The Sun.
London, England, 1831-12-20 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

A FAMILIAR COMPENDIUM OF THIS
LAW OF HUSBAND AND WIFE.
BY A SOLICITOR,
LONDON : WHIMER, TRE4CHER7 AND CO, 1831.
This book is designed to be a familiar abridge-
ment of the laws affecting husband and wife, with
the addition of the legislative provisions relating
to breach of promise of marriage, the seduction,
and the abduction of women. It appears to be
intended rather for unprofessional, than profess
sional, readers, and is written in a plain, familiar,
style. Several interesting cases, such as " Foote
v. Hayne," and the " king v. Wakefield," are
given at considerable length, and with illustra-
tions of an entertaining kind not usually met with
in law reports. 4.411
It is very questionable whether popular
works on law, medicine, or such sciences of
immediate practical importance, do not, for the
most part, do more harm than good. They
give people a smattering of things which they
cannot thoroughly understand, for want of pro-
fessional education, and lead them to rely upon
their own imperfect knowledge rather than upon
professional and technical skill. Whoever is af-
flicted with the cholera morbus, or any other
disease, runs the most imminent risk of destruc-
tion, if he relies upon treatises on domestic
medicine for a cure ; and, in the same way, if a
man has the misfortune to fall within the juris-
diction of Doctors' Commons, he will do much
wiser in confiding in the advice of his legal
friends, than by trusting to such publications as
that before us.

We admit, however, that it is desirable
that the reciprocal rights and duties of hus-
band and wife should be generally known, in-
stead of being involved in legal obscurity.
The institution of marriage is one upon which
the very existence of civilized society depends.
It is that institution, combined with the
establishment of the rights of property, which
distinguishes the life of civilized men from
that of savages. It fastens men's affections to
the circle of domestic endearment, and secures
to women the respect and protection to which
their sex is entitled. When, therefore, the duties
of marriage are lightly regarded, or made sub-
servient to the ends of avarice, or of vanity, it
is not to be wondered at that thorns are found
where there ought to have been roses.
The case of Mr. and Lady Caroline Neeld
has disgusted the public at the indifference with
which the solemnity of marriage is treated by the
higher ranks, and by their imitators among the
upstarts of the middle ranks. The foolish
vanity of the goldsmith's heir, and the sordid
views of the lady or her friends, have been placed
in a light that has made both parties appear ridi-
culous and contemptible in the eyes of the
common-sense portion of society. Dr. Lush-
ington's judgment has afforded very general satis-
faction, and could, indeed, have hardly been dif-
ferent, if the former decisions on the subject of
what is termed cruelty are taken into conside-
ration. The following is the summary in the
" Compendium" of the law on this subject :
" Cruelty by the ecclesiastical law will entitle the in-
jured person to a divorce from bed and board, if it consist
in that sort of conduct which endangers the life or health
of the complainant, and renders cohabitation unsafe.
" The husband as well as the wife is entitled to a
divorce by reason of cruelty, and instances are not want-
ing wherein sentences of divorce have been pronounced
on the application of the husband. But it most commonly
happens that the wife is promoter in suits of this nature
(which are sometimes coupled with the suit for adultery),
tad if it he proved that the conduct of the husband h .
been dangerous, or accompanied with probability of per-
sonal violence, she is released from cohabitation.
" It is not necessary to prove acts of personal violence
to suhstantiate