said, seeing the First Commissioner of Works in his place, he would beg to ask him a question. The other day the right hon. Gentleman, in answer to a question put to him by the hon. Member for North Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley), stated that he had entered into communication with the local authorities of Lambeth with regard to certain noxious trades carried on in that parish, and which, as was obvious to the perception of every one who put his nose out of the library windows of that House, were to a considerable extent the cause of the bad vapours which entered the House from the direction of the Thames. The question he had now to ask the right hon. Gentleman was, whether that communication had led to any result, and if so, whether he felt himself at liberty to state it to the House?

said, he was glad that his hon. Friend had put that question to him, for the matter to which it related had become one of very serious nature in consequence of the course which the local authorities in the Parish of Lambeth had chosen to pursue on this occasion. With the permission of the House he would read a letter which he had caused to be sent to the Vestry of Lambeth on the subject, and their answer:—

"Office of Works, &c., July 30.

"Sir,—By direction of the First Commissioner of Her Majesty's Works, &c., I send you herewith an extract from a report from Mr. Goldsworthy Gurney, who has the charge under this Board of the warming, lighting, and ventilating of the Houses of Parliament, respecting the nuisances affecting the atmosphere of those Houses from offensive manufactories on the other side of the river. I also enclose a copy of a letter, dated the 23rd instant, from Mr. Gurney to the Solicitor for this Department, specifying some of the manufactories referred to by him; and I am to request that you will submit these papers to the Vestry of the Parish of Lambeth, and move them to cause steps to be taken for the suppression or abatement of the nuisances in question.

"I am, &c., "ALFRED AUSTIN, Secretary. "Thomas Roffey, Esq."

"The Vestry of the Parish of St. Mary, Lambeth.

"Vestry hall, Kennington-green, Aug. 10.

"Sir,—I beg to inform you that your communication of the 30th ult. respecting the nuisances affecting the atmosphere of the Houses of Parliament from offensive manufactories on this side of the river was submited to a Vestry Meeting on the 6th instant, and, in reply thereto, it was resolved that Mr. Austin be informed that this Vestry has had the matter referred to in his letter under their consideration, and are not prepared to take any legal proceedings, in connection therewith. "I am, &c.,

"THOMAS ROFFEY, Clerk of the Vestry. "Alfred Austin, Esq.

said, he rose to move the insertion, after the word "adultery," of the words "or of adultery committed in the conjugal residence." He had to complain that the Government had ignored the existence of the codes collated by Mr. M'Queen in his valuable paper, which seemed to have been collated for the guidance of the House of Lords, but not for the guidance of the House of Commons. He had not been able in the short time which had been allowed to consider the blue-book to make a critical analysis of all these foreign codes, but it was clear that with regard to France, which was the most matured law, and the result of the opinions of Napoleon and some of the ablest men of his day, the wife had a right of demanding separation a mensà et there, where the husband had committed adultery in the conjugal residence. He had adopted those words in the French code as translated by Mr. M'Queen. In Sweden the wife was permitted to claim a divorce on the ground of adultery alone on the part of her husband. In Bavaria divorce a mensá et thoro, was granted indiscriminately to the wife and to the husband; Sardinia and the Two Sicilies, he believed, followed the rule of France. It was obvious that many of the most heartrending, most aggravated, and most cruel cases of adultery would not be met by the words as they stood in the clause. If they were about to change the law of England with respect to divorce, and to give the wife a right to claim divorce under certain circumstances, they would do well to consider the provisions of the law in other countries, and, in his opinion, the decision arrived at by the French jurists was more in accordance with good sense and with the kindness and respect which they ought to show to the female sex than the extraordinary provisions of the clause as it stood. He therefore moved the insertion of these words.

said, he must beg leave to take objection to the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General alike as a statement of facts and an enunciation of principle. The further they advanced in the discussion of this Bill the more obvious did it become that it was most essential it should be subjected to an examination and scrutiny which had not been given either by the House of Lords who passed, or by Her Majesty's Government who were responsible for it. Let them try the statement of his hon. and learned Friend first as a matter of fact, and next as a matter of principle. The Attorney General said they were only going to embody in the present Bill the expression of the administration of the existing law. Was that true in point of fact, or was it not? In the first place he must remind the Committee that the Government invited them, and if they should so decide they were about to abolish the action of criminal conversation. Was that an expression of the existing law, or was it not a change of enormous importance, if joined with no other, and was it not a change which of itself required the maturest and most careful discussion? They were also going to constitute adultery a criminal offence, or something like it, or, if not a criminal offence, a nondescript transaction, neither criminally nor civilly punishable. Was that embodied in the existing law? Was that the expression of the existing law? His hon. and learned Friend said he declined to admit the Amendment on the ground that the Bill made no change in the law. Would his hon. and learned Friend have the kindness to acquaint him in what case a woman had obtained in the House of Lords a divorce from her husband on the ground of desertion during two years and upwards? He should like to have a reply to this question before proceeding further upon the consideration of the subject.

said, that if every hon. Member who addressed the Committee were to put a specific question in the middle of his speech, and then wait for a reply, the result would be great waste of time and considerable inconvenience.

said, the object of his question was not to create delay, but to prevent it. He believed there was no case in which divorce had been given for adultery, coupled with, desertion for two years and upwards; but before proceeding to comment on the speech of the Attorney General in that sense, he had thought it fair to his hon. and learned Friend, as he was not himself minutely conversant with the history of proceedings in the House of Lords, to put a question to him upon a matter of fact, which, if it were capable of answer at all, might have been answered in three words. Such had been his purpose, and he was in the judgment of the Committee whether it would not have tended to shorten debate rather than to prolong it. However, there was no answer forthcoming, and he was therefore driven to the alternative of supposing that there was no such case as divorce for adultery coupled with desertion. That being so, what became of the statements of the hon. and learned Attorney General, and what confidence could be reposed in his accuracy in describing matters of fact? The hon. and learned Attorney General had told them distinctly that he refused to entertain a proposition which he admitted had much reason in it, because it was making an alteration in our law of divorce. Well, according to facts, judged by the silence of the Attorney General, the Bill already made an alteration in what his hon. and learned Friend called our law of divorce a vinculo. The Bill provided for an entirely new category of divorces a vinculo, and therefore he called upon the Attorney General on his own principles either to strike out of the Bill divorce a vinculo for adultery coupled with desertion for two years and upwards, or else not to attempt to stifle discussion upon the important Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Leicestershire. He now came to that part of the speech of the hon. and learned Attorney General in which he dealt with this question as one of principle. The hon. and learned Gentleman had told the Committee that it was their business to embody in the Bill an expression of the administration of the existing law, and not to change it in any respect whatever. He ventured to say that a more preposterous proposition never was submitted to Parliament. The Attorney General had spoken of the administration of the existing law as if it had been something fixed and systematized upon a principle; whereas, on the contrary, it had been in a constant state of growth and development from generation to generation. The House of Lords, acting like wise and prudent men, had dealt with cases according to circumstances, and when new cases had come forward of sufficient gravity to induce them to think that they ought to be included by parity of reasoning within the principles upon which they had formerly granted divorce Bills they had made fresh admission of such cases accordingly. That was a rational principle; and not only with regard to those new cases, but with respect to the remarriage of the guilty person, and the intermarriage of the two guilty parties the practice of the House of Lords had also been in a stale of growth and development. To represent, therefore, that the administration of the existing law was somewhat consistent, systematized, and fixed, constituting of itself a firm standing ground, so that we had nothing else to do but to place our feet there, he must say was a proposition entirely unworthy of the Attorney General. More; he ventured to say it was a proposition which the hon. and learned Attorney General would never have made if it had not been for the extraordinary circumstances under which this Bill was being pressed through Parliament, and which rendered it absolutely necessary to stop discussion and prevent that consideration which the subject required. Such was the true reason for saying that the Bill was merely an expression of the administration of the existing law. Nor was this all that the extraordinary speech of the Attorney General opened to the Committee. He had understood that the real object of the Bill was to get rid of the quasi-judicial proceedings before the House of Lords, and to substitute for them a real judicial proceeding in a Court; but the hon. and learned Attorney General now called upon the Committee to pass the Bill upon the ground that it was merely an expression of the existing law, and then for the improvement and extension of that law to trust to the new precedents which would from time to time be established by private Bills of divorce brought before the House of Lords, and receiving their affirmation, thereby becoming equivalent to judgments upon appeals. If the Attorney General really contemplated that the law of divorce was still to remain exactly in the same fluent and uncertain state, subject to modification, relaxation, and addition by successive private Bills, he could only say that he cut from under his feet whatever little narrow shred or strip of ground yet remained for him to stand upon, and again supplied a conclusive proof of the crudity and precipitancy of the Bill and the scarcely decent haste with which it was being pressed through Parliament. Differing entirely from the Attorney General in regard to his facts and principles, he likewise differed from him in the practical result which would arise from his speech. He thought there were very strong grounds for entertaining the proposal of the noble Lord the Member for Leicestershire, or something equivalent to it, and if the noble Lord had not brought forward this Amendment, he should have done so himself. The noble Lord proposed that they should introduce into the Bill a provision by which not only bigamous adultery, adultery with cruelty, adultery with incest, and adultery with desertion should supply a wife with grounds for a divorce, but likewise adultery committed in the conjugal residence. They were going to give divorce to a woman for adultery with cruelty. Now, adultery with cruelty was at present a thing almost unknown in the higher classes of society, because the cruelty mentioned in the clause did not mean moral cruelty, but cruelty attended with the effect of producing bodily fear. He was afraid that in the lower classes the consequence of their giving a remedy for adultery with cruelty, and not for adultery alone, would be in a multitude of instances to induce the husband to add cruelty to adultery, with a view to divorce. That which in the higher classes bore an analogy to adultery with cruelty in the lower was adultery with insult—adultery paraded under the roof and in the view of the suffering wife,—adultery with moral cruelty; in short cases of that kind were common in the upper ranks of society. They were not likely to find among those classes adultery with desertion, adultery with incest, or adultery with bigamy, but he was afraid there were many examples of that sort of adultery which was attended with the greatest amount of convenience and luxury to the profligate husband, and which consisted in his converting his own house into the scene of his infamy, while at the same time he complied with the demands of society by maintaining outwardly peaceful relations with his wife. That was the form which the temptation took in the higher classes, and that was exactly what the Government had omitted from their Bill. He hoped, therefore, that the Committee would adopt the Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for Leicestershire, or something equivalent to it in its spirit and its effect.

said, he should proceed upon the same principle with regard to the noble Lord's Amendment as he would with his own, namely, to support any proposition having for its object the establishment of perfect equality between the sexes. The clause as brought in by the Government would permit a man to turn his house into a brothel, while he could discard his wife for a single act of adultery. Grosser and more horrible systematic cruelty could scarcely be devised, and to the shame of English gentlemen be it said, that this was the only country where such a law was tolerated.

said, that as one of the majority who voted for the second reading of the Bill, he would beg to state that he had not done so upon the grounds assigned by the hon. and learned Attorney General. When he voted for the second reading he had not carefully considered all the details of the measure, but, believing that the present state of the law of divorce was not satisfactory, he had confidence in Her Majesty's Government that they would propose a suitable measure for the amendment of that law. But he had the strongest objections to the clause now before the Committee, and should vote for every Amendment that would tend to better the unfair position in which a wife was now placed. It was proposed that a sin which, by whomsoever committed, was equal in the sight of God, should be permitted in one case but not in the other. He demurred to that principle, believing that the sanctity of home would be best maintained by perfect equality existing between husband and wife. The clause proposed to protect the lust of the man from the scandal attendant upon an application for divorce, and to pour out the vials of legislative wrath upon the woman alone. Women's sins generally arose from the weakness of their nature—men's from the strength of their passions. Men also had, in reality, fewer excuses for a crime to which a woman was often led by her finer feelings in seeking some one to love and cling to when her affections had been driven from their legitimate channel by the cruelty or desertion of him who had vowed at the altar to cherish and protect her. It was said that the sin of a woman led to greater social evil than that of a man, but was it not a great social evil that a man should be permitted repeatedly and with impunity to indulge in sin, and would not such a state of the law hold out strong temptations to men to indulge in vice? He believed the clause as it stood was founded in injustice, that it was opposed to morality and to the Christian religion; and, though he was desirous of supporting the Government, he could not allow that feeling to interfere with his duty to society at large, and therefore he should vote deliberately and conscientiously for the Amendment of the noble Lord (Lord J. Manners), as well as for every Amendment which would lead to the establishment of principles of equality between the sexes.

said, he fully concurred in every observation that had fallen from the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken. As the Lord Advocate was now in his place he (Mr. Napier) would remind the House that in Scotland husband and wife were placed upon a footing of perfect equality. In this country there was no law governing such matters, which were left to be dealt with by private legislation. In cases of adultery the Legislature had declared that there was no scriptural objection to granting divorces under special circumstances, but that they should be dealt with as public policy might suggest. When a wife applied for a divorce the Legislature had decided not as a matter of law but of public policy not to grant it. It should be remembered, however, that the present clause as it stood limited the power of obtaining divorce by the wife to one or two cases, and as the Amendment introduced a fresh case, in which he thought it ought to be granted, he should vote for it. He had already voted for a perfect equality between husband and wife, and he could not see that there would be any danger likely to arise from adopting the Amendment, because wives would not be likely to apply for divorces on account of simple adultery alone, but would do so only in cases where the husband's adultery was accompanied by circumstances which rendered continued cohabitation impossible.

said, he should support the Amendment as in accordance with the spirit of the clause as introduced by the Government. The objection started by the hon. and learned Attorney General was entirely untenable, for the principle of divorce for desertion was not in accordance with the old principle either of the House of Lords or of the Ecclesiastical law. Therefore they adopted a new principle as regards both forms of the law. The clause already recognised desertion in one form as a reason for divorce, but cohabitation in the same House was really desertion in the spirit, if not in the terms, of the proposition. The husband in cases of adultery scarcely ever deserted the wife. It was the wife who was compelled to leave her husband when a guilty woman was brought into it; and she had at present no remedy for this grievous wrong. They were now amending the law, and before passing any Bill for that purpose they were bound to see that it was made conformable to the principle of justice, and was likely to afford a remedy for a most aggravated form of suffering and injustice.

