The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1860-05-08 00:00:00

Central NEIN.

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ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW IN '
CRIMINAL CASES.

One of the most reasonable expectations that aea be
based upon the anticipated legal decision of a pending
dispute is perhaps that, rightly or wrongly, the matter
shall thereafter be set at rest, and that the supposed
right in question shall be dearly and definitively settled,
one way or another, as a point of fact. It seems pos.
aible, however, that there may be exceptionable cases in
which even this moderate faith in the operation of the
law may chance lii be disappointed. A recent trial in
the Divorce Court. having been adjudicated upon by the
Judges. is au terminated as te leave a lady, the principal
party therein, in the distressing position we are about to
describe. In the British dominions that lady is 'mined
Madame liaise, and is the wife of a certain M. Malec, a
French person of unenviable repute. In France and its
depsindencias the same lady is Mdlle. Simeon', spinster.
The facts leading to this extraordinary arrangement are
as follow. In 1854 Wile. SilllloDill, then • favourite
French actress, was courted by M. Make, who prevailed
upon her to takes trill to England with him in order
that lie might marry her without the consent of his rela-
tions Such convent would have been uecessary by the
French law, and perhaps M. liaise hail reason to believe
that it might be withheld from him in his contract with
the actress. The parties came to England, where, by
means of perjury, M. Malec obtained a license moll
married the lady. Millie. Simonin, whom affection for
the bridegroom appears to have been tempered by an
unusually large share of prudent*, nevertheless ilelined
to live with him as his wife until the necessary cere-
monies had been gone through in France. They re-
turned to Fans, where M Malac, after a week's futile
solicitations, abandoned the trap which lie had set for
such a particularly wary young lady. He then cast off
all disguise, and after leaving her, wrote to her to tell
her of his disinclination to fulfill his promises. " I have
broken my word. Love and respect me." were the nun-
eluding words of his epistle, sod illustrate the charm:Meer
of M. Malec vividly enough. Wile. Simonin applied to
time French Court, which declared the marriage null and
void, having been contemplated in ev•111011 of the law
and carried out by fraud acid falsehood. Millie.
Simonin returned to her profemion, in which, after a
period, M. Malec habituated himself to adopting the
course of publicly insulting and humiliating law as a
revenge for her escape. The lady returned to England
and set up in business in London. Having be,sime
naturalised as an English subject she applied to Sir
Cromwell Cromwell to set aside the English marriage
with respect to this country, 101 it had already been set
aside in Fraiince. Sir C. Cromwell declines to du so,
and dismisses her petition on the grouud that as she has
been married in England, according to English law, that
marriage eau not he interfered with, in consequence of
its being in opposition to the laws of any other country.
"This country," said the learned Judge, "was not
bound by any international law to surrender its laws to
that of any other State." The result is that which we
have already described with respect to the lady's posi-
tion in France and England respectively. In no other
country can any living person or any legal court, how.
ever corstituted, decide whether the lady be iddlle.
Sinionin or /Wine. Malec, except as • matter of favour.
This is not only hard upon the lady but is not creditable
to time laws of England, especially as that law has within
the last few years, upon precisely the same grounds as
throe taken by the French Conti., declared ladies to be
Illegally living with their sirpmeed husbands, and decided
whole families to be illegitimate when the persons con-
tracting the supposed marriage (between the husband
and the sister of • amassed wife) have lett England to