The Sun.
London, England, 1830-06-04 00:00:00

humble Address be presented to his Majesty, pray-
ing that his Majesty would be pleased to direct the
Commission, now sitting to inquire into the Eccle-
siastical Courts, to take into their consideration the
state of the Law of Divorce, the expence of ob-
taining a divorce, and to inquire into the best means
of bringing such case under a legal jurisdiction."—
The Law of Divorce is like almost every other thing
in England—a lie. Fiction runs through all our
institutions and all our practices. There is nothing
in England which does not differ from what it pur-
ports to be. Into the cause of the prevalence of
fiction in the institutions and practices of this
country we will not now enter at present. The
Law of Divorce does not form an exception to the
general rule. The letter of the law is, that marriage
is indissoluble. The reality is, that every man who
can afford to spend 7001., and who has interest to
procure votes, can set the law aside.
" There was even yet (said Dr. Phillimore) canvassing
for opinions and support for such Bills as were disgraceful
even in a Turnpike Act. The next point he would men-
tion was the inequality of the law. Nothing was better
established, as a principle of our law, than that it should
be equal for all parties, for high and low, for rich and
poor, and that was the case throughout the law, except
in the law for divorce.—[We should like to see this de-
monstrated]. He had asked, a few days ago, the expence
of a common Divorce Bill, which had nothing peculiar in
it, and be was told that the expence was between 600/.
and 700/. That was an expellee which no person in the
middle and lower ranks of life could possibly submit to.
What made it more galling here was, that if a man went
act ass the borders into Scotland, or if his wife committed
adultery there, he would obtain a divorce for 10/. or 15/."
Sir Charles Wetherell observed, "If they were
to allow all who had a small sum to spend the pri-
vilege of being separated a vinculo niatrimonii, it
would follow, as a necessary consequence, that the
lower classes, whose morals were more corrupt, and
whose principles on these subjects were more lax
than those of the higher classes (! !I) would be con-
tinually applying for divorces, while the facility of
obtaining them at a small expence would increase
the immorality of adultery, and indeed give encourage-
ment to the commission of that offence." Assum-
ing the correctness of Sir Charles's premises (though
it be notorious that leisure and luxury are the great
causes of irregularities of this kind, and that the
poor are notoriously in all countries the least dis-
posed to adultery), we have here a remarkable in-
stance of the generosity of the higher orders. They
know that divorces are a great evil, and yet they
confine that evil to themselves, and carefully seoure
the morals of the poor against the contagion to
which they so expose themselves. In England
every man generously abandons his own morals, or
the morals of his own order, for the sake of guarding
the morals of others. How grateful must the poor
be to see the benevolent care of the higher orders
with regard to them ! But why is the time of
Parliament, which all admit is insufficient for busi-
ness of importance, to be occupied with tire dirty
details of Divorce Bills merely because the
parties happen to be Lords or rich persons ? Why,
but because the money is of importance to a num-
ber of individuals of influence. Of the 6001. or
7001. expenses who receives the greatest portion ?
We can conceive no other possible reason for not
withdrawing the cognizance of Divorce cases from
Parliament to a suitable tribunal. When the El-
lenborough Divorce Bill was before the House, Dr.
Lushingtori exclaimed—" Would to God the Mar-
riage Laws were placed upon some solid basis—
that some regulation were laid down, a deviation
from which would at once entitle the aggrieved party
to a Divorce, whether that party was of high or
low degree; and mark me (continued the Honour-
able and Learned Gentleman) whether male or fe-
male." On that occasion, Mr. Spring Rice ob-
served—" There was no one who disputed that the
present law was bad, and that the judicial duty
which the House had just exercised must always
be most imperfectly performed by them. The con-
elusion he took to be this—that if they allowed the
Session to pass away without making any attempt
to remedy the evil, when all admitted its existence,
he thought they could not stand well with the
country, nor could they be considered as having
discharged their duty to their constituents." This
was said on April the 6th. Last night, June
3d, the same Mr. Spring Rice " combatted
the principles on which Dr. Phillimore had brought
forward his motion ; denied the force of the argu-
ment which he had founded on the supposed in-
equality of the law for the rich and the law for the
poor ; and maintained that the House was compe-
tent to the consideration of the subject of divorce
when brought before it in particular cases." We
may observe that there is nothing peculiar in this
contradiction given by the Honourable Member to
himself. We are not aware of his having ever ut-
tered one opinion which he did not contradict in
the course of a month or two at most. We remem-
ber being much amused by the number of opinions
he sported in the course of one month, on the sub-
ject of the effect produced on the labourers of Eng-
land by the immigration of the Irish. Perhaps it
was this capacity for embracing all opinions, and
changing them as easily as a coat, that pointed him
out as a fit Under Secretary of State. The oppo-
sition, on the whole, was rather to the devolving
the subject on the Ecclesiastical Commission, than
to the principle of change being necessary. Mr.
C. Wynn thought his Honourable and Learned
Friend would have done well to propose at once a
Bill upon the subject. A contemporary (the Globe),
alluding to a recent case of bigamy at Union-hall,
pays ;
" In mussy cases of bigamy, not only do the criminals
themselves, whose passions might be supposed to bias them,
justify the con lust which is punished by law, but society
in general does not visit either party with that obloquy
which, with females in particular, falls, perhaps, too
heavily in other cases. Another circumstance adds to the
mistaken feeling of the public on this subject—the facility
with which the higher classes arc enabled to free them.
selves from those shackles which the poor man can only
throw off with his life. If the husband, in the case at
Union-hall, had been able to obtain a divorce (and be
might have as good grounds to sue for one as in some
cases that have recently occupied public attention), he
would have been entitled to marry without fear of magis-
terial interference. If divorces for sufficient reason are al-
lowable in one case they ought to be so in another; and a
poor man will never be convinced that he does wrong in
doing what, if he were rich, he knows he could do le-
gally. If the right of divorce be just and reasonable, let
it be extended to poor as well as rich, under regulations
proper to prevent its abuse. If it has no foundation in
reason or justice, let it lie equally placed beyond the reach
of rich and paw% The poor criminal should not have it
in his power to say, lam transported only because I had
not money to carry a divorce through the House of Lords.'
This is punishing an accidental circumstance connected
with the crime, and not the crime itself. The real crime
is the injury done by bigamy to the first and second wives,
and to the nights of the female sex in general ; but by our
law, it would seem to be the want of money."
In these observations there is much force. We
can conceive no circumstance to have a stronger
tendency to destroy the morality of the country than
the constant spectarsle of every tiring being given to
property. The disposition to acquire is sufficiently
strong, without the additicnal stimulants which are
afforded in this country. Montesquieu observes, that
in France hp could dispense with wealth : but that
if he were an Englishman, he should never forgive
himself if he did not obtain it, no matter how. In
fact, poverty is a crime, and almost the only crime,
in England. Bat is it prudent in the higher ranks
to let this be so apparent Oil all occasions ? Why
destroy all virtue and honour in tire body of the
people, by constantly inculcating the lesson, that it
once property ire obtained, the means ere unimpor-
tant ; and that he wino is rich may trample on all
laws, divine and human ? We would have them
pause in time. The examples constantly exposed
to the eyea of ant instructed people, are making a
deep impression on them. We can conceive no dan-
ger greater than that which the lessons taught ever)
day ace calculated to produce.—Morning Chronicle.

Several actions are still going on against the
projectors of some of the Bubble Companies of 1825, who
tiad to their cost the old proverb of " the biter bit" realised