said, he must express his great surprise at the course which had been taken by the Attorney General on this Amendment. The hon. and learned Gentleman did not condescend to say a word against the Amendment, but with an aplomb possessed certainly by no other man in the House he refused to take it into consideration, because he said Parliament was not now engaged in altering the law of divorce. But was that the case? In the very clause under consideration, there were four cases for which a divorce might be obtained by the wife, and two out of those were new. The Royal Commissioners stated that only four divorces a vinculo had ever been granted to a wife, two of which were for incestuous adultery, and in the other two there was the element of bigamy. There was no one in the House, then, with the exception of the Attorney General, who would have the hardihood to say that they were not altering the law in this clause. The Committee, too, had just as much right to complain of the conduct of the Home Secretary. The right hon. Gentleman, when a plain question was put, got up and objected to its being answered because it would lead to delay. That was the right hon. Gentleman's idea of the manner in which this Bill was to be discussed. Again, the Committee had a right to hear the Lord Advocate's views upon this Amendment which was in accordance with the law of Scotland, where he believed it had worked well. What was the reason that the law was to be different in the two countries? If the law was wrong in Scotland the Lord Advocate ought to bring in a Bill to amend it. If it were right, why should it not be right for England? It was absurd to say that Parliament was not enacting a new law with regard to divorce, for there had been no law at all before in which the House of Commons had concurred. The House of Lords alone had laid down the condition's under which divorces could he obtained. In establishing a new law of divorce the wife ought to have the same rights as the husband. Nobody had denied that the sin of adultery was the same in the husband as in the wife, and the remedy ought to be the same. But one Member in the House—the hon. Member for Newport—had had the boldness to admit that the only reason for making this difference was the difference between the social effects of the crime in the two sexes. The Amendment of the noble Lord was a good Amendment; it was a step towards that perfect equality which he would get if he could, but as he could not he would get what he could. It would be easy to show that the argument based on the danger of collusive divorce was totally without foundation.

said, he had listened to the discussion with the deepest interest, and he was glad to find that the right hon. Gentleman had altered his mind as to the convenience of assimilating the laws of the two countries with respect to marriage. The law of Scotland proceeded upon the principle that the two sexes should be on a footing of equality, and that that principle was a correct one was proved by the result of social experience. No doubt there was a difference between the social effects of the guilt of the two parties. It was a difference which was recognised by society and by public opinion, and it was so plain and so elementary that it was unnecessary to point it out. Even the other sex at once admitted it, and condonation on the part of one sex might be amicable, while on the part of the other it would be degrading. But, notwithstanding that, he was of opinion that the rights of the two parties ought to be equal, because there was this countervailing balance, that nothing but absolute extremity would induce the wife to apply for the remedy. This was not merely a theoretical reason, for it was borne out completely by Scotch experience. In Scotland it was found that the proportion was as three to two. Out of seventeen cases in a year in a population of 2,000,000, seven were applications from wives, and ten from husbands. Out of 175 cases of divorce, seventy-three were at the instance of the wife and 102 at the instance of the husband. It was a mistake to suppose that divorces were only available for persons residing in and about Edinburgh. He had made inquiry, and he had found, on analysing the cases, that petitions proceeded from all parts of the country; but it might appear that they came mostly from Edinburgh because many of the parties would come to reside in Edinburgh while they were suing out a divorce. He bad agreed in the principle of the Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Surrey the other evening with regard to the omission of the word "incestuous," but he had not voted for it for fear that it would entail the rejection of the Bill by the other House.

said, he wished to explain that he had never expressed any opinion Other than that marriage was dissoluble.

said, that the speech of the learned Lord, which did him infinite credit, demanded the serious consideration of the Committee, because it had been announced that it would be necessary hereafter to introduce fresh laws applicable to the cases of the Colonies and Ireland and Scotland. [The ATTORNEY GENERAL: Not as to Scotland.]—applicable then to Ireland, India, and the Colonies. Were these laws to be founded upon what the Lord Advocate had properly described as the principles of immutable justice, or upon those of this Bill? The hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General had altogether mistaken his own position as well as the spirit of the House, in the manner he had ventured to deal with the question. The argument of the Attorney General proceeded upon two assumptions. The first was that four cases which had been decided by private Acts of Parliament in the House of Lords were to be regarded as settling and establishing the law of the country; and the second was, that this clause in no way altered the law as laid down in those four cases. Now there was in the first place no law in England which authorised a divorce a vinculo; but admitting the first of these assumptions for the sake of argument, the other could not be supported, because it was proved by the report of the Commissioners that divorce a vinculo at the suit of the wife was never allowed by Parliament, except under two cases, that of adultery. coupled with incest and bigamy. But the present clause authorised two new cases—of adultery with cruelty, and adultery with desertion for two years. The Lord Advocate did not stand alone in the opinion which he had expressed. It was the universal opinion of Scotch lawyers that, if a divorce were allowed to the husband on account of the wife's adultery, the same remedy ought to be given to the wife on account of the husband's offence. What would be the practical effect of this clause if the Amendment were rejected? As a divorce was to be granted for adultery coupled with desertion for two years, a husband who showed so much respect and regard for the feelings of his injured wife as not to commit this great sin and crime in her presence, or under her roof, would be visited with the penalties of the law; but the man who flagrantly and shamelessly dishonoured the marriage bed, who kept his concubine in the house to the daily and hourly torture of his wife's feelings, would be sanctioned and upheld by the law in the violation of his marriage vows. Truly it seemed to him that justice, the principles of religion, and social expediency, all combined to condemn the clause as it stood.

said, I think that I have a certain right to complain of some of the remarks which have been made with regard to myself in connection with this Bill in quarters where I should least have expected them, but I am sure that upon cool consideration the Committee will see that those attacks which have been made upon me are without the slightest foundation. This Bill was committed to my charge as being based upon the limited principle of embodying the existing law with regard to divorce, and I presented it to the House as being based upon that principle, and I explained upon the second reading of the Bill the course which we proposed to adopt in order to carry out that principle. It is undoubtedly true that divorce on account of desertion for two years and adultery has not in that specified form been embodied in any Bill which has passed the House of Lords, but, although the statement which I made may be carped at, as it has been, it was substantially correct. Well, then, I am now, such being the principle upon which the Bill was introduced, invited to enter into the consideration of a question, no doubt of great importance, and one which it would be most fitting, if not most material, to consider if we were proposing to place the law of marriage on a new foundation; but that is not the function which we are now called upon to perform. I made no such representation when I introduced the Bill into the House, nor was it upon any such principle that the majority of this House voted for the second reading of the measure. I think, therefore, that I have some right to complain of the language which has been adopted by the noble Lord and by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford with regard to myself —namely, that I have disdained to consider this subject. If we were about to enter into the consideration of the whole subject of the law of divorce at large it would be a most important subject for our careful attention, and I think that the Committee will do me the justice to remember that I stated that the principle of giving equal facility for divorce to the woman and the man was recognised, not only by the laws of France, but by laws anterior to the law of France. Was that disdaining the question, or treating it with contempt? It would, however, have been beyond my functions, and beyond what I had undertaken, to have entered into the consideration of that subject on the second reading of the Bill, because it did not come within the scope of that principle which I was commissioned to invite the House to accede to. I think that the person who has charge of this Bill ought to be treated with some consideration, and it is not just to impute to me an insensibility with regard to the great question of giving equal facilities of divorce to the woman and the man. I am perfectly aware of the importance of that subject, and is it fit or right to taunt me with insensibility or indifference with regard to it, because, having proposed to the House a limited field of inquiry, I decline to enter into the consideration of other points not yet embodied in any existing principle of the law of divorce in this country? I hope, therefore, that the Committee will do me the favour to distinguish between any feeling which I might entertain if the whole subject of the law of marriage were being entered into, and what I feel it my duty to do when the inquiry is limited as it is at present, and to believe that I am not actuated by any feeling of disdain or contempt for a principle which I admit under other circumstances would be entitled to the utmost consideration. The duty which we have now, however, to discharge is a limited one. It is merely to embody the law of divorce which at present exists, and I know of no private Bill ever having been granted which has embodied the principle which I am now blamed for refusing to discuss. If this Bill were once thrown aside, and the whole law of marriage and divorce made the subject of inquiry, then I should be the last man to limit the field of discussion, or to refuse to consider a state of law which inflicts injustice upon the woman most wrongfully and without cause, and which may be considered opprobrious and wicked. We are now, however, limited to the performance of that duty which this Bill imposes upon us—namely, to erect a new tribunal and to embody the principles of law which already exist. As regards the question of equal facility of divorce being given to both sexes I certainly think myself entitled to ask, how is it that some hon. Gentleman who, like the right hon. Member for the University of Oxford, or the right hon. Gentleman opposite, has been aware that injustice has been perpetrated year after year and century after century, has not brought the subject under the consideration of the House? Those hon. Gentlemen had, on the contrary, allowed her to remain in the position in which she was, and now, when the Government were taking some steps in her favour, they suddenly found out that in one particular point, which the measure did not touch, she is a perfect martyr. The subject, however, is one of the greatest importance, and this present Bill need not be the end-all of legislation upon the subject. By this Bill we shall create a tribunal which may hereafter have to I administer other laws made under happier auspices. I hope that some hon. Gentlemen will in a following Session perceive the inconsistency which has marked their conduct throughout this discussion. In what way do those hon. Gentlemen think that they have presented themselves to the country? Do they suppose that after having recorded on the Minutes of this House their intention of advocating in every way the principle of the indissolubility of marriage they will be listened to with credit when they come forward and move Amendments which not only recognise the principle of the dissolubility of marriage, but which propose to afford further facilities for obtaining divorces a vinculo matrimonii? Do they suppose that such proposals as they bring forward will be received by the people of England as coming from sincere advocates? No; such proposals cannot be sincere. An hon. Gentleman cannot be supposed to be sincere, nor will the people of England look upon him as sincere, who, after advocating the principle of indissolubility of marriage, brings forward Amendments based upon a diametrically opposite principle.

If I, Sir, had been a mere spectator of this debate, and had heard the speech which the hon. and learned Attorney General has just delivered upon an Amendment to a clause of the Bill, and had noticed what a wide range he has taken, both in general discussion and in personal attack, and if I had been ignorant of all that has taken place in this House, with regard to this Bill, I should have thought that there was an intention to defeat the Bill by delay, and that that design was nurtured by the Attorney General. The hon. and learned Attorney General thinks himself entitled to charge hon. Members of this House, in so many words, not only with inconsistency—with which he has a perfect right to charge them—but with insincerity, in that they have brought forward and supported a proposition with which he says, they know well nobody can believe them to he sincere. Now, it appears to me, that my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General himself, if he has not crossed the line, has trodden very close to the line, where it would have been the duty of the right hon. Gentleman who presides over the deliberations of the Committee to interrupt him, as a disorderly Member of Parliament who abuses the privilege of speech; for I say, it is not usual with hon. Members of this House to challenge the sincerity of an hon. Member, in reference to any proposition he may think it his duty to advance. Now, if I had the intention of defeating this Bill by delay, my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General has given me the best handle in the world for taking that course. After the charges, not of inconsistency only, but of insincerity also, which have not only proceeded from his mouth, but gleamed from those eloquent eyes of his, which have been turned continuously on me for the last ten minutes, instead of being addressed to the Chairman, I should have been justified in entering on a personal defence of myself. But I shall do no such thing. I give my hon. and learned Friend all the benefit of all his imputations of inconsistency and insincerity. Let them go for what they are worth. I will not occupy the time of the Committee by replying to them. But this I shall tell my hon. and learned Friend, that those charges, multiply and reduplicate them as he may, will not stand between me and the performance of my duty, or go to absolve me from the obligation of canvassing and criticising a measure which has now, perhaps more than ever, assumed a position that renders it totally unfit to be submitted for discussion in this House. What are the statements of my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General himself, and of my hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate? Are those statements really compatible with the course which Her Majesty's Government are pursuing? Can it be justified—I don't say out of the mouths of the opponents, but out of the mouths of the friends and champions, and out of the mouths of those who are responsible for the Bill. The Lord Advocate says, I have misinterpreted the reports on the Scotch divorces. On the contrary, I contend I have analysed them with the utmost care, to the extent to which the information goes. I have appealed to him for more information, but he has not had time to procure it. But, if you will refer to the 73rd page of the Divorce Commission, you will see that the operation of the law of Divorce in Scotland is, in the main, to make it a local law, and, almost, to confine it to Edinburgh and Leith and their immediate neighbourhood, and to some other great towns which are in easy communication with them. But that is a matter comparatively unimportant, except when we match it with other admissions made by my hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate. He has been fairly challenged as to the merits of the question now in issue, and what were the memorable words of the Lord Advocate? I think he said that the law of Scotland, which gives perfect parity of divorce to a woman, was well founded, both in principle and experience. He used, I think other pretty strong words on the subject. He said, he concurred in the principle of the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for West Surrey; and these admissions have been followed by the admissions of my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General. The Attorney General distinguished between the advocates of the Bill and those who had the charge of it, and it appears from my hon. and learned Friend, that those who have the charge of the Bill are not the advocates of it. The Bill is pushed by him through this House as a ministerial duty. He receives it from the Cabinet, for whom he considers it his business to hew wood and draw water. [The ATTORNEY GENERAL was understood to say, "That is true."] It is true? Well, that is important. My hon. and learned Friend expounds to us the principles of this great measure of policy, and dilates, not only on history, but, also, on theology, and the Scripture arguments. He must always recollect, however, that he does not appear before us here, simply as an English Gentleman, speaking from his own breast and his own conscience, but as the organ and minister of commands issued to him from above: but, notwithstanding that, that is the principle which my hon. and learned Friend has laid down, he has, himself, however, entirely broken the shackles that surround him, for he has fairly given tongue on this Bill, and has told us that the English law of divorce is "opprobrious and wicked," that that law, to which he now asks us to give legislative expression, is "opprobrious and wicked," and places women in an inferior and unjust position. I may question the prudence and policy of the declaration which my hon. and learned Friend has made, in his capacity of Attorney General, but I must say, I think it does him honour as a man. My hon. and learned Friend says he is going to propose to us a Bill which is to leave women in an inferior and unjust position, and which is to give statutory form and fixity to the law of divorce, which is "opprobrious and wicked;" and my hon. and learned Friend the Lord Advocate, the other official and legal adviser of the Government says, the law of Scotland, which asserts a contrary principle, is well founded in principle and experience; but he invites us to pass a Bill ill founded in principle, and condemned by experience, and his reason for that is the fear that the measure should not pass during the present Session. Let us translate this matter into plain language. They demand of us to pass a bad Bill; for, if we attempt to make it a good Bill, it is impossible to pass it at all. Why, that is the original ground on which a difference of opinion arose with respect to this Bill. It is a total mistake to suppose that my right hon. Friend asserted the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. Some hon. Members may hold that doctrine, but there are many others who do no such thing; and I hold myself open to consider the legislative question of the dissolubility of marriage, and of the conditions on which it should be granted. But is that a reason that we should pass a Bill under the circumstances in which this is laid before us? My hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General wonders why he has been taunted so much for the course he has pursued with reference to this question, and he repays those taunts with interest. My hon. and learned Friend must' clearly observe the actual position of affairs. My noble Friend opposite (Lord J. Manners) proposed an Amendment which is conformable to the precedents of other laws, which Amendment he thought it his duty to submit to the House, and the principle of which has received the approbation of every hon. Gentleman who has spoken upon it. The hon. and learned Attorney General, however, says, "I cannot consider your Amendment, because this Bill is a mere and pure expression of the present legislative practice of the House of Lords." But does the hon. and learned Attorney General say that this is a case in which "an inch is as good as an ell," and that if, by an inch, you depart from the present law of divorce, in order to admit propositions which you view with favour, a man is to be found fault with, who wants to digress by two inches? After the Attorney General had, on the part of the Government, said, they would not discuss the proposition of my noble Friend (Lord John Manners), the Lord Advocate, on the other hand, in the frankest and clearest manner, proceeded to give his opinion upon it, and he, too, is in favour of the Amendment of my noble Frend, in principle. Why, then, is it not to be admitted into the Bill? I could understand your proposition if you were taking this imperfect, fluent, uncertain, and continually growing and altering, practice of the House of Lords, and arbitrarily founding a statute upon it, though that would be a bad ground for legislation. But you are not doing that: you are altering the law of divorce a vinculo; you are giving to it new chapters and new heads. My noble Friend (Lord J. Manners) asks you to give it another new chapter; and, again, I ask on what principle it is that the Government can ask the Committee to negative the proposition of my noble Friend? But I cannot pass by the remarkable admissions of the legal advisers of the Government. They admit that the principles upon which the Bill is fixed are founded in injustice and condemned by experience, that they leave the woman in an inferior and unjust condition, and that such a law is opprobrious and wicked. It is impossible to pass by those admissions without seeing that those who make them are not justified in asking the House to assent to a Bill so framed. It would be far better to wait until we can, with deliberation, deal with a subject of this vast and immeasurable importance, than now to proceed, with haste and precipitancy, to give our sanction to a measure with regard to which its own advocates make admissions more damning than any charge which can be brought by those who are opposed to it.

