The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-24 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, NOVEVIBER 24, 1863.

LITERATURE,

The Wife's Evidence. By W. G. Wills, author of
"Notice to Quit," &e. Three vols. Hurst and
Blackett.
The two great orators of ancient times elicited
from their hearers a widely different species of
approbation. The Romans listened with rapt
attention to the eloquence of Tully, and at the close
of the discourse were be lost in admirationt at the
genius of the orator—" What an orator is Cicero !"
Ear otherwise was it with the listeners of Demos-
thenes. At the close of his impassioned
" Philippics," no word of praise was bestowed
upon the speaker ; but, carried away by the power
of his discourse, with one voice his hearers would
exclaim, "Let us march against Philip !" We are
not going to compare Mr. Wills with these giants
of old, but the comparison is suggested to us by the
conviction that he has framed the arguments and
incidents of his story so happily, that his readers,
before they stop to admire the eloquence of the
author, will all be willing converts to his theory.
Mr. Wills' own convictions upon the subject he has
chosen, are evidently very strong, and there is
nothing so powerful as conviction for convincing
others. The preface to the book consists of a few
lines from two totally different legal enactments.
The first is the Act 12 and 13 Vic., c. 106, in which
permission is given for the wife of a bankrupt to
give evidence before the Court of Bankruptcy ! The
other is the well-known formula of our common law,
which forbids a wife to give evidence for or against
her husband' in any criminal proceeding. Upon
these two facts Mr. Wills has. very ingeniously
story
that with no great
constructedimprobabi a
brngslity
both laws to bear at
different periods upon the same wife and
husband. If the construction of the story is inge-
nious, the manner in which it is worked out is sin-
gularly effective, in the simple truthfulness and
deep natural pathos with which the domestic tragedy
is imbued. There is here no striving after sensa-
tional effect, but again and again the hearts of
many readers will thrill and their eyes brim at the
touch of that mighty power that " makes the whole
world kin." The very opening gives a happy speci-
men of the simple, natural manner of this nar-
rative :
He sought to tell her these many days. Only yesterday,
when he returned from his office in Fleet.street to his house
in Hornsey-road, he laid a plot to tell her; but as he came
languidly upstairs, his throat adust with the heat of a Lon-
don midsummer, and saw her bright welcome awaiting him
on the landing, he lost heart, and bethought him it was a
pity to lose that garnishing of smiles to his dinner and their
light to the restful evening. Last night he was on the
brink of a disclosure, as they lay waking and talking, but
the announcement still faltered on his lips, He was a man
on the verge of bankruptcy, and his wife must be made
aware of his position somehow—he was obviously the pro-
per one to tell her, but still he held back the blow with a
half-selfish mercy.
And so, day by day, he defers the explanation
until " at last, she told him," for not in vain had
the devoted wife watched 'her husband's growing
abstraction—" She had taken him by surprise. She
had turned his flank with her ambushed sunshine,
and whilst he wavered and doubted how to comfort
her under the intelligence, her heart had read his
secret, and she had applied herself to comfort
him., A very charming, loveable character is
Eleanor or Nellie, the loving, devoted wife of the
bankrupt, and afterwards of the supposed murderer.
At her husband's trial before the Court her evi-
dence turns the scale in his favour. Later on the
husband is arrested, and under most suspicious
circumstances, for murder. At first poor Eleanor,
knowing his innocence, is unalarmed. She declares
she can explain matters in a moment, she was with
him all the time ! Among all with whom she comes
in contact no one ventures to undeceive her. Pious
frauds are adopted, various excuses are made. As
the time passes by, she grows suspicious and un-
easy. At last she forces the painful truth from
her husband, who thus gently and tenderly tries
to break it to her.
" Answer me now—you promised to answer me—are you
going to reject me as a witness ?"
" I will answer you; I have no power, love, to call you
or reject you."
"Are you going to shako my statement to the court ?
Deal fairly with me before you commit me, for with God's
help I shall appear."
" I tun not going to shake my statement, Nell ; I shall
not even speak. Coins, you are under delusion ; we have a
good case, thank God, and your evidence will not be
needed."
" Not needed ?" she cried. " Why—why, you have no
other evidence than mine ?"
