for the immediate, working out of the details of a uniform law, while yet rapidly changing social and indus trial conditions make variety of experimental treatment of cultural value; the social need is rather for a legal provision everywhere which will secure more deliberation before action; more accessible counsel of the wise and good for the foolish and confused, more patient waiting, more earnest trial to patch it up and 'go on' even when things look dark and threatening." A good comparison between England and America is set forth in:— "Divorce in America and England." By "Britannicus." North American Review, v. 195, p. 296 (Sept.). "A growing body of opinion is being organ ized in England against the maintenance of a system so prolific of injustice and so conducive to immorality. . . The British have gone as far towards one extreme as the Americans towards the other; but from the standpoint of the social well-being of the community there cannot, I think, be much question that the American system is the less harmful of the two." How shockingly bad the English conditions are may be seen from this statement:— "Notes from London." 25 Scottish Law Review 204 (Aug.). "When Lord Gorell found that the Lord Chancellor's bill made no mention of divorce in the extended jurisdiction of the County Courts, he gave notice of a motion that it was desirable that a limited power of divorce should be included. He made a long speech, dwelling on the points that poor people cannot afford to seek divorce in the High Court—he put the costs of an undefended case at,£30 or,£40; and that the practice of obtain ing separation orders from magistrates, which leave the parties neither married nor unmar ried, is a bad system, which encourages