My right hon. Friend who has just sat down has accused my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General of dealing severe taunts on those to whom he is opposed. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford, with that great kindness which distinguishes him, has dealt, as I think, and as he himself must feel, an undeserved taunt, not on his opponents, but on other parts of the House. The right hon. Gentleman has accused my hon. and learned Friend of being a hewer of wood and drawer of water. No doubt in the course of the arguments which have taken place on the present Bill, it has been necessary for my hon. and learned Friend—and ably has he acted up to the necessities of the case—to "hew" in one or two directions, and in so doing has cut most severely right and left; but it has been reserved for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford to describe the persons on whom those cuts were inflicted as composed of that material of which he says my hon. and learned Friend is a hewer. Whether, as a drawer of water he has drawn tears of repentance from the eyes of those who have abandoned their opinions, it is not for me to say. This Amendment undoubtedly will be recommended to our adoption by the reflection that those who vote for it must have given or are giving a public, formal, and deliberate recantation of the principle which they have hitherto maintained of the indissolubility of marriage, because the object and direct effect of this Amendment are to extend to a greater range the principle of dissolubility, which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford and others have denied. We shall certainly be disposed to look with favour upon an Amendment which draws into our camp, from the adverse camp, all those who have hitherto opposed the fundamental principle of this Bill. The right hon. Gentleman opposite, and some who have taken part in this debate, support this Amendment upon the broad principle that with regard to divorce there ought to be no difference between husband and wife. I cannot admit the extent of that principle, and I think, without explaining more particularly the grounds, no reasonable man who looks to the constitution of society and the results of marriage can fail to see that whatever may be the quality of the moral offence, the consequences of adultery are utterly different in the case of the woman. As far as regards the interests of society it is not true that the woman ought invariably to be placed on the same footing in this respect as the man. The Lord Advocate, with that national feeling which I trust every Scotchman will always cherish, and with that natural regard which is instilled into the mind in early youth for the institutions of his country, would have all distinctions between English and Scotch law abolished, by the extension to England of everything peculiarly belonging to Scotland, and that, I understand, is the opinion of some of those who sit on the other side of the House. Do they mean to say that the law of marriage is the same in the two countries? Do they mean to introduce into this country the extreme facility of contracting marriage which has been brought to light in a recent trial in Scotland, and formed part of the defence of one of the parties—namely, that the writing a letter to a woman by a man, or by a woman to a man, claiming the other as husband or wife, constitutes a marriage? They do not. Therefore it is quite preposterous to argue this question upon the ground that because there is a difference between the law of Scotland, and the law of England, that difference must be removed by adapting to England everything which may be found in the law of Scotland. If my Scotch friends will permit me to say it without offence, I would rather attain similarity in an opposite direction, by extending to Scotland the law of England; but I am well content to leave the laws as they are, except upon matters where common interests require that legislation should be uniform. The great objection to the Amendment proposed by the noble Lord is that it gives rise to great opportunities and means of collusion between the parties. I think it is evident that it would very much assist a husband and a wife who wished to get rid of each other by legal process, and it is obvious how much more easy that process would be under this Amendment than under the Bill as it now stands. One great argument of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford is that we ought to make this Bill as perfect as possible—that we ought to correct every evil which may exist in the law of marriage. That is a stereotyped objection to every measure the opponents of which desire to prevent its passing. It is an old, standard, set-up form, for the purpose of objecting to any improvement to say that it does not carry out all the improvements of which the matter in hand is susceptible, and if we admit that to be a valid reason there is hardly any improvement in the law which ever can be made, because it always can be said that we have not done everything which might be done. It is the same argument which for years has delayed the improvement of the Ecclesiastical Courts. When measures with that object were brought before the House those who wished to perpetuate abuses said that they did not accomplish everything which it was desirable they should accomplish. I do not go so far as my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General and others who have spoken in thinking that in regard to the dissolubility of marriage we ought to place the wife on the same footing as the husband in all and every respect, but I frankly admit there is some force in the argument which has been alleged in favour of the particular condition of the Amendment. I cannot but admit that the argument of the right hon. Gentleman has some force, that by the Bill, as it stands, marriage may be broken by the wife for a less violation of her rights than that which this Amendment would contemplate; and, although I think with the Attorney General, that it would be much better that the House should pass the Bill, adopting in it the law as it stands with trifling omissions, nevertheless, anxious as I am to promote the passing of the measure as it is, and balancing the merits against the evils of the Amendment, I am not disposed to press to extremity the objection which I have stated. I only protest against the concession on one point being made the ground for demanding other concessions more objectionable, and with that explanation I do not intend to divide the Committee.

said, that by accepting this Amendment the noble Lord repudiated the doctrine of the hon. and learned Attorney General that they were not to amend the Bill. The noble Lord admitted that they ought to take as good a measure as they could when they could not get a perfect one, and thereby conceded that the Committee should endeavour to amend the Bill as much as possible. This was an important concession. The local courts were another important concession, and neither of these objects was included in the Bill. The noble Lord had no right to make the charge general, that a majority of the opponents of the Bill were against the dissolubility of marriage, because many of them objected only to the conditions and form in which the Bill for divorce was presented. The noble Lord knew that they were only beginning to get into the difficulties of the question, and yet he asked the Committee to import into it the whole subject of Scotch marriages. He thought the noble Lord had exercised a wise discretion in accepting the Amendment, but regretted that he had not consented at once to place the wife in the same position as the husband. The vast inconvenience to a woman of having her home destroyed was a security that she would not abuse her power of applying for a divorce.

I am glad that my noble Friend at the head of the Government has agreed to the proposal of the noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord J. Manners), because I think that the ground which has been taken by the hon. and learned Attorney General, that we were doing no more than carrying into effect the existing law, having undoubedly failed, the Amendment of the noble Lord opposite is necessary for the improvement of this Bill. It was shown clearly enough by the noble Lord and by others that, in effect, if the Bill were to pass in its present shape you would impose upon the wife greater hardships than she may now sustain, because, instead of deserting his wife and living with a mistress at some distance, a profligate husband would have only to introduce the woman into his house in order to drive his wife away, thus placing her in a worse position than at present. But I should not have thought it necessary to rise now, my noble Friend having given way, if I had not believed that the tone adopted by some who have taken part in this debate called for a few remarks. I thought we were discussing one of the nearest and dearest relations of life—that on which not political events or the changes of Ministries, but the happiness of married life depends; but from the tone assumed by members of the Government I should have imagined that we were engaged in some party debate, in which all those paramount considerations which the subject of divorce naturally suggested were to be thrown aside in order that taunts might be cast at some hon. Gentlemen who are said to be inconsistent. I think that taunt in itself is of little value, because I have always understood that hon. Members of this House were quite at liberty to oppose the principle of any Bill, to declare upon the second reading that that principle was totally adverse to their opinions, and yet when a majority had affirmed it to endeavour in Committee to make the Bill as consonant with justice as it could be made. Upon the subject of the taunt, therefore, there is little to be said; but what I think ought not to be borne by this Committee is, that a mere taunt should be put in the place of all argument against the opposition. A noble Lord or a right hon. Gentleman proposes that marriage should be dissoluble in certain cases, and up gets some member or official of the Government and says, "Oh, but you were of opinion before that marriage should not be dissoluble in any case." What has that to do with the question? If a wife some years hence should be found to complain that she could not get a remedy, that the law was wrong and unjust, what answer would it be to her to say that the House of Commons could not agree to such an Amendment because it was proposed by those who had said or done something inconsistent with it upon some former occasion? We really ought to consider the importance of the subject before us, and not whether a taunt might be well or ill directed against an opponent. I think the hon. and learned Attorney General has a right to be heard when he says this Bill is placed in his hands, and he is asked to expound it to the House; but the Government ought to give greater weight and confidence to the hon. and learned Gentleman, considering his eminence as a lawyer, and the value of his opinion, and they ought not to ask him to support propositions which he declares to be wrong and unjust. I heard with alarm that this Bill was not to be an end-all of legislation on this subject. I am one of those, as I stated the other night, who are willing to come here and attend to this Bill, and who do not think it would be any excuse for a neglect of our duties to say, that we are in the middle of August; but, if we are to consider the Bill, let us do so fairly and fully; and let it not be said after this measure has passed, that it is intended to last for a year only, and that we may expect another Bill next Session. The subject is so important, solemn, and even sacred, that Parliament ought to deal with it in the most careful and deliberate manner and not allow fresh propositions to be brought forward year after year. It would be intolerable to say to a wife, "It is true you are unjustly treated, but wait a little, marriage will be put upon different conditions, and in a few years hence the law will enable you to obtain a divorce." The effect of that would be to shake the very foundations of married life, and I must say that the adoption of such a course ought not to be permitted to any Government whatever. Let the Government be strong or weak, it ought not to be allowed to tamper with the best interests of society by perpetually unsettling the law of marriage—a law which, above all others, demands the most sacred and inviolable fixity.

said, that the principle of the Amendment having been frankly accepted, he wished dispassionately to call the attention of the noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire to the very large proposition involved in his form of words, as compared with the authority from which he had derived it. In the book to which the noble Lord had referred the French law was stated thus:—"A wife may demand divorce by reason of the adultery of her husband, when he has kept his concubine in the common residence." It was stated in a note that the French law, though regarding the adultery of the husband in all cases as extremely reprehensible, yet distinguished where his infidelities were occasional and fugitive. The principle of the French law, therefore, was, that a wife should have divorce when she had been insulted in a manner that prevented the hope of reconciliation, by her husband bringing a mistress into the same house, and insisting upon keeping her there; whereas, the words adopted by the noble Lord opposite would include any occasional and fugitive act once committed in the common residence, without the insult offered to the wife of bringing the mistress into the house as a resident. He would suggest, therefore, that they had better adopt the language of the foreign Code referred to rather than the somewhat loose words of the noble Lord, and that the Amendment ought to run thus:— "Adultery committed by the husband with a mistress kept in the same house as the wife." Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment,—to leave out the words "in the conjugal residence," in order to add the words, "by the husband with a mistress kept by him in the same house with his wife."

said, he believed that the words proposed by the hon. and learned Attorney General would be wholly inoperative. In English society it would be hardly possible to find a single man who was sufficiently a villain to outrage all laws so as to bring him within the category laid down by the hon. and learned Gentleman. A man might commit adultery with the housemaid, the lady's maid, or any sort of maid, but that would not fall within the hon. and learned Gentleman's category of a mistress kept in the conjugal residence. He hoped the hon. and learned Gentleman would not attempt to fritter away to nothing that which the noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston) had agreed to on principle.

said, he had not the least desire to evade any decision to which the Committee had arrived. All he wished to point out was the difference between an isolated act and habitual adultery. The principle of the law, as copied from the source to which he had referred, would be to give the wife a right to divorce for habitual adultery on her husband's part, committed with in the conjugal residence. As the right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that he (the Attorney General) wished to evade the decision of the Committee, he should with draw his Amendment.

said, that he did not intend to convey that the hon. and learned Gentleman sought to evade the decision of the Committee, but merely intended to point out what would be the effect of the Amendment he proposed. As to habitual adultery, how was that to be proved? It was difficult enough at present to prove a legally a single instance, and of course it would be still more difficult to prove a series of instances.

said, he regretted that he felt bound to speak somewhat in opposition to the generous feeling of the Committee, which seemed to think that there should be a parity of punishment between the man and woman; but to justify that there must be a parity of crime, and that he could not admit to be the case. Those who had listened to the analysis of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford must have been struck with the idea that, if the crime of adultery was more frequent among men than among women, that arose from the circumstance that with the former it was regarded as a lesser offence than by the latter; in fact, according to the French axiom, it was in one case a surprise of the senses, and in the other an error of the heart. In order to show the inequality of the crime in man and woman, he would put the case of a father who had a son and daughter both married. If the son complained to him of his wife's infidelity, the father would sympathize with him, and say, "You cannot continue to live with this woman; you cannot entrust the education of your daughters to her, and you must put her away." If his daughter came to him and complained of her husband's infidelity, the father would express his sorrow, but would ask whether the adultery had been combined with cruelty, or with offensive insults, or was it habitual? If he found it was merely a "surprise of the senses," he would recommend his daughter to bear her misery for a time, and to endeavour to bring back her husband for the sake of her own and her children's position. By this illustration the Committee would see how differently the crime is viewed in the two sexes. Divorce might be given to the wife for her husband's habitual adultery, but, for God's sake, let it not be granted for every passing error committed by the husband.

said, he thought the hon. Gentleman had only discharged his duty in stating his difference from what he believed to be the general current of opinion in the Committee. As, however, the hon. Gentleman had referred to him (Mr. Gladstone), perhaps he might be permitted to say a few words in answer. The hon. Gentleman had imagined the painful case of a father giving advice to his daughter as to the irregularities of her husband, and had said, would not the father recommend that those irregularities should be borne with if they were not of a deliberate and habitual character? That might be, but it had no bearing upon the present question. In how much better condition would the father be to give that advice if he could show to his daughter that there was a sheathed sword which the law put into her hands, and which she could at the proper moment draw from the scabbard? He would advise her to avoid resorting to the use of that weapon so long as there was any hope of a remedy without it. What they had to do was to provide a remedy upon which the woman could fall back in case of extremity, and they knew from all experience that recourse would not be had very frequently to that remedy. The knowledge of the existence of such a remedy would give the wife and her friends much influence over the husband, who would have the alternative offered him of a divorce "looming in the distance" in the event of a continuance of his irregularities. The hon. Gentleman said that the crime of adultery was unequal in man and woman, but so were other crimes, in the punishment of which the law did not consider sex. The offence of drunkenness was greater in a woman than in a man, but the difference was not considered in legislating upon the subject. The crime of homicide also was greater in a woman than in a man, but neither in human nor in Divine law was there any difference in the punishment recognised. In the New Testament, although adapted by the highest wisdom to the purposes of human life and human society, there was no specific distinction made between crime in man or in woman. Religion and experience were alike against such a distinction. The Attorney General, however, had now raised a new difficulty. The Amendment of the hon. and learned Gentleman was quite different from that of the noble Lord (Lord J. Manners), for to say that divorces should be granted to the wife only in cases of habitual adultery on the part of the husband was only saying that such divorces should never be granted at all. Habitual adultery of this sort would be of all offences the most difficult to prove. The term "mistress," too, was exceedingly ill-chosen, as it was unknown in the law in this sense. In old times it had an honest meaning, as what was now called "miss" was then called "mistress;" and even now in most ranks of society the term applied to the wife and not to the concubine. In the Roman law, the divorce was granted on proof of any specific act—not on proof of habitual adultery. The words were—Si quis in eâ domo in quâ cum uxore manet, contemnens eam, cum aliâ invenietur.

