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NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS . During the Session of Parliament it is often impossible to nndroomfor correspondence , even the briefest ; . Ifrts impossible to acknowledge the mass of letters we received Their insertion is often delayed , owing to a press of matter ; and when omitted , it is freijuently from reasons quite independent of the merits of the communication . No . notice cau be taken of anonymous correspondence . Whateveris intended for insertion must be authenticated by the name and address of the writer ; not necessarily for publication , but as a guarantee of his good faith . ' We cannot undertake to return rejected communications . / Communications should always be legibly written , and on one side of the paper only . If loug . it increases the difficulty of finding space for them .
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THE DIVORCE BILL . The general Divorce B ill has caused a stir in the public inind which the particular Divorce Bills have never aroused . For our readers must bear in mind that the bill now passing through the Commons is in the main merely calculated to make more easy and therefore more general the divorces which peers and other wealthy persons now occasionally obtain from the House of IiOrds . This caution is necessary , for one hears in society vague talk about the multiplicity of divorces for any and every cause under '
new bill . ' The new bill makes the adultery of the wife and * adultery and cruelty' by the husband the only grounds of divorce . There is thus no increase , but there is an extension of the facilities , of divorce , for instead of the three suits ( criminal conversation , suit in . the Ecclesiastical Court , and special Act of Parliament ) now necessary , one suit in a new Court will be sufficient for the purpose . This will simply make divorce easy to those who have as good grounds for asking it as the wealthy persons who now obtain it by special privilege . No practical man denies that this is a real 'law reform . '
Men not practical , men who seem to set the Church above both God and man , object on principle to the dissolubility of marriage , and object in practice to the extension of divorce . But these men of religion confound two essentially distinct things—marriage as a religious sacrament or institution , and marriage as a civil bond . Marriage is a religious institution—not as Xiord STOT ^ Eiiii , quoted by Mr . Gxadbtone , lays down , * when religion is received into a
State , ' but when religion is recognized by the individual conscience . When a man and w 6 man , loving one another , seek the consecration of the Church to their union in marriage , it is made a religious bond by the force of their own consent to its sacred character . Society has in nearly all countries consented to recognise the sacred ceremony as a civil contract ; but this recognition is a secular consequence established for the convenience of the State . It neither adds to nor
diminishes the value of the rite m the eyea of the religious person , who regards the rite as indissoluble , and who says , '" Come what may , my marriage cannot be dissolved ; the Church has bound and the civil law cannot
loose . " If any legislation attempted to coerce the conscience of this man—attempted to make him regard his marriage as dissolved —attempted to force him into a second marriage , which to his mind would be adultery- — every man in England would protest against the oppression . But no law of divorce ever enacted has interfered with the religious obligations of any married persons ; it simply deals as becomes it with the secular
consequences of marriage . It dissolves the marriage ; but its dissolution cannot touch that bond which the pr iest- may have imposed on the conscience of the man and wife . This is no imaginary case . Boman Catholics may be divorced by law , but no religious Boman Catholic considers himself divorced
in conscience . It is open to the High Church party , represented by Mr . Gladstone , to fly to a similar refuge—a hiding-place into which no Attorney-General can penetrate . The new Divorce Bill is an enabling , not a compulsory , act . It does not prevent that forgiveness of the guilty wife which Mr . Dkummoud and Mr . Gladstone
contemplate ; it does not prevent the injured husband from taking her back to his heart and home ; it does not even prevent the divorced parties from marrying each other again . But it says to the husband wronged by the adultery of his wife , " You can separate yourself from this woman , and thus prevent her imposing upon your heart and home a child not yours ; " and it says to the woman who suffers from the ' adultery and cruelty , ' or the * incestuous adultery' of her husband , " You can obtain
your freedom , and seek elsewhere for domestic happiness . " But it forces no conscience ; it releases no man or woman from any religious obligation they may entertain . It simply enables those who hate each other to avoid the secular consequences of their union . " We may take Higher ground , and discuss the dissolubility of marriage in its purely religious aspect . The man swears at the altar to love and to cherish , ' the woman to ' love and obey , ' until death ; when love and
obedience have eeased , the marriage vow ia broken . God instituted marriage as an ordinance of love , not as a legal contract compelling the man to give bed and board to a profligate woman , or to pay for the support of children the offspring of adultery . Even according to High Church teaching , God must regard with as much anger the undissolved marriage of unloving persons as the dissolution of marriage where there is no love . The ends of marriage in the eyes of
statesmen may be the security of property to legitimate heirs and the maintenance of the fabric of civil society , but the priest expressly regards it as a holy ordinance ' instituted in the time of man ' s innocency' ( before suits for alimony , or separation , or wife ' s debts , were discovered ) to prevent profligacy and to preserve the purity of religion . No Attorney-General can touch this sacred rite ,
but the High Church party , feeling , we suppose , that through their own feebleness they are losing their hold on the conscience of the laity , call in ,, as of yore , the secular arm to give to the secular consequences of marriage a legal indissolubility , and thus bind together by fear of the gaol and the hulk the married couples who would contemn the ordinances of the Church .