" It is happily needless," said he, "so slight is the case
against me; and I shall not have the pain of seeing you
come into a large public court, Nell, . , Thank God,
my girl, we'll both be spared from such shame."
" Shame I" she repeated, clinging to him. " I tell you,
Will, when it is your lot I share I'd rather have it than
half a throne."
He caught her nestling figure into him with a moment's
ecstasy of pride and gratitude, " I'd face the world with
you, love," he said tenderly. " And so they never told you
—they never told my poor girl ?"
" Told me what ?" she cried, breaking from him in a
terror. " Any bad news ?"
"No bad news. There, be tranquil ; it is old, old news,
old as the laws. Don't be uneasy, Nell; we shall have a
quiet talk, as you wished, about this same evidence of
yours; we don't mind who hoar us. There, don't look so
wild ; there is nothing I have to tell you worth that wild-
fowl look. Now, Nellie, I suppose you, who have quite a
business experience, remember that in business matters a
wife is not recognisable as an agent in law. She is sup-
posed to be under her husband's influence and control. If
you had debts, Nellie, which you never had—debts for
bonnets and shawls and trinkets, which you are reasonably
fond of, on reckoning day against whose names would these
debts be entered ?"
"You are trifling with me. But to-day I will not be set
aside : yon must meet my questions," she said, again re-
called by his light manner to her resolve and mettle.
" I am meeting your questions, Nell, but I may choose
my own way. Who is liable for those debts, you or I?"
" You would be," she said, impatiently.
" And if you were to be sued for non-payment in a court
of law, whose name would head the action, yours or mine F"
" Yours."
" And so poor Nellie seems to have no existence in law,"
he said, looking in her face with a nervous calculation and
forced smile.
" I see your drift, but you are not putting it fairly. I have
read cases in the newspapers too often to be deceived. If a
wife commits a felony, her husband is not answerable—she
will be tried by herself; as she has existence in law."
" I am talking of a wife's evidence, Nellie," ho said,
solemnly watching her. "You are supposed to be under
my complete influence, and your statement is assumed in
law to be under toy undue direction. The law exists chiefly
in mercy that a wife may not be forced to appear against
her husband, but if she would appear for him, it is naturally
supposed she is in collusion with hire, don't you under-
stand : she is hi fact flesh of his flesh, and must be pardoned
should she perjure herself for his sake."
"You cannot deceive me," she said indignantly. " You
know well I was called as a witness in your examinations in
the court of bankruptcy, and gave evidence perfectly good
in law as to the surrender of all your property."
" That was a civil case," replied her husband, "and the
law with respect to civil cases is altered ; but in criminal
cases—"
" In matters of life and death, you would tell me," said
she vehemently, " a wife is silenced, when a word from
her would save her husband's liie. It is not true—l do not
believe you; if I believed that, it would kill me," cried the
poor emphatic Eleanor.
The best argument poor Eleanor brings forward in
favour of her cause is when, a little later, she is ap.
pealing to the counsel :
THE BENEFIT OF A DOUBT.
tome "I do not know the law, sir. It seems like a
prison, shutting out life and truth. But I have heard that
you give the prisoner tho benefit of a doubt. You even
receive the prisoner's own statement, and give it weight."
"It is not given on oath," interposed the counsel.
Let,us say that the evidence of a Christian woman,
given on her oath in favour of her husband, may be liable
to suspicion—the utmost suspicion and doubt—and be only
the weight of a feather in the scale. Still, why should he
not have the benefit of a doubt? Why must his wife sit
silent till her heart bursts, whilst servants and enemies
swear his life away?
The lawyer replies to this with equal truth :
"It is a law, besides, that really has a humane and
merciful intention. Now, suppose you were possessed of
evidence against your husband—dust the missing link that
might be necessary to convict him, and you loved him as
you do now—would it not bs a painful state of things if
you could be dragged into the witness-box by a subpoena,
and forced to give evidence which must convict him But
here is the law you complain of, which has been framed to
shelter him and you from such an unnatural position,"
These two considerations--tae wife's plea that she
may speak for I.ser husband as he speaks for himself,
and the lawyer's threat that such a permission
might compel her to speak against him—these two
considerations taken together seem to afford a solu-
tion to all the difficulties of the case. A person
under accusation is not compelled to criminate hini-