said, that as the Government had withdrawn their Amendment and accepted the original Amendment, he had nothing more to say than to deny that he was guilty of inconsistency in endeavouring to introduce Amendments into the Bill, having previously voted against the second reading. It would be rather a dangerous doctrine to lay down that those who voted against the second reading of a Bill were thereby precluded from endeavouring in Committee to obviate some of the injustice which it would entail.

declared that he felt much embarrassment in the position in which he was placed, by the conduct of the Government. The aspect the debate had assumed that morning, had put the Committee in an entirely new position. Great complaints had been made that the opponents of the measure were offering it a factious opposition; but how stood the matter now? He denied that because they attempted to make certain clauses better, they were therefore to be supposed to agree to the principles of the Bill. As far as those principles were concerned, this ought to be a final measure—one not requiring an important and immediate Amendment, as it was highly injudicious to disturb domestic relations by fleeting and continuous legislation. This showed how necessary it was to wait for further information before they legislated on this subject. A document, which had been long before the other House, but which was only just placed in their hands, compiled by Mr. M'Queen, a gentleman well known in the profession, contained information of the highest importance, which they had not had time to read. He had been on the point, at a previous period of the debate, of rising to move that the Chairman leave the chair, in order that the Government might take advantage of the information afforded them by this discussion, and reserve the Bill for another Session. He would now submit the Motion, if he thought he should have any substantial support. It was evident to him that the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General was performing a difficult and laborious task, and not one of love. It was clear he was fully alive to the imperfection of the Bill, as he could not tell the House that he was satisfied with it. Who was it, then, who wished to go on with the Bill? He denied that he abandoned the principles in advocating the Amendment—he was for in-dissolubility, but he was likewise for justice. He trusted that the noble Lord would see that if he proceeded with the Bill there was no knowing when the discussion would cease. Much had been done—susfsrestions of a valuable nature had been made—an important principle had been established, and he trusted that the noble Lord would even then consent to abandon the Bill for the present.

said, he thought the suggestion of the hon. and learned Member was well worthy of consideration. Important information on the subject—the Report as to foreign law on the subject—had not been presented to the House. And under such circumstances the House ought not to be asked to hurry the Bill through in a crude and unsatisfactory state. He should support the proposition to report progress if it were made. He also would beg to ask the learned Lord Advocate if it were not the law of Scotland, that an adulterer was punishable with death.

said, he wished to call the attention of the hon. and learned Attorney General to the effect of the clause as it at present stood. By the clause a wife was allowed to sue for a divorce on the ground of adultery with incest, or cruelty, or desertion, and then it also ran on in a disjunctive manner for bigamy. Now, according to that, a man might marry a second wife and be arrested on his way from the church, where bigamy could no doubt have been committed, but not adultery, and was it intended in that case that a woman should have the power of obtaining a divorce?

said, that the word "bigamy" in the clause implied cohabitation.

said, he had been informed by an eminent ecclesiastical lawyer, that the act of bigamy was complete without cohabitation, but in order that the question should be fully discussed he would move the omission of the word "bigamy" from the clause.

suggested to the Attorney General to include bigamy among those offences which, coupled with adultery, entitled a woman to sue for a divorce. Bigamy was a statutable offence of which the essence was the intermarriage, and under the Statute there was no provision that cohabitation should be necessary to complete the offence.

said, that it appeared to him that they could hardly move an inch without receiving some new illustration of their total unfitness to manage this subject. The hon. and learned Attorney General had laid down that bigamy included cohabitation.

What I said was that in this clause bigamy implied cohabitation.

What, did his hon. and learned Friend mean that the term should have a sense in this Act different to that which it had according to the general law of the laud? Why, suppose a man were tried for bigamy before a Judge of Assize, did the Judge require proof of cohabitation? No; he only required proof of the first marriage and the second marriage, and the fact that the first wife was living at the time the second marriage was contracted. Now, by the Bill, power of granting divorces à mensâ was conferred upon the Judges of Assize, and were they in dealing with the subject of divorce to attach a different meaning to the word bigamy to which they attached in administering the general law? His noble Friend at the head of the Government had affected to say that a species of credit had been established in favour of the Government; in fact, that, as he had made a concession with regard to the Amendment of the noble Lord opposite, so the opponents of the Bill ought in their turn to concede a little to the Government. Now, he could not agree in that opinion, for he thought that, instead of his noble Friend having made a concession, he had received a great benefit from the noble Lord, for which the advocates of the Bill owed the noble Lord a debt of gratitude. Then, again, but for the hon. Gentleman the Member for the University (Sir W. Heathcote) the House might have been committed to a scandalous and gross blunder. He could not himself recollect such a piece of blundering workmanship, through which a woman would have the power of obtaining a divorce on the ground of bigamy where no adultery had been committed, while in other cases, even where adultery actually had been committed, she had no such power.

said, it was true that it must be bigamy followed by cohabitation. The collocation of the words which came from the House of Lords is such, however, as to make them open to the observations which have been made upon them. He hoped his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Walling ford (Mr. Malins) was not about to treat the Committee to another speech. [Mr. MALINS: I shall not promise you.] He could hardly account for the exultation with which his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Wallingford flapped his wings at the admission which he (the Attorney General) had made. To return to the point under discussion, bigamy was an offence by the common law, and by the Statute 9 Geo. IV. bigamy was completed as an offence by the solemnization of the marriage, although it was not attended by cohabitation. The intention of the clause was to make bigamy a ground of divorce where it was followed by cohabitation.

The Attorney General says the intention of the clause is to make bigamy followed by cohabitation a ground of divorce. But why "followed?" Why not also "preceded" by cohabitation? That interpretation given by my hon. and learned Friend will not do.

said, he thought they were being afforded a tolerable illustration of what they had been told over and over again, from the Treasury bench, whenever hon. Members asked the meaning of this part or that part of the Bill—namely, that it was so plain that he who ran might read. The Committee, he thought, ought to be obliged to his hon. Friend near him (Sir W. Heathcote) for having asked the simple question he had done. He (Mr. Henley) had not exactly caught the words proposed by the hon. and learned Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ayrton), but probably, the hon. and learned Member would bring them up, and let them be read from the Chair.

said, probably, these words would answer the purpose —"adultery and bigamy combined."

said, there would be this difficulty, if the Amendment first suggested by the Attorney General were adopted, that the adultery might be with one person, and the bigamy with another. The Amendment he (Mr. Ayrton) proposed, would run thus,— "be guilty of incestuous adultery, or of adultery coupled with bigamy," and then some words would have to be added to explain that, it was adultery with the person with whom the bigamy was committed. They should be strict in their wording of a clause which involved penal consequences.

said, he would withdraw his Amendment.

said, the difficulty might be surmounted if the words ran thus,—"incestuous adultery, or bigamy and adultery with the same person." Another Amendment proposed in the same line, after the word "bigamy," to insert the words "and adultery with the same person."

said, that, with all due respect, he must submit that it would be worth while for the hon. and learned Attorney General to consider the words necessary to be inserted a little farther, and that "bigamy and adultery with the same person" would not do. They had advanced thus far, that they had now got this portion of the Bill before them for discussion in an intelligible and grammatical shape, and that, in his opinion, was a great matter. By this Bill, however, they appeared to constitute adultery a criminal offence—in fact, to make it a misdemeanor. Observe what would happen. A married man, who had committed the combined crime of adultery and bigamy, gave his wife a title to present a petition to the Court, praying for a divorce. She presented that petition and obtained that divorce, and the Court, exercising the discretion reposed in it, imposed, as it would be its duty to do, a heavy fine on the adulterer. The adulterous husband would then have to undergo the punishment of a fine, not only for his adultery, but for his adultery together with his bigamy, and his bigamy would constitute a portion of the offence. Now he (Mr. Gladstone) wanted to be sure what would be the effect of that state of the law on the husband's liability to answer for bigamy as a felony under the statute which made bigamy felonious?

said, the only fine imposed by the Bill arose under the petition presented by the husband; but the case they were now considering was the petition presented by the wife. There was no fine where the wife was the complainant, and the husband the respondent; but if it were so, the infliction of a fine would not preclude an indictment for the felony.

said, he was not before aware that the Bill contained another case of inequality so gross between the husband and wife, as that the man who corrupted another man's wife was to be subjected to a fine, while the husband who was guilty of the enormous offences stated in the clause under consideration, was to be subject to no such fine, but merely to divorce. He should, certainly, take another opportunity of raising that question before the Committee.

said, that the effect of the clause would be, that a charge of bigamy which was one of felony, would be tried by the Court in the first instance, collaterally, and without a jury.

said, that the case must be sent to a jury.

observed that he thought that the case of adultery with one woman and bigamy with another ought not to be excluded.

said, that the words he had originally proposed would meet this case.

remarked, that he thought that the hon. and learned Attorney General should take time to consider the words. It was a matter which required considerable attention, as a man might be first tried, under this Act, for adultery and bigamy, and then, under an indictment, for bigamy alone; so that he would be tried twice for the same offence.

said, that he could not give way to the appeals made to him to abandon the Bill, and it would be brought on again the first thing in the evening.

said, he wished to ask the Attorney General for Ireland Whether it is the intention of Government to introduce a Bill, next Session, for the purpose of withdrawing protection from arrest from official debtors in Ireland, in accordance with the recommendation of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce?

said, he presumed that the question had reference to certain judicial officers who were protected from arrest for debt. That protection was originally given for the public good; but, since he had received the Report of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, and that of the Solicitors' Society, his own impression was, that the time had arrived when the public good did not require that such protection should exist any longer, while, on the other hand, much evil arose from its existence, enabling persons to contract debts without any intention of payment. He expected early next Session to bring the subject before Parliament.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether any complaints have been received from the Australian Colonies (by either of the two last mails) of the irregular and unsatisfactory manner in which the postal service has been performed between Suez and Melbourne, since January last; and, if so, whether there would be any objection to lay the same on the table of the House?

said, in reply, that he had received certain communications from the Governors of the Australian colonies, upon the subject to which the question referred, and if the hon. Gentleman would move for the production of those communications, there would be no objection to lay them before the House.

said, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty what steps have been taken by Her Majesty's Government, or the proper authorities, with reference to the steam transports that have already sailed, or are about to sail, with troops or stores for India, so as to secure for them an adequate supply of fuel for the voyage, and what arrangements have been made for such supply at the Cape de Verdes, Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, or other coaling stations en route?

said, that under the engagements between the East India Company and the owners of steamers taken up to convey troops to India, the latter were bound to provide coals for the entire passage. He was able to assure the hon. Gentleman that the European and American Steam Ship Company, from whom four ships had been chartered, had provided such a supply of coal at St. Vincent's as would suffice to take those ships to Calcutta without stopping at any intermediate place. The owners of the other vessels would no doubt take means to provide coal, and he believed there would be no difficulty in obtaining coal at Madeira and the Cape de Verd Islands. As to the steps which had been taken by the Board of Admiralty to assist the shipowners, he was enabled to state that when the hostilities with China commenced care had been taken to replenish the stores of coal at all the naval stations, and those stores had been kept up ever since. As soon as the news of the Indian mutinies arrived, and it was known that troops would have to be sent out, the Board of Admiralty informed the East India Company that if any of the transports should require coal from any of Her Majesty's naval stations, and more especially the Cape of Good Hope, the storekeepers would supply them. He could assure the House that, after deducting the coals necessarily used for the supply of ships going to China, there still remained an ample store at the Cape of Good Hope to fill up the deficiencies of screw ships going to India.

said, he should be glad to know whether the same precautions had been adopted at the Mauritius.

said, the Mauritius was not a naval station for coaling steamers.

said, he would beg to inquire of the noble Lord at the head of the Government whether he could appoint any day when he (Sir J. Pakington) could bring on the Motion relating to Education, of which he had given notice.

said, he was sorry he could not give the right hon. Baronet a day at present, but when the Divorce Bill was disposed of he would be happy to accommodate him.

As the Attorney General will be engaged to-morrow morning in the House of Lords, is it intended to proceed with the Divorce Bill to-morrow morning?

I am not aware of anything to prevent us from going on to-morrow morning.

Then I will ask the Attorney General whether he can attend to-morrow morning.

Among the minor duties to be discharged by the Attorney General at this time of the year is the duty of summing up for the Crown in certain cases in the House of Lords. In the Shrewsbury peerage case I shall have to perform that duty to-morrow, unless the House of Lords upon my application shall think proper to defer my address until Monday. If the Divorce Bill be fixed for to-morrow morning it is my intention to acquaint the House of Lords with the fact, and to ask their Lordships to allow me to postpone my summing-up until Monday.

As there seems to be some doubt whether the Attorney General can be here to-morrow, perhaps the noble Lord will re-consider his determination and give me to-morrow morning.

Every point in this Bill is discussed at so much length that I cannot lose an opportunity of pressing it forward. However unwilling, therefore, I may be to inconvenience the right hon. Gentleman, I am afraid we must go on with the Bill to-morrow.

said, he understood it was the intention of the Government to proceed with the Divorce Bill Committee on the following morning, provided the Lords would postpone the Shrewsbury case. Supposing their Lordships not to do so, what would then be the course of Her Majesty's Government?

There is a French saying, "Then as then" (Alors comme alors).

I rise, Sir, to move the adjournment of the House. Really, I think my noble Friend, confident in the power of his majority, is overstepping the fair consideration which is due to Members of this House. We are now told that we are to-morrow morning to wait upon the Attorney General at twelve o'clock to know whether the House of Lords will give him a permission which will dispense with his attendance there and enable him to go on with the Bill in this House. However confident my noble Friend may be in his position, and however much he may desire to push this Bill in the same manner as he pushed on the Limited Liability Bill, which he had to repeal the next year, it is not right that he should keep Members of this House dancing attendance here in order to know whether we are to have any business or not.

said, he thought it was very hard upon Members who took an interest in the Bill, and who made a point of attending to discuss it at great personal inconvenience, to be brought down at twelve o'clock to-morrow, and then to be coolly told that as the hon. and learned Attorney General could not attend there would be no business. He would venture to predict confidently that the House of Lords would refuse the hon. and learned Attorney General's application to postpone his summing up, and that they would insist upon his proceeding to-morrow.

