The Sun.
London, England, 1865-07-27 00:00:00

ject to ascertain the real position in which husband
and wife respectively stand to each other, and to be-
come familiar with the circumstances as well as the
conditions under which a bond which is found irk-
some may be sundered. Formerly, when people
took each other for better for worse, the only matter
left for decision was whether an individual was pre-
pared to enter into a life-long contract ; but under
the existing regime the considerations which present
themselves to the minds of reflecting people are so
manifold that every thoughtful person would do
well to weigh them with great care. In the
words of the proverb, no one ought to buy a pig
in a poke, and every man and woman who has a
due regard for his or her happiness ought, before
marriage, to ascertain what they ought to do and
what they ought to avoid, if they should be
desirous of returning to a state of what may, for
want of a better designation, be termed single blessed-
ness. It is remarked that there has been of late a
growing disinclination towards matrimony on the
part of our aristocratic youth, and we cannot avoid
thinking that this unwillingness has been to a great
extent fostered by the erroneous impression, which
our social history during the past seven years has
failed to eradicate, that matrimony is in some sort a
sacred and irrevocable contract. Writers ou the
science of jurisprudence bear unanimous testimony
to the great difficulty which attends all attempts to
extinguish traditionary usages by positive laws ; we
ought not therefore to be unreasonably astonished
if the rising generation have not completely eman-
cipated themselves from the prejudices of what we
may still call the present age. A decision pronounced
on Tuesday last by Sir James Wilde, exposing one
of the pitfalls into which a young man of wealth
may drop if he should marry a woman of whom he
subsequently tires, has induced us to offer a few
remarks on a topic which is confessedly one of great
social interest. In the suit of Sidney v. Sidney, a
petition was presented by the wife, praying for a
dissolution of her marriage, on the ground of her
husband's cruelty and adultery. The charges were
established, and the usual decree pronounced. After
the lapse of the customary interval to admit either
of appeal or of the int6rvention of the Queen's Proc-
tor, the Court was moved to make the decree abso-
lute, and at the same time the late wife petitioned
that her husband should be ordered to make an
annual provision for her support. This raised an
extremely nice point-Ist, as to the power of the
Court to accede to the wife's prayer; and, 2dly, as to
the scale on which, if her petition was complied with,
permanent alimony should be granted. The ecclesi-
astical courts were in the habit of compelling a
husband to make permanent provision for his wife
when they pronounced a divorce A mensa et thoro,
but as such divorce did not amount to dissolution
of the marriage tie, the subsisting relation of hus-
band and wife constituted the foundation on which
the alimony was granted. In cases of judicial sepa-
ration, which stand on a similar footing with the
previous divorces, the new Court has invariably
followed the example set it by the ecclesiastical
tribunals in respect to permanent alimony. But in
cases where the marriage is actually dissolved, the
same precedents do not apply, and the Court is
compelled to confine itself to the exercise of those
powers which are granted by the statute which called
it into existence. It had already been decided by
Sir C. Cresswell that in those cases where the wife
was the complainant she ought not to be compelled
to purchase redress at the cost of being left destitute,
whilst on the other hand it would be impolitic to
give her a large pecuniary interest in obtaining a
dissolution of the marriage tie. In the present in-
stance, however, the application of the principle has
been extended by Sir J. Wilde, and husbands are
now informed that they cannot get rid of their wives
by providing them with a bare maintenance. The
Judge Ordinary declares that it is a very common
case indeed for a young husband to get tired of his
wife shortly after marriage, and endeavour to shake
her off. To such a one he says, " According to
your ability you must still support the woman you
have first chosen and then discarded, and so much
of the duty of the husband as consists in the main-
tenance of his wife may be justly kept alive and
enforced upon you in favour of her whom you have
driven to relinquish your name and home."
And accordingly, as Mr. Sidney was the possessor
of realised property, a decree was made that an
annual sum of £245 should be paid to his late wife
whilst she remained unmarried, the Court profess-
ing itself unable to deal with the husband's profes-
sional income. The law of England is said to be
made up of judicial precedents, and as the marriage
law is one with which every one should be familiar,
here is one which we recommend to the attentive
consideration of all bachelors of property who are
thinking of entering into the holy state of matri-
mony. We should advise such to reckon well the
cost of the possibly temporary luxury in which
they may be about to indulge. If they fancy a •
good-looking-girl as a wife for a few years,
they should not forget that, although by a judi-
cious course of cruelty and dissipation they can
virtually compel her to abandon the home they have
provided, they may have the misfortune of seeing
an ugly slice taken out of their ancestral estates
for her future support. It is satisfactory, however,
to see that merchants, tradesmen, and professional
men do not labour under the same disadvantages,
and that the Legislature enables them to get rid of
their wives without the necessity of maintaining a
costly, and thenceforth a useless burden.. With a
man's earnings the Court cannot interfere. On
the whole, however, we do not think that, with the
facilities now afforded for dissolving marriages,
either man or woman can complain of being
needlessly hampered. As soon as the law of divorce
is carefully determined, and becomes more generally
understood, people when they marry will, to bor-
row a common expression, " know exactly where
they are," and matters will run on smoothly
towards that happy consummation to which one or
both will look forward when they will be in a posi-
tion under different, if not happier, auspices to re-
peat the experiment. " The possibility of freedom,"
as Sir James Wilde said when delivering his judg-
ment the other day, " begets the desire to be set
free, and the great evil of a marriage dissolved is
that it loosens the bonds of so many others."
The word " evil" is clearly a misprint for " advan-
tage," as it is impossible to conceive that the
Legislature would maintain in existence a tribunal,
the presiding judge of which dissolves some eight
or ten marriages a day, and at the same time be-
lieves that each dissolution contributes in an appre-
ciable degree to weaken the binding efficacy of
several existing marriages.

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