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    Untitled Article

    This would have been behaving like a man of genius , as he is . But when talent and taste enlist under the banners of sordid faction , they may well make their lament with poor Ophelia , " we know what we are , but we know not what we shall be /'

    It may very reasonably be questioned whether a court of law ought ever to be occupied with the verification or disproof of suspicions like those entertained by the Honourable George Norton . So far as affection between the parties is concerned , nothing whatever can be contingent on the verdict of a Jury . Before matters come to that pass , the mutual feelings between the parties must be settled for life . No such verdict as

    < c Guilty of being unloveable , but recommended to benevolence , " could have any avail either with the fountain or the object , of marital mercy . Whether the ultimate fact be proved or disproved , with all persons of delicacy their future relation must be fixed unchangeably . Nor does the idea of punishment on offending parties enter into the question . Rightly or wrongly , the fact is certain , that the penal code of England knows no such crime as that of adultery . It is only taken cognizance of in the Ecclesiastical Courts , where it is called

    a sin , but dealt with as a virtue , and rewarded by the privilege of divorce ; which must , under the circumstances , be no slight privilege to the parties . The civil proceeding is merely to repay the plaintiff in hard cash for the damage done to

    his female propertj . And this proceeding we laud , because of that great constitutional maxim , that there is " no wrong without a remedy . " Now , pray where is the remedy for the grievous wrong to the woman by exery such procedure ? — the grievous wrong to any and every woman , whatever the facts of the particular case may be i For a woman ' s having loved another man besides her husband does not unhumanize her ; it does not make her a wild beast , to be beaten , and pelted , and hunted , and mangled . Let her have gone to ( her over-pnssiug is beyond supposition ) the boundaries which society allows

    to the other sex without loss of caste ; let her have been a * had as a ?? ia ? t ; still it is both si grievous wrong towards her , and a pernicious practice for society , that all her personal ways , her little toilette fancies , her daily and nightly whereabout , should be brought into question , and even her laundress ' s basket be subjected to forensic investigation , tickling the itching ears of a coarse-minded auditory , and all particulars hawked about the streets next morning in filthy ballads , filthier caricatures , and filthiest newspapers . The exposure of any woman to this indecent treatment for the sake of pocketing pence thereby , is a wrong which society would never allow , were the terms " female delicacy" generally regarded as any thing more than a cant phrase for a particular species of male property . It is needless to show how uiucu the

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    Politics of the Common Pleas . 397

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1836, page 397, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2659/page/5/