I have no hesitation in saying that we will go on with the Bill to-morrow, whether the hon. and learned Attorney General is here or not.

said, he must beg pardon. If he had known that the Bill would be proceeded with in the absence of the Attorney General he should not have made any observation. He would beg to withdraw his Motion.

said, that on consideration he thought it would be better that the words should run, "bigamy with adultery with the same person."

said, he must express a hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman would explain what was the intention of the House of Lords in this clause. Was it meant to give a title to divorce for bigamy and adultery, though they were committed with different parties, or was it meant to give a title to divorce only in cases where bigamy and adultery were with the same person.

said, he thought there was a great practical difficulty in mixing up the question of bigamy with adultery, as the former offence was well known to and punishable by the law. He would therefore suggest the omission of the word "bigamy" from the clause.

said, that in a case which had come before the House of Lords, a divorce was granted for adultery with a certain person, followed by bigamy. Accordingly, when their Lordships came to settle this clause, bigamy was inserted as being a ground justifying the granting of a divorce to an injured wife. The House of Lords sent down the Bill with that word alone in the clause, plainly meaning that it should be bigamy consummated, that was, bigamy followed by adultery with the person with whom it had been committed. A doubt having arisen as to whether the words in the clause were sufficient to express this meaning, the Committee that morning addressed itself to the introduction of words which should express the meaning more accurately. Some difficulty was occasioned by his hastily proposing the words "adultery and bigamy." An hon. and learned Gentleman immediately suggested that there might be adultery with one person, and bigamy with another. It did not at the moment suggest itself to him to propose the words "adultery with bigamy," and he therefore moved those which were now in the hands of the Chairman. Since then it had occurred to him that the words "bigamy and adultery" would meet the case. He should prefer "adultery with bigamy," but it was necessary to move the words in that order, because the word "bigamy" in the clause had been passed. If the Amendment were allowed to be withdrawn he should propose the insertion of those words, which would entirely remove the difficulty started by the hon. Baronet the Member for Oxford University.

said, he had to complain that the hon. and learned Attorney General had not answered his question. The embarrassment arising from the want of time was shown by the fact that the hasty admission of words that morning had compelled his hon. and learned Friend to suggest the adoption in this clause of words less clear than he thought it desirable to use.

remarked, that he thought it was unreasonable of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford to ask the Attorney General what were the intentions of the House of Lords. All that that hon. and learned Gentleman could be expected to state was what were the intentions of the Government. To his mind, the question whether the adultery and bigamy were committed with the same person, or with two different ones, was irrelevant. The Committee was, a few lines afterwards, invited to give the wife a divorce in case of desertion, and in his opinion bigamy, with whomsoever committed, was such a decisive proof of the intention of the husband to desert his wife and take up with another woman, that it ought to be a ground for a divorce.

said, he was ready to admit that the hon. and learned Attorney General could not be expected to explain what were the intentions of the House of Lords upon this matter, but he wished to ask the hon. Member for Hertford shire (Mr. Puller) whether, sitting as he did immediately behind the hon. and learned Gentleman, he had been able to discover what had been his mind upon this subject during the last three or four hours? Since four o'clock the Attorney General had considered this matter, and he now suggested general words instead of such as would apply only to a particular case. Every step that they took with regard to this Bill only increased their difficulty, and led them deeper into the mire. The hon. and learned Gentleman had not yet answered the question as to what would be the effect of a verdict in this court of divorce upon a subsequent indictment for bigamy. That was an important point, and he trusted they would yet have the benefit of his opinion upon it.

said, he did not think that his question was open to the remarks of the hon. Member for Hertford shire (Mr. Puller). It would, of course, be absurd to suppose that his hon. and learned Friend, from the position which he held as Attorney General, would be able to inform the House as to what was the intention of the House of Lords; but in the present instance, he would beg the Committee to recollect that after all this was not a clause forced upon the Government by the House of Lords; for that all the Amendments to the Bill in that House were finally determined according to the wishes of the Government. Now, his hon. and learned Friend (the Attorney General) had made an Amendment on the clause, and he (Mr. Gladstone) must admit he was most anxious to know what would be the exact judicial construction of that Amendment. At the same time he thought his hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire (Mr. Puller) had stated the case with perfect fairness when he said that the question substantially before them was, whether the bigamy was necessarily to be committed with the same person as the adultery, or whether the case referred to in the clause extended to bigamy perpetrated with another person different from the adulterer. He confessed that he thought bigamy with adultery to amount to such an aggravation of the offence as justly to entitle the wife to the relief of divorce.

said, he had answered the question of his right hon. Friend several times already.

No; pardon m. What I want to know is, whether the Government proposes to give the wife a title to divorce in case of bigamy and adultery—whether the adultery be committed with the same person as the bigamy or with any other person.

said, that both cases would, he thought, be met by the words "bigamy with adultery."

said, that they had been informed that, with the exception of the Amendment of the noble Lord opposite (Lord J. Manners), they were proceeding upon the assumption of not altering any principle of law as laid down in private Acts of Parliament; and if that were so, then it was necessary to gather from the cases which had been decided by Parliament what was the real state of the existing law upon the subject. Now, he believed that among the few cases in which relief had been granted to a wife, there was not a case in which a divorce had been granted on the prayer of the wife for adultery and bigamy, where the adultery bad been committed with one person and the bigamy with other persons. If there were such a case, then great care ought to be taken not to deprive the wife of a remedy which at present she could obtain, by making it necessary that the bigamy and adultery should be with the same person. This, however, seemed to him to be the effect of the clause.

said, that in the case referred to by the noble Lord, the bigamy had been completed in the sense in which he had explained it to be intended in the clause. He believed that the words he proposed to introduce would meet both classes of cases—those in which the bigamy and adultery were committed with the same person, and those in which the adultery was committed with one person and the bigamy with another.

said, he could not assent to the Amendment without being better satisfied as to its exact effect. He could not see why a distinction should be made between bigamy and other felonies. Suppose a husband to be transported for life, did not that amount to a complete desertion of his wife? Again, there was no provision in the Bill providing for the trial of these offences criminally. The whole proceeding was civil, and there the matter was allowed to rest. Besides which, under the Bill, as it stood, a party might be tried for an offence in his absence, and without the intervention of a jury. Now, those were anomalies which ought to be remedied. Lord Thurlow laid it down in one of the first applications that came before the House of Lords for a divorce on the part of the wife, "That in all such causes their Lordships ought to govern their conduct by the particular circumstances of each individual case." Well, when they departed from that rule it was his (Mr. Napier's) belief that they ought to provide specific redress for every case that might arise, otherwise they would be depriving the wife of remedies she at present enjoyed. As he had said he could not give his consent to the Amendment without receiving a clear explanation as to the reasons why it was introduced, and as to the form of procedure by which it would be worked out.

said, he thought the observations of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Napier) were well worthy of consideration. Now, he wished to direct the attention of the Committee to a paragraph appearing at page 16 of the Report of the Commission—namely, "that in the case of innocent bigamy, or the like, it might be proper to give power to the wife to institute a suit for divorce a vinculo; but, as a general rule, her remedy should be left to the Legislature, and to the Legislature alone." Well, what interpretation were the Government about to put upon that recommendation of the Commission? Was it the intention of the Government to restrict the redress of the wife to the cases specified in the clause under discussion, or was it intended to permit wives when insulted and aggravated beyond what was provided for by the clause to come to Parliament for redress, and that Parliament was to be at liberty to decide each case on its merits. If so, what became of their cry that they were about to put an end to the scandals of the present system. The opinion of Lord Cottenham and of the House of Lords in 1840, as delivered in the case of Mrs. Battersby, was, that the transportation of a husband for felony, coupled with adultery on his part, was a sufficient ground for divorce on the part of the wife. At all events that was Mr. M'Queen's interpretation of Lord Cottenham's views, and he would beg to ask whether the Government assented to that opinion.

said, he could not but compassionate the position of the hon. and learned Attorney General, the only use made of whom by the Government was to throw him over when it suited them. Now, he did not profess to understand the Bill in the slightest degree, but he really could not conceive why there should be so much time spent in discussing a point, which was clear to all but legal minds. It struck him that if a husband was guilty of bigamy, whether he consummated the second marriage or not, he had sufficiently insulted his wife to justify her in looking for a divorce. A husband might commit a rape, and yet the wife need not necessarily be entitled to a divorce; but not so in the case of bigamy. And for this reason—a man might commit rape without any vicious intention. He meant to say circumstances might occur in which a man was induced to commit rape without any premeditation, whereas bigamy was always premeditated. There was no parallel at all between the two cases.

said, he would ask the Committee whether the speech they had just heard did not afford a very apt illustration of the anomalous position in which they were placed with regard to some of the provisions of this Bill. Here was a most intelligent Member of Parliament expressing his opinion with a candour which they could not but admire; and in what way did he try to clear up the question before the House? He seemed to be possessed with the spirit of a Draco when he spoke on the subject of bigamy, but when he affected a transition to that of rape he exhibited all the tenderness of a woman or an infant. He seemed to think that bigamy was an offence infinitely more atrocious than rape, notwithstanding the marked distinction which our law had ever made between them; for he would remind the hon. Baronet that the law dealt with rape as a capital offence, but had never done so with bigamy. The hon. Member whose mind was evidently in a state of mature preparation for the discussion of this great and important subject, was surprised that anybody should have the least difficulty in coming to a conclusion upon the matter before the House. The hon. Member gave an admirable proof of the exact preparation of mind with which, on the 13th of August, a Member of Parliament could come to the consideration of this question. It was not necessary to discuss the relative guilt of the offences that might be committed by a husband; but the point was, what other criminal offences beyond those stated in the clause ought to be included as giving a wife a title to a divorce against her husband? If one kind of felony superadded to adultery was to constitute a title on the part of the wife to divorce, why should not all other felonies accompanied with adultery give her the same title? Then he would say, irrespective of the question whether all felonies, when superadded to ought to give a title to a wife for a divorce, there was another question whether that particular class of felonies which had a certain analogy to the crime of bigamy ought not to give that title to a wife, even though the Legislature refused to give it for all felonies. And therein particularly came the felony of rape, and another class of felonies of the highest order to which it was not necessary to advert by name, but which would be generally understood by the Committee. It appeared to him that, as regarded that particular class of felonies which constituted capital offences against the marriage contract, it was in comprehensible that they were not included in the clause under consideration as giving the wife a title to divorce. He did not think they could pass this clause without having those questions distinctly raised.

said, he thought that the question of his right hon. Friend had been answered already by his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, who pointed out that bigamy was an offence particularly directed against the wife, inasmuch as it was an attempt to contract a fresh engagement in violation of a still existing one between the husband and wife, whereas other felonies were directed: against society in general. That seemed to him (Viscount Palmerston) to be a substantial distinction, and one on which the Committee might fairly assent to the Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend.

said, he had already one question before the learned Attorney General, which he had not as yet been good enough to answer; nevertheless he wished to put another question to the hon. and learned Gentleman. In those cases which had been decided in the House of Lords, and upon which, as they had been told, the existing law was founded, he wished to know whether previous convictions for bigamy had taken place? For if so, he should contend that the clause ought to be shaped in accordance with what was said to be the law founded on those cases; and that the matter should not stand over for trial until after the wife had proceeded in a civil court.

said, the right hon. Gentleman having had some experience in criminal proceedings must be well aware, that supposing the question of bigamy came before the civil tribunal for the purpose of divorce, the determination: of that tribunal, or the evidence taken in order to arrive at that determination, would not be looked at for one moment in a court of criminal judicature. He would take that opportunity of saying, without meaning to give offence, that it was scarcely fair to put questions to him, not for the purpose of eliciting information, but for the purpose of founding some other argument upon his answers.

said, the hon. and learned Gentleman had not answered his second question, and at the same time let him observe, that although, as he was quite aware, evidence before a civil tribunal was not available for a criminal proceeding, still a jury would be very likely to be prejudiced by the fact of such a trial having gone against a man.

said the phrase bigamy with adultery was rather ambiguous. To bring out the meaning of the clause more clearly it should run "adultery coupled with bigamy." He thought that adultery when coupled with bigamy, even if it was not committed with the same person, was a ground of divorce by a wife.

said, he must beg to reiterate his question, and to ask the Attorney General whether in Battersby's case, in the House of Lords, felony was proved, and whether it would be permitted to a wife to seek a divorce in case of felony followed by transportation? The noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston) said that bigamy was a felony which implied desertion by a husband; but in other felonies there was desertion, which, though not voluntary, was more certain. Was adultery followed by felony, followed by transportation or imprisonment, and so by desertion, to be a ground of divorce for a wife to sue for a divorce.

said, that if they took the only six cases mentioned in the reports in, which divorces were applied for by wives against their husbands, they would find that, although adultery by itself was not considered sufficient to entitle the applicants to a remedy, yet adultery coupled with any other offence was regarded as a valid ground of divorce. The Committee had decided that there should be a distinction between the two sexes, but he thought, nevertheless, that adultery combined with I other aggravating circumstances should entitle a wife to a divorce.

said, he wished to make a suggestion to the Committee. They were now considering what were to be the consequences of adultery coupled with a particular offence, but when they arrived at the next line, which provided that adultery coupled with unjustifiable desertion should be a sufficient ground of divorce, they would have to consider the more general question of adultery combined with such a class of acts as caused a permanent or prolonged separation between husband and wife. He suggested, therefore, in order to enable the Committee to get on with the Bill, that the Amendment of the hon. and learned Attorney General relative to adultery with bigamy should be agreed to—supposing they concurred in the proposition, which, for his own part, he deemed a doubtful one, that the bigamy might be committed with one woman and the adultery with another—and that they should discuss the other questions which had been raised in connection with the subsequent part of the clause.

said, he thought the hon. and learned Gentleman had omitted to advert to one very important point, raised and discussed principally on the other side of the House, and without the consideration of which they could not pass even the limited portion of the clause that related to bigamy. He had heard no answer vouchsafed to the question of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), whether in the case of a petition for divorce, where the allegation was bigamy with adultery, it was or was not to mean exclusively bigamy which had already been proved in a court of justice, subject to all the forms and safeguards by which the liberty of Englishmen was defended. If they did not interpose that condition, if the felonious act of bigamy was not proved in a criminal court before it came to be put in issue in the Court of Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, they would inflict great injustice upon the party, because, although it might not be competent to produce in evidence the fact of divorce for adultery combined with bigamy, yet the knowledge, which they could not possibly shut out, that he had been divorced for adultery with bigamy would unduly prejudice him in a court of justice. It was to be hoped that the Committee would not be ready to affirm the proposition that bigamy with adultery should be a valid ground of divorce until they knew whether proper provision was to be made for ascertaining that the proof of bigamy should be full and adequate. He wished to refer for a moment to another point. The noble Lord at the head of the Government had given him a sort of meagre answer to the question why other felonies were not included along with bigamy. Bigamy, replied the noble Lord, was the only felony that necessarily implied desertion. If that were true it would still be most inadequate; but it happened not to be true, because there were other felonies that implied desertion, and because bigamy did not necessarily imply desertion. A man who contracted a bigamous marriage might not intend, and might not de facto desert his first wife, but, on the contrary, might continue to cohabit with her, and only pay occasional visits to the unfortunate person whom he had deluded into an illegal marriage. But the noble Lord did not take the slightest notice of the question put, not with respect to felonies universally, but with regard to that particular class of felonies which imported capital offences against the marriage contract, especially the offence of rape and that other offence which they were unwilling, as long as it was not necessary, to name in that House. If the Committee had no further explanation of the views of the Government than what they had succeeded hitherto in extracting, directly the word "bigamy" had been passed he would proceed to raise a question with respect to other descriptions of offences.