An objection to the new bill comes from another side : Lord Ltnjdhuust asserts that adultery by the husband should be as legitimate a cause of divorce as adultery by the wife . Leaving out of the question the practical consideration that adultery by the wife imposes a material wrong on the husband , while adultery by the husband imposes only a sentimental wrong on the wife , we take our stand on the principle which religion in all
ages has indirectly sanctioned , and which tl moral instinct of mankind has always a serted , that adultery by a man is not i sinful as adultery by a woman . One mig discover some recondite reason for the d : ference , but we rely on the universal sen : of society , which forgives in a man social sii it cannot forgive in a woman . Whether it that a woman to be pure at all must 1 entirely pure ; or whether it is that ma with a stronger mind , may make vice a thii apart , ' while woman , more sensitive , thoroughly tainted with one great sin , it is tl
fact ( and against facts we cannot fight ) tin an unchaste woman is , in the eyes of evei man and woman , in the kingdom , tenfold moi guilty and abhorred than an unchaste ma But while laying down this as true , ve ayou ' accept Lord Ltndhuest ' s amendment j embody ing a principle that would have ii directly a beneficial effect . It would arm wife persecuted in many ways with a pow < of release . The Scottish wives possess tl power , they seldom use it ; but we have i doubt that it gives a dignity to their positio which must have a good result .
Leaving the arguments of priests and \ v < men we come to the arguments of ' < the world . ' They assert that the iiidissoli bility of marriage has a good effect on pe sons of restive tempers ; that it induces the to bear and forbear when they know th ; escape is out of the question . We do n < deny that there are couples on whom th consideration has an influence in establishii a decorous if not a happy household ; but v must not forget that there are many \ vl would wear with ease a chain that mig ht 1 taken off at any -hour who bear with irrit know al
tion an irremovable yoke . We : that the sense of aii everlasting bond tempi many husbands and wives into cruelties an provocations they would never dare to exei cise were there any prospect of the puuisl ment of divorce . For it must not be forgoi ten ( while the religious party are straiigel enough always talking of divorce as a priv lege ) that to many husbands , and to nearl all wives , divorce would be , to speak mos lightly , a serious inconvenience . Mauy husband of the * middle class who now by n peated petty annoyances persecutes his wifi would hesitate to do so were he awnre tha
any slip on his part would arm her wit power to obtain a release from his contro and thus deprive him of a helpmate who ma be useful though not openly esteemed , an convenient though not respected . To the provisions of the Mbill which secur to her own use the earnings of a wife deserte < for a year , and which enable her to obtaii judicial separation when the desertion haa ex tended for two years , we cordially assent . II is also satisfactory that judicial separafcioi ( equivalent to the divorce a mensd ct thoro \ is to bo obtainable for all those causes whici now are visited with partial divorce ia the Ecclesiastical Court .
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THE BENGAL TERROR . The Bengal mutiny has already been tracec to a hundred separate sources by writers an ( speakers , each of whom , having detected i real or imaginary flaw in our Indian system has triumphantly connected it with the rcvoli of the native regiments . Mr . Disbamli hat compounded a curious theory , attributing th < late events to our extensive annexations , ou ; religious meddling , and our tampering witl the ancient institutes of property . This view with many others equally plausible , may b < disposed of by a reference to the single foe : that the rebellion is military , instend o national . It is not Bengal but the Benga array that has sprung into insurrection . W <
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750 THE IiEAPEB . [ No . 385 , Atj&tjst 8 , 1857 .
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There is nothing so revolutionary , because there is nothing so unnatural and convulsive , as the strain to keep things fixed when all the world is by thevery law ofits creation in eternal progress . —De . Aenold
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SATURDAY , AUGUST 8 , 1857 .
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 8, 1857, page 756, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2204/page/12/
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