said, he understood the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire to say that it would be extremely unfair to prejudice a man by an inadequate and an incidental inquiry in the divorce court, he being subsequently liable to be tried for the felony of bigamy. That was a hardship which was not only perfectly well known to the law, but which might and actually did frequently occur. Take the case of action for libel, the libel being an accusation of felony, and the plea or justification that the plaintiff had really committed the offence. The defence would be set forth as precisely as if it were an indictment for felony, so that whatever way the verdict might go the plaintiff would really be indicted for a felonious act.

observed that the hon. and learned Solicitor General had omitted one important fact in the case he had put. The hon. and learned Gentleman had cited the case of a man who chose to commence proceedings against another for libel, and the defendant justified by setting out proof of a felony committed by the plaintiff; but in that case the party complaining brought the inconvenience upon himself, and there was a law maxim that volenti non fit injuria. But in the cases which would arise under the Amendment the proceedings would be against a man who was not a willing party to them. The hon. and learned Gentleman had not answered one part of the question, whether or not the House of Lords did try the question of bigamy in the case of Mrs. Hall and in another case, or whether there had been a previous conviction.

said, that question could not be answered without a minute investigation of the Journals of the House of Lords to ascertain whether the record of the previous conviction was tendered and received in evidence. He hoped the Committee would allow the words to stand as they were, for it would be impossible to expect women to seek for divorces if they were required, as a preliminary, to prosecute and to convict their husbands of bigamy.

said, he would also beg to remind the Committee that there was a further answer to the case put by the hon. and learned Solicitor General, and that was that the case he put must be tried by a jury; but in the case under the Bill it could not be tried by a jury, and you had what was unknown to the law, a felony tried without a jury. Then, again, the word "bigamy" was not known to the law as necessarily implying a felonious offence, for according to the definition of Lord Coke, it was said to mean marrying two wives in succession, or marrying a widow. That showed how loosely they were dealing with this important question, and if the words proposed were adopted, they would make the clause clumsy, inconsistent, and, he believed, inoperative.

said, he was sorry to multiply objections, but he must state one difficulty which occurred to him. The right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down said that bigamy was not known to the common law as a felonious offence. If that were so—if the word "bigamy" was not secundum artem, and was not known to the law, it appeared to him that they were involved in a great scrape, for that word was the only word of the Amendment which stood part of the clause at present. He thought great absurdity, to use the mildest term, would occur if the words proposed should be adopted. He understood the proposition to be that a wife might apply for a divorce to the new tribunal alleging on the part of her husband adultery with bigamy. The Court might be satisfied that the two crimes had been committed, and the marriage would be dissolved and never could be renewed. If he were not much mistaken, the man whose marriage had been dissolved, because a competent tribunal had declared him guilty of adultery and bigamy, might afterwards be indicted and tried at the assizes, and the jury might return a verdict of not guilty. There would then be the gross absurdity that a marriage had been dissolved upon the ground of bigamy which a jury had decided he had not committed. Unless he should receive some better explanation upon that point than had yet been given be should vote against the Amendment.

said, the word bigamy was perfectly well known to the law as a description of an offence, even if it did not actually occur in an indictment. With respect to the question of the right hon. Baronet, he could only say that in case of any difficulty it would be competent for the Court to suspend the proceedings, and to direct a prosecution against the party accused of bigamy, and in that way make the criminal proceeding subservient to the civil.

In what part of the Bill is that power to be found?

There was no need for a provision to that effect in the Bill, as it was a power necessarily inherent in the Court. Every Court had power to suspend proceedings and to direct an indictment.

said, he should wish to know whether the case was really as the hon. and learned Gentleman had stated. Could a Court, without any specific words in the Act of Parliament constituting it, take upon itself to direct the Attorney General to prosecute a man and to stay proceedings until that prosecution was decided?

said, that his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General had stated his view of the law, and the question was put by the noble Lord to the other gentlemen of the Long Robe; no one rose to answer, and yet his right hon. Friend (Mr. Gladstone) complained that the Attorney General had not given an answer.

hoped that some answer would be given to the question. He would appeal as it were in formâ pauperis to the right hon. Member for Dublin University for information. Did he believe that in the case of a man whose wife pro- against him in the Matrimonial Causes Court for adultery coupled with bigamy, the Court could direct an indictment without any special words to that effect appearing in the Act.

replied, that any Court where a criminal offence was shown to have been committed might direct the evidence to be laid before the Attorney General.

said, that if a criminal prosecution were going on the civil Court might suspend its proceedings, but it was not within the power of any Court, for the purposes of a particular suit, to direct a prosecution. It might direct the papers to be laid before the Attorney General.

thought it would be unfair, if it was intended that there should be a prosecution for bigamy, to start it with the prejudice against the accused of the prosecution having been directed by the civil Court.

said, he was of opinion it was not in the power of the Court to suspend the prosecution, unless in the case of any evidence actually affecting the ends of justice which it had to administer. If a question arose the solution of which was to depend upon the question of felony, he apprehended it was out of the province of the Court to order the papers in question to be laid before the Attorney General, for the purpose of inquiring whether the felony was or was not committed. In a collateral question, he apprehended that the Court had no jurisdiction to set the Attorney General in motion; and the Attorney General would pay no attention whatever to a recommendation made by the Court in such case. Undoubtedly when any offence had been committed against the Court, or any offence which would tend to divert the practice and procedure of the Court from the ends of justice which it had to administer, or, still farther, any offence against any persons or property over whom the Court had any jurisdiction, it would be within the jurisdiction of that Court to direct the necessary documents to be laid before the Attorney General.

said, it was certainly the practice of the Scotch Courts, if anything came out in a case which ought to be the subject of a criminal prosecution, to draw the attention of the Lord Advocate to it. With regard to the point under discussion, nothing was more common than to see a civil Court trying a question which might be made the subject of a criminal indictment.

said, he thought that it was impossible to attempt to provide for every case which might arise without running the risk of doing injustice to the husband or the wife. Something ought to be left to the discretion of the Court.

remarked that the clause should be so framed as that there should be a previous conviction for bigamy before the prayer of a petition could be granted for dissolution of marriage. He would suggest that the words "evidence by a conviction of the offence" should be added after the word "bigamy."

said, that if a married man went to a foreign country and married another woman, the effect of such an Amendment would be to deny the wife in this country the power of being relieved from the marriage. Impediments would be thrown around the wife which would render her situation so difficult that she would be unable to obtain the benefit of the provision if it should be necessary to establish bigamy by a criminal sentence.

said, that the case of marrying a woman and going away with her came within the category of adultery and desertion.

said, that, as the clause stood, it was lawful for a wife to proceed for a divorce on the ground that her husband had been guilty of bigamy. Now, bigamy was a felony, and he apprehended that this Court, not being a criminal Court, could not try this. If a petition were presented to the Court of Chancery to do a certain thing on the ground that a party had been guilty of felony, the Court would not try that. If a party came to this Court asking for a divorce on the ground of bigamy, the proper course to be pursued by the Court, acting on the same analogy, would be to insist that the fact of this offence having been committed should be proved by the record of the conviction. That being so, he thought that it was unnecessary to introduce the words proposed by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Wigram) because he thought that, as the clause stood, the Court could not grant a divorce upon the ground of bigamy without the record of a previous conviction being put in. He believed that no Member of the bar would controvert this. He might remark, however, that the word "bigamy" was not a proper one to use, because it was a word not known to either of the statutes which made remarriage during the life of a husband or wife a felony, and one which would not be held to be a sufficient description of the offence in the indictment.

said, that if the proposition of the hon. Member were correct, there could be no objection to saying, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University proposed, that the Court should not proceed to grant a divorce on the ground of bigamy without proof of a previous conviction. But the fact was that this was not so. Any one who was acquainted with the proceedings in Courts of common law, must know that nothing could be more common than for such a Court to try criminal questions incidentally arising in the course of a civil proceeding; as, for instance, if a newspaper charged the hon. and learned Member for Wallingford with bigamy, and he brought an action for libel, and the defendant pleaded "justification," the Court would at once try the truth of that issue. So it was the case when actions were brought upon bills of exchange where the plea was forgery; the Court would at once inquire into the truth of that issue. In no such case, however, would the Court suspend its proceedings until they had directed an indictment to be preferred and that was tried, as had been suggested by the hon. and learned Attorney General. If this Bill were passed three Judges might, without a jury find a man guilty of bigamy, and upon that ground a sentence of divorce, for the next clause only rendered the verdict of a jury necessary upon the fact of adultery. He objected to that, and thought that the foundation for the exercise of this jurisdiction should be a previous conviction in a criminal Court. They were told that this Bill was to incorporate the present practice of the House of Lords. But he believed they would only grant a divorce, if at all, in such a case as that under discussion on the production of a record of a conviction in a criminal Court. If no other member of the Committee did so, he would move the insertion of words in the clause defining the word "bigamy;" making it only apply to a man who married another woman during the lifetime of his wife, and rendering it necessary in order to obtain a divorce by the wife on such grounds that the record of the conviction in a criminal Court should be produced in support of the petition for divorce.

said, he thought the clause required amendment, and consequently was induced to support the suggestion of the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Wigram).

said, that it was clear that the Committee had agreed to the adoption of a word which in law had no meaning at all, and it was, therefore, most necessary to insert explanatory words defining precisely what the offence of bigamy was.

said, that he was afraid that having passed it they could not then get rid of the word "bigamy," although it made the Bill stark staring nonsense; but he would propose to add to it these words, "by feloniously intermarrying with any other woman." They need not say "in the lifetime of his wife," because she would be the petitioner.

said, he thought these words were unnecessary. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Wigram), namely, "bigamy evidenced by conviction," was sufficient, because conviction could take place only for the criminal offence under the statute.

said, he begged to refer to a passage from Burn's Justice of the Peace, which defined bigamy to be marrying two successive wives, and polygamy to be married to more than one wife at the same time, He would suggest that as in the case of incestuous adultery there was a proviso explaining the meaning of the word "incestuous," it would be advisable to add a similar proviso defining the offence of bigamy.

remarked that he would not object to the introduction of the words proposed by the hon. Member for Youghal (Mr. Butt) which were perfectly harmless and, he might add, perfectly unnecessary.

said, he thought this was the proper time to raise the question whether there were any other felonies which ought to be placed on the same footing with adultery, as giving the right of divorce to the wife. There were other offences besides bigamy which so much outraged the marriage tie as to entitle the wife to a divorce on the ground of their being committed. There was, for example, rape, and a certain class of other offences which all would admit ought to be included in the same category with bigamy.

intimated that he would not object to the specification of the offences referred to.

said, he would, in that case, not detain the House with any further observations, but would propose the insertion of the words "or of rape with adultery." He had inadvertently, it appeared, committed a slight blunder. The Amendment he proposed was the insertion of the words "or of rape." The words "or of rape" were then inserted in the clause, as giving the wife a right to divorce, as were also, on the Motion of Lord Lovaine, a certain other class of offences.

said, he should now propose to incorporate words in the clause, so as to necessitate the act of bigamy, rape, or other offence being proved by a conviction. Amendment proposed, in page 7, line 7, to insert the words "such bigamy, rape, or other offence as aforesaid, being proved by conviction."

said, he could not agree to the insertion of these words, on the ground that to make the remedy of the wife depend on a criminal proceeding and conviction would be to limit it in the most unjust manner, by accompanying it with painful and degrading circumstances. There was also another reason. He had known a case of a person of large property who was charged with one of these offences. A large portion of his property was applied to buying off the witnesses and sending them to a foreign country, which prevented his being convicted.

said, he would admit that there were real and grave difficulties in this case, but they only showed how wisely the Committee would have acted if they had given effect to the real opinion of the Lord Advocate and the Attorney General by adopting the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for West Surrey, the principle of which those two hon. and learned Friends of his admitted, but opposed on the division. The result was that they had now nothing left but a choice of difficulties. There might be a class of cases of persons absconding, with respect to which the Amendment of his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Wigram) would be attended with serious objections; but, serious as they would be in themselves, they would be exceptional cases. He would remind the Committee that they were not now legislating so much for the upper classes, where, in cases of things so infamous, to abscond was a matter of course, and where the means of absconding were always at baud, as they were legislating for the people at large. With respect to the general operation of the enactment, he frankly affirmed that he had not an adequate conception of this question, but he was driven to give a vote upon it under the circumstances in which the Bill was brought before them, and being so compelled to give a judgment, it appeared to him that the Motion of his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Wigram) ought to be adopted, because it tended to establish a rule which would be sound, fair, and wholesome in the generality of cases. In the clause, as it stood, there was something like a violation of the cardinal and elementary principle of justice in regard to criminal procedure which invariably guided that House, namely, that a man was supposed to be innocent until he was proved to be guilty. The hon. and learned Solicitor General could not imagine that by quoting the case of a court called upon to try a felony charged in a libel he was supporting a real analogy. That was a case in which there were many fundamental differences. In the first place, the man libelled went voluntarily into the Court; in the second place the question of libel and of felony as connected with libel was tried by a jury; and, in the third place, the question at issue was the mere failing of a man in his action, whereas here it was his being divorced from his wife.

was understood to say that in the case suggested by the hon. and learned Attorney General, of a man charged with an unnatural offence absconding from justice, the wife would obtain by his flight all the remedy she desired.

said, he thought it would be extremely unfair to bring an accused person into a court before which he might not have the means of proving his innocence.

said, he wished to ask whether it would not serve the purpose of the hon. and learned Member for Cambridge University, instead of requiring that the different offences enumerated in the clause should be established in a Criminal Court, to have them tried by a jury in the Court of Divorce in the same way as the question of adultery was proposed to be decided.

said, the Committee had only a choice of difficulties, and, for his own part, he though that the least inconvenient course would be to require a previous conviction in a Criminal Court.

said, be would now propose to insert words to allow a wife to obtain a divorce in a case of murder or manslaughter, coupled with adultery, committed by her husband. The offence might be the murder of the man's paramour, and if after conviction for the murder the sentence should be commuted, he thought the wife should be allowed a divorce from such a man.

said, he rose to propose an Amendment to extend the powers of the Court. He said that the House of Lords, acting in a more enlarged way than the Court now constituted could act, had the power, and on many occasions had exercised it, to judge equitably in respect to the cases brought before it. The word he proposed to introduce into the clause as a ground of divorce was the word "cruelty," unattended by any other circumstance. They must remember that women were not heard in that House, and he believed it was universal throughout a jurisprudence to challenge the Court, where there was any manifest unjust bias, Now, that House was a court of men judging women according to their own estimate and for their own purposes. He now called on them to do justice to a suffering class, whose sufferings they did not know, because, as with those who suffered in the Inquisition, those who knew their sufferings were interested in concealing them. They might think that they had done much in protecting women against the; brutal violence of drunken husbands, but there were much more serious lacerations of heart which took place in the higher regions. When the discussions on the slave trade were going on not one West India planter ever gave his vote in favour of the slaves, nor did any Member for a town—such as Bristol or Liverpool—interested in the slave trade ever do anything but vote against Abolition. So it was in the present case, and the Members of that House were very much in the situation of Turks legislating for the inhabitants of the seraglio. He would not let the matter, which he had undertaken, rest on empty assertion, but would quote instances drawn, not from the line of life whence, as on former occasions, his examples were drawn, but from Grosvenor Square and Belgravia. Those instances would show what women had to endure, and how the law afforded them redress, and he trusted, therefore, that the powers of this new Court would be extended. The first case was that of a young lady married to a gentleman who was heir to a large fortune, though at first he had a small income. Within a year or two after their marriage he had three mistresses living in three different houses in this town. With one or other of them he generally supped, and often came home intoxicated, when his servant undressed him and carried him into his wife's bedroom. She begged to be allowed to sleep in another room, but he said he would then bring home one of his mistresses to live in the house. For her children's sake she submitted to this treatment for nearly twenty years, when he died. During his life her health was twice injured by her husband's profligacy, and when her sons were about fourteen years of age her husband took them constantly to visit his mistresses. Another instance was that of a lady of a peculiarly meek, timid, and gentle disposition. She was married to a man who for no assignable reason took a dislike to her. Her love was then wholly concentrated on her children, and her husband, knowing that she would endure anything for their sake, treated her with systematic hardship and neglect. He locked her up in her bedroom, kept her destitute of money, and at length drove her mad. Under the kind treatment she experienced in a lunatic asylum she recovered, and being desirous of embracing her children, she returned to her house, was met at the door by her husband, who denied her admission. Her reason again gave way, and next morning her dead body was found in the sedges of a neighbouring pond. The dictum of a namesake of his (Mr. Drummond)—that property had its duties as well as its rights—had passed into a sort of household word; and, if one property more than another had its duties as well as its rights it was the property of power. Everywhere since the world began, power where it had been great and uncontrolled, had been used not for the blessing, but for the curse of mankind. In emperors, from the time of the Cæsars down to the modern emperors of Russia, Austria, and France. In public bodies, as may be seen in the conduct of the priests throughout the middle ages, in Italy, Spain, and South America; among popular assemblies—witness for example the popular assembly in France—the fact was the same; and now the House of Commons, composed of men, and having the absolute control over women, refused to give to women the right which they claim for themselves. He moved the Amendment which the Chairman had in his hands. Amendment proposed in the same line. To leave out from the words "or of" to the word "destruction" in line ten in order to insert the words "cruelty or of."

said, he would express a hope that the Committee would not agree to the Amendment, because it would introduce an entirely new principle into the law of divorce. The cases which had been cited by the hon. Member for West Surrey were new to him, but certainly one of them was one of flagrant and repeated adultery, which the clause as it stood would meet.

said, that when this question should be discussed here-after, when this measure should have borne its fruits, and when the public mind should be more enlightened, it would be difficult probably to resist the Amendment of his hon. Friend the Member for West Surrey. The opinion had often been expressed, that if the dissolubility of marriage were once admitted in certain cases it would be impossible to find any broad ground on which they could take their stand against further invasion. That, indeed, was the current opinion, but he had striven to impress upon the mind of the Committee that they ought not to place too much confidence in temporary and local opinion, but that they ought to elevate their vision, and to take less contracted views of the operations of the human mind than they were apt to do from a defect, he feared, inherent in their natural disposition—a defect which prevented their assuming the existence of anything in heaven or earth except that which chanced to be dreamt of in their philosophy, and which made them imagine that what they knew in their sphere comprehended all in God's universe, and that the notions current among themselves afforded grounds for permanent and durable legislation. Ha protested earnestly against that doctrine. He had warned, and he would again warn, the Committee against the undue confidence which it seemed inclined to repose in the fashionable opinions of the day, and he claimed that they should found there legislation upon the basis of a wide experience. What stronger proof could there be found that we were not in a fit state to legislate on the subject than the fact that when a learned person thought fit to prepare an account of the law in twelve foreign countries, and presented his book to the House of Lords many months ago, that book had not been supplied to Members of the House of Commons, except to a favoured few, and to this moment he believed that no member of the Government had looked into it. Such was the way in which they were dealing with this great question. He did not think that in this instance it would be inconsistent with the principle, upon which he had protested against the second reading, were he to join with his hon. Friend in the introduction of a complete new category of causes for which divorce should be granted. Entertaining, however, gloomy thoughts as to the effect of this Bill he did not wish to accelerate the fulfilment of his predictions; and although he agreed with his hon. Friend that there were causes in which the misconduct of a husband to a wife—tyranny and cruelty, for example —laid the ground for a divorce, such as it was, yet he could not join in the introduction of this new chapter into the history of such cases. He did not think that the principle which his hon. Friend proposed to introduce was called for by the country, and he feared that while appearing to do an act of humanity in particular instances, and grant, relief in a few isolated cases, they would, if they agreed to the Amendment, inflict a new and a deep injury upon the interests of those whose welfare they were so anxious to promote.

said, he wished to explain that on n former occasion, although he had been apparently misunderstood, he had intended to say that the distinction drawn in the Bill was not an arbitrary distinction of the Attorney General's, but a distinction drawn by nature. Without strong ground he should not feel satisfied in drawing an artificial line between the rights of men and the rights of women.

said, he wished to ask for a legal definition of the term "desertion."

asked for a similar definition of the phrase "without reasonable excuse." Would the word desertion include constrained absence under a criminal sentence?

said, he must remind the Committee that there was no Motion before the Chair.

said, that to put himself in order, he would move as an Amendment the omission of the word "desertion."

said, he should have thought the right hon. Gentleman, who in his capacity of magistrate must have made many orders upon husbands for the support of wives deserted by them, would have been perfectly acquainted with the meaning of the word. The word as used in the Bill admitted in plain intelligible interpretation. When a man had altogether left his wife and children, not simply refusing to cohabit, but quitting his house with no intention of returning—this was desertion. It had, he believed, in a case which had come before the House of Lords been called abandonment. Of course such a construction of the word excluded temporary or constrained absence. With regard to the question of the noble Lord whether constrained absence, under a criminal sentence, involved desertion, his reply would be certainly not. Desertion implied voluntary abandonment.

said, he would beg to ask whether a wife, whose husband, condemned to penal servitude, did not return at the expiration of his sentence, would be allowed to contract a second marriage on the score of desertion?

said that, supposing a man to have been transported, to have completed his sentence, and not to have returned home or been heard of for two years afterwards, the wife would be entitled to marry again.

said, that a man might live in Belgrave Square, and keep a mistress in Dorset Square. During the time specified in the Bill he might sleep half a dozen times in his own house. Would that constitute desertion?

said, it would not.

said, that no difficulty had existed under the existing law where desertion was regulated by the maintenance of the wife by the husband; but as soon as that rule was altered, and they were remitted to the question of simple desertion he saw no end to the difficulties which would arise in the construction of that word. If desertion, coupled with adultery, was to be a ground for divorce, such desertion should be an absolute separation brought about by the criminal conduct of the husband. He did not think the word "desertion" was clearly defined. For instance—if a husband, still keeping up his house in England, went to live in Paris, and there committed an act of adultery after two years' absence, was this to be considered adultery coupled with desertion?

said, he believed he could trace in the last answer of the Attorney General that mistrust of the phraseology of the Bill which he exhibited whenever he came to any portion of it which had been drawn up by a noble and learned Lord. He (Mr. Gladstone) thought they were involved in considerable difficulty with regard to this matter of desertion. It had been very pertinently asked what was the use of the words "without reasonable excuse" as they stood connected with the word "desertion"? Surely the word "desertion" of itself was sufficient, for if there were reasonable excuse for the absence of the husband how could there be any desertion? He was doubtful, he owned, not only as to the mode in which the procedure under the Bill would work, but as to the result of that working. His right hon. Friend the Member for Oxfordshire had put the case of a gentleman having a house in Belgrave Square, where his wife resided, and where he paid rent, taxes, and kept up a large establishment; this gentleman also kept a mistress in Dorset Square, and never visited Belgrave Square half a dozen times in two years. To this case the Attorney General replied, that it would not be desertion. But he (Mr. Gladstone) would put a still stronger case. Suppose he never went to Belgrave Square at all, but his wife lived there, and he kept a full establishment—would that be desertion? [Mr. BUTT: No.] He protested, then, he did not know what else it could be termed. His hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General had been asked to give a definition of the word desertion, and his answer was—a man who had ceased to live with his wife, and had no intention of returning. But in the case he had supposed, surely the man who never went to the House in which his wife dwelt, must be held to have deserted her; he had no intention of returning to Belgrave Square. The definition of the Attorney General, therefore, entirely broke down. Then, with regard to a class of persons in the humbler ranks of life—the sailors in the commercial navy. There was no class amongst whom marriage was in so loose and unstable a state—no class which would give more food to hungry attorneys. Was the onus of proof of an intention to desert to be thrown upon the wife in case of her husband having gone abroad and not returned within the period mentioned in the Bill? It frequently happened that a sailor remained abroad upwards of two years for a legitimate cause. How was it possible that in such cases the wife could establish a case of desertion? The Committee were entirely in the dark as to the probable operation of that part of the clause relating to desertion.

suggested that if the hon. and learned Attorney General referred to the code of Holland, which enacted that in case of a malicious desertion of five years divorce might be obtained, he might be able to frame a clause which would be more satisfactory to the Committee.

I ask my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General whether he has considered that?

said, that in regard to desertion, the Court would judge of the animus of the party from the overt act. The essence of the crime consisted in the intention of the person committing it. Whether the absent husband communicated with the wife, or sent money for her support, was a matter that could be easily ascertained.

observed, that he thought the Committee had been occupied for hours in the profitless task of splitting straws. He could hardly conceive a case in which a man of ordinary sense could not readily pronounce whether or not there had been desertion. The case put by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University, judged by the rules of common sense, and he believed also by the principles of law, would be clearly one of desertion.

denied that it was a waste of time to endeavour to comprehend the legal meaning of their own legislation. It would be a great injustice to refuse to a woman whose husband had not only committed adultery, but also some great crime which caused him to be transported for life, that relief which was to be granted to wives in cases that were far less aggravated. Yet that would be the effect of the construction put upon the clause by so high an authority as the hon. and learned Attorney General.

said he entertained the same opinion as the hon. Member for Hull (Mr. Clay) that in disputing about words they were losing sight of the substance. How could it be said that a man who lived in another house with a mistress, and habitually remained away from his wife, had not committed desertion? But, perhaps, it would be better to say at once that the wife should have a remedy whenever the husband had been guilty of open and notorious adultery.

said, that the plan of the hon. Baronet might save trouble, but it was not exactly the proper way to legislate. The complaint, however, was most unjust, that an over-anxiety was manifested to obtain an interpretation of "desertion." It would be most undignified to expect Judges to interpret words to which the Legislature avowedly could not assign a meaning.

said, he was quite willing that the view of the hon. Member for Mallow (Sir D. Norreys) should be acted upon, and that open adultery should be held to be desertion. The limitations introduced into this clause were none of theirs (the Opposition); but, if those limitations were insisted on, it was only reasonable that they should have a definite signification.

remarked, he believed it had been truly affirmed that the Committee had been asked to adopt words of which they did not know the meaning. It was not his doctrine that the case he had put was one of desertion. A number of hon. and learned Members declared decisively that it would not he desertion, but the hon. Member for Hull, with more than usual boldness, said that common sense and the Courts of law would alike declare that it was a case of desertion. He always suspected his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General when he shifted his ground. [The ATTORNEY GENERAL: I did not shift my ground.] That was matter for argument. He began with a definition of desertion, which he defined to be "when a man had ceased to live with his wife, and had no intention of returning." But when the lawyers agreed that no case of desertion could be proved on this definition of desertion, his hon. and learned Friend did not return to his definition, but said the Courts would be guided by the animus deserendi. But what was the meaning of the word deserendi? That difficulty still remained, and constituted the very point they were endeavouring to ascertain, for no Member of the Government had yet been able to give a satisfactory definition of it. The clause as it stood was not intelligible, and he hoped that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Henley) would not make himself responsible for the wording of the clause, the responsibility of which properly belonged to the Government, but would persist in his negative, not for the purpose of defeating the object of the clause, which he (Mr. Gladstone) would admit was a good one, but for the purpose of compelling the Government to put that object in intelligible language. The fact was that Parliament was asked to pass Bills with haste and precipitancy at the end of the Session, to make up the tale when it was shorter than usual, and the acts so passed went into the Courts of Law with great disparagement to the reputation of Parliament, which was in the following Session asked to amend them.

said, he had great difficulty in making up his mind, after the opinions that had been expressed upon the meaning of the word desertion, whether his Amendment would be of any advantage to the woman. He should there consent to the withdrawal of his Amendment.

said, he would now propose to strike out the words, "for two years and upwards." His object was to leave it to the Courts to decide whether the desertion had been of such a character as to justify the claim of the wife. Another Amendment proposed in the same line, To leave out the words, "for two years or upwards."

said, he wished to explain that what he had said was that common sense would call the case put by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) one of desertion, and that he believed the Courts of Law would agree in that decision.

said, he hoped that the Committee would not agree to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Mallow. In the codes of all countries some term was always mentioned in defining desertion. If the words "two years or upwards" were struck out, the woman might be baffled, for the Courts would be unable to determine whether there had been such an abandonment as to show that no animus revertendi existed. He believed that the period of two years was taken from the French code.

said, he now rose to move the insertion, at the end of line ten, of the words, "or of adultery coupled with aggravated ill-treatment of the wife, of such a nature as ought, in the opinion of the Court, to entitle her to such divorce." The object which he had in view in proposing the Amendment was to prevent the possibility of the wife being placed under the operation of the clause, as it stood, in a worse position when suffering from the cruelty of her husband, than that in which she was placed by the existing law. There was, he added, no principle better established in the procedure of the House of Lords than that acting upon which the other branch of the Legislature deemed itself justified in refusing to the husband, who was proved to have neglected or ill-treated his wife, the remedy of divorce, notwithstanding that the infidelity of the wife might have been beyond all doubt established. That principle the House of Lords applied as it thought right to the varying circumstances of the several cases that came before it for decision, but the Bill under discussion sought to establish a new tribunal for the granting of divorces, which would be bound by fixed and unchangeable rules, and which would not have it in its power therefore to exercise that discretion in carrying out the principle to which he had adverted, which the House of Lords possessed. He recollected a case of a suit for divorce in which the guilt and degradation of the wife had been clearly proved, but in which she had succeeded in establishing that early in their married life her husband had abandoned her to seek his fortune in another country, and, instead of joining her upon his return to his native land, had left her in a state of poverty and destitution, and had sought a divorce from her only when he found that her conduct might bring degradation upon himself. Well, in that case, Lord Lyndhurst, while admitting that all the allegations which had been brought against the unhappy woman were true, had pronounced the husband to be morally responsible for her degradation, and the consequence was that she had been able to quit the House of Lords, exclaiming in the face of her husband "I am still your lawful wife." Such was the principle upon which the other House of Parliament proceeded. The whole current of legislation in recent days, in fact, demonstrated that there existed a leaning to extend the remedy of the wife to cases which had not previously been contemplated by our laws; and it was in order to uphold that principle that he proposed that in every instance in which the crime of adultery had been proved against the husband, combined with aggravated ill-treatment of the wife, then the new Court should be empowered, but not compelled, to grant a divorce. Amendment proposed, at the end of line 10, to insert the words "or of adultery coupled with aggravated ill-treatment of such a nature as ought, in the opinion of the Court, to entitle her to such divorce."

said, he thought the sincere thanks of the Committee were due to the hon. and learned Member for Youghal for having raised this question. He believed, however, that the object of the hon. Gentleman's Amendment would be better effected by inserting the words "adultery with aggravated circumstances." They would thus avoid the iron rule prescribed by the clause as it stood, and retain that elasticity as to the power of relief which at present obtained. He might be permitted to remind the Committee that three ex-Lord Chancellors had come to the opinion that it was unreasonable not to place the wife upon a perfect equality with the husband in the matter of divorce. So much, therefore, for the judicial decisions of the House of Lords, upon which the present law was said to rest. He should move, then, at the end of line ten to insert these words, after "adultery," with aggravated circumstances."

said, he had some difficulty in reconciling the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Youghal with his Amendment. The case which he put was that of a husband not open to the charge of adultery himself, or of being accessory to the adultery of his wife, but who, having deprived her of the advantages arising from his wealth, and reduced her to poverty, was in some degree the cause of her degradation. Such a case as this he bad stated as a reason for the Amendment which he now proposed to the House, that Amendment being "adultery coupled with aggravated ill-treatment" as causes which should entitle the wife to a divorce. This was introducing a new title to divorce in favour of the wife; for it introduced adultery, and not adultery alone, but adultery aggravated by ill-treatment. But in the case on which the hon. and learned Member rested his argument there was no adultery, but simply what he described as ill-treatment. Then the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Lygon) not exactly satisfied with the words proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Youghal— feeling probably that the words aggravated ill-treatment were neither very intelligible or very euphonious—suggested that the terms should be "adultery coupled with aggravated circumstances." Now, the question to be decided was, whether they should have in the Bill an enumeration of the particular instances forming the grounds of divorce granted to the wife against the husband, or whether they would have one general, sweeping, indefinite clause which would give the Court power to grant divorce to the wife whenever there were such circumstances of ill-treatment, added to adultery, as they thought warranted such a decision. If they resolved to have a general sweeping clause of this kind, then all the specific grounds for divorce against the husband which they had been laying down became perfectly useless. If it was to be decided that, the Court should have power to give divorce to the wife against the husband where there was adultery accompanied with circumstances of ill-treatment—if a sweeping clause like that were to be introduced—it ought to have been done a long while ago, and so saved the House the I trouble of the long contest which had taken place, while specifying particular grounds of divorce. He was not prepared to accede to the proposal of his hon. and learned Friend, which was, indeed, the same in principle with that decided the other evening, when the hon. Member for Surrey moved the omission of the word incestuous from the clause. He repeated that, if carried, the Amendment would entitle a woman to obtain a divorce against her husband without reference to those specific accompaniments of adultery which the House, at the expense of much time and debate, had agreed to. It would make the rule as to divorce on the part of the woman altogether too elastic, for different Judges would be found interpreting circumstances very differently, and thus the law would become undefined, and made to depend upon the discretion of a Judge.

said, he differed entirely from the view taken by the hon. and learned Attorney General. He thought the question before them— even accepting the decision on the Motion of the hon. Member for Surrey as decisive against putting the woman in the same position as the man —was, ought they not to approximate towards giving the woman some protection and more of an equality with man? This they had done up to that point. It was admitted that if there were circumstances which showed something more than a more act of adultery on the part of the husband —something beyond a passing demonstration of an alienation of his affections—they ought to give the wife rights which would otherwise be denied to her. Acting in that view, then, the hon. Member for Youghal (Mr. Butt) proposed to give the Court an opportunity of taking cognisance of those innumerable circumstances which tend to make up a case impossible of definition within the corners of an Act of Parliament. Every one allowed that they were obliged to leave behind them cases of the greatest enormity from want of the necessary procedure for giving redress to the wife. Then, if that were so, it was only reasonable to give the Court the liberty of action proposed by this Amendment.

said, he concurred entirely in the views expressed by the Attorney General. He considered that as the Committee had already decided that there should be a difference as to the offence of adultery committed by the man and the woman, it would not be consistent to leave to any Court of Justice the discretion to decide what was the aggravated ill-treatment which would enable the wife to bring herself on terms of equality; and, moreover, it was such a discretion as he was not prepared to commit to any tribunal. Besides, the Amendments ought to have been brought forward earlier in the evening, for if either of these were adopted the Committee would have been wasting time most miserably in previous discussions.

said, he must be allowed to observe, notwithstanding what had been so frequently alleged, that this Bill made a material difference in the position of men as to the attainment of divorce, for it gave them a more absolute right in the matter than they had ever possessed before. And, as had been stated by the hon. and learned Member for Youghal (Mr. Butt) it gave them that right without the intervention of that discretion hitherto exercised by the House of Lords. Well, it was said that all their lengthy discussions would go for nothing if the present Amendment were accepted. Now, as far as their discussions were concerned, he argued from their great length that the majority of the Committee were not satisfied with the limitation given in the Bill to the claims of woman. He took it, then, that there were great doubts as to whether they had gone far enough in admitting their claims. As to himself, he unfeignedly pronounced this to be a most cowardly Bill: for if he was capable of interpreting the fundamental principle of the English law, it was directed to protect the weak against the strong, while this Bill refused to give the redress to the weak which it gave to the strong. Learned lawyers might, indeed, discover difficulties which were not apparent to his sense of justice in the way of such an arrangement, but his belief in the necessity of a discretionary power being vested with the Court was so strong that if his hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Lygon) pressed his Motion to a division, it should receive his support. He was sorry to say he himself knew of cases where husbands maintained mistresses immediately opposite to the houses where their wives resided, and he, therefore, for one should be most unwilling to refuse in such cases the relief now demanded.

said, he thought there was not sufficient definition in the term "aggravated;" and that it would leave too much to the whim of the Judge, or as it was sometimes called, his discretion. The Commission pointed to that consequence; and though at first he was inclined to put the woman and the man upon terms of equality, it left so much to the Judge that he could not support the Amendment.

said, that as there was no substantial difference between his Amendment and that of the lion, and learned Member for Youghal, he would beg leave to withdraw his own.

replied: The word "aggravated," in this case, meant special circumstances; and he had no hesitation whatever in leaving all such cases to the discretion of the Judge. The only choice of the Committee was to exclude a number of cases of the grossest character by insisting on strict definition, or to accept his Amendment, which left the cases in question to the discretion of the Judge. He intended to press his Amendment, therefore, to a division.

said, that having been ten hours engaged on the Bill he should move that the Chairman report progress.

said, that there were no other Amendments to the clause, and if they would agree to it he should not object to reporting progress.

said, that there were other Amendments to the clause.

said, he also thought that there were other Amendments, and, moreover, he would remind the hon. and learned Attorney General he had promised to give a definition of the word "bigamy," which occurred in the proviso, and which was important.

said, that the definition of the word "bigamy" would come in much better in the interpretation clause, and he undertook that it should be given there if the Committee would favour him so far as to dispose of this clause.

observed, that it was past twelve o'clock, that they had been upwards of ten hours engaged in discussing this Bill, and that several hon. Members had left the House in a state of complete exhaustion. He must, therefore, decline to discuss at that late hour the question whether the definition should be added to this clause, or included in the interpretation clause. He thought there had been extraordinary neglect and carelessness on the part of the Government with regard to this Bill. [Cries of "Oh!"] He repeated the assertion. A paper with respect to foreign codes had that morning been placed in the hands of hon. Members which bore most vitally on the subject they were now discussing. It had some time previously been laid on the table of the House of Lords, and he said again that the delay in its presentation to that House exhibited a degree of carelessness to which he recollected no parallel. He thought that under these circumstances it was impossible to continue the present discussion.

I certainly congratulate the opponents of this Bill on the success with which they have, for ten hours, contrived to exercise their ingenuity upon three lines of a clause. If they will allow me, however, I beg to inform them that we shall return and sit here day by day, and night by night, until this Bill be concluded. Other persons, I think, when they see the course of our proceedings, may entertain opinions not very favourable to those who oppose the progress of this Bill. It will be for them to consider how far their conduct will meet with general approbation. I should certainly have resisted the proposition for an adjournment, and should have urged the Committee at least to go through this clause, but for consideration to the professional engagements of my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, who will be required at an early hour to-morrow to be present in the House of Lords. Out of consideration to him, therefore, and not at all out of consideration to the opponents of the Bill, I shall not oppose the Motion for adjournment.

This is not the first time that my noble Friend has given me occasion to perceive that he emancipates himself from certain rules which are ordinarily incumbent upon hon. Members of this House. [Cries of "Oh, oh !"] I repeat it —this is not the first occasion on which my noble Friend has emancipated himself from those rules which are ordinarily incumbent upon hon. Members of this House, and on which, confident in his majority, he assumes to himself the liberty of using language to other hon. Members of this House which I will venture to say is entirely without precedent —["Oh !"]—yes, without precedent so far as my recollection of twenty-five years in Parliament can go—in the conduct of former leaders of this House. It is the first time that I have heard the leader of this House rise in his place, after ten hours' discussion upon a single subject, and find fault with those who have been endeavouring to repair the grievous and manifold errors of his Bill, as if they had been interposing obstructions; and it is the first time that I have hoard the loader of this House, on consenting that the Chairman should report progress, take care to inform those from whom he differed, and on whom he is laying a physical burden as great as their powers will bear, that be consents to it, forsooth, out of deference to the Attorney General, but in no degree out of consideration to the Members of this House. Now, I will meet my noble Friend by no retort of language, by no epithet such as, perhaps, in a moment of temper, I might be inclined to apply. I have heard those observations of my noble Friend, however, with the greatest pain; and this is not the first occasion upon which I have experienced the same feeling. So thankful am I for the liberty of speech permitted to minorities in this House, and happily not subject to be taken from us by any arbitrary will, that taunts like those proceeding somewhat too often from a portion of the Treasury bench will not ruffle my temper. I put it seriously to my noble Friend, to those who support him, and the House generally, to say what has been the character of the discussion upon this Bill. Have not three-fourths of the time that we have occupied in Committee been occupied in urging propositions to which at length Her Majesty's Government, notwithstanding their opposition in the first instance, have been forced to give way? We began business this morning with an Amendment of the noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord John Manners), which for two hours and a half was stiffly resisted by the Attorney General; but at last, such was the feeling in its favour, that my noble Friend, with that acute instinct which enables him to discern the signs of the coming defeat, conceded the point. Is it fair and just after this, and when our discussions have usually terminated by our gaining the points we have pressed, to say that factious obstruction is the character of those discussions? I say that the whole proceeding of my noble Friend is entirely unprecedented. No doubt, in the course he is taking, he is adopting a conscientious construction of what he believes to be public duty. I hope he will make similar allowances for those who are opposed to him. I believe we are acting strictly in the discharge of our duty when we oppose one of the worst and most carelessly drawn Bills on a subject of the greatest importance I have ever seen submitted to this House; and I am quite prepared to leave the judgment to be passed on our respective proceedings to the public out of doors.

Whether, in the words which have just passed, my right hon. Friend or I have shown the greatest amount of temper, I will leave others to decide. I only beg to say that I used no epithets. I did not employ the word "factious." Perhaps, indeed, when the House recollects that, in a former part of this ten hours' sitting, my right hon. Friend informed me that he was determined we should not carry the Bill until the Greek Kalends, I might have used something like the expression which my right hon. Friend imputed to me. But I did not do so. As to the complaint he makes, I do not conceive I am departing in any way from the rules of the House in the step I have taken. The natural course would have been, in such a case as this, for the leader of the House to have resisted a Motion of adjournment, when there remained only a few lines of a clause with regard to which no Amendment was to be proposed. The natural course would have been to ask the Committee to affirm that they would not report progress. I stated that, in acceding to the adjournment, I did so not out of deference to any arguments urged by those who opposed the Bill, but out of consideration to my hon. and learned Friend and the professional engagements which he has to fulfil; and, in doing so, I believe I was acting strictly in accordance with the rules and practice of the House.

said, the noble Lord was not quite correct in saying that there remained no Amendment to be disposed of on this clause. It was certainly expected that the definition of a word would be added to the three remaining lines which the Attorney General now said he was desirous of adding in a general interpretation clause.

said, he thought the noble Lord's complaint of the conduct of the opponents of the Bill came at rather an unfortunate time, just after the Opposition side of the House had assisted the Government to carry out their views, and had obtained for them a majority of three to one. It was not to be expected that the opponents of the Bill should, by any protest on the part of the Government, be prevented from giving it a careful and adequate consideration.

said, the word "bigamy" in this clause would require a very lengthened discussion to set its meaning right.

Perhaps the Committee will allow me to offer one word of explanation. My noble Friend, as I now understand, says it was not out of consideration "for the arguments" of the opponents of the Bill that he acceded to the adjournment. My belief was that he said it was not out of consideration for his opponents. If, however, it was not out of consideration for their arguments, I have not a word of complaint to make of that phrase, and I beg my noble Friend to consider unsaid what fell from me on this subject.

What I meant was, that I acceded to the adjournment not out of consideration for "the wishes" of the opponents of this measure.

in moving the second reading of this Bill, said that, in fulfilment of the promise which he made last Session, a Bill was introduced in the other House this Session for the purpose of making permanent regulations with respect to the administration of the Roman Catholic Charities in this country, which Charities, owing to the peculiar conditions attached thereto, were exempted from the general law relating to Charities passed in 1853. Since that time, short Bills had been passed from year to year to exempt the Roman Catholic Charities, until a satisfactory permanent measure could be framed with regard to them. The Bill introduced this year was referred by the other House to a Select Committee, who reported that, in consequence of important questions having been brought before them, there was not sufficient time this Session to frame a permanent measure, and they therefore recommended that another short Bill should be passed to continue the exemption till next year. This Bill had been accordingly introduced for that purpose.

said, he fully agreed that it was highly expedient that some measure with respect to Roman Catholic Charities should be passed.

said, he wished to call attention to the case of the retiring salary of the Judge of the Court, and to suggest that, whenever that Judge retired, he should have his present full salary.

said, the salary of the Judge in question had been increased to £3,500 a year, and he was placed in the position of a puisne Judge.

remarked, that the worst economy the nation could practise was economy in the retiring salaries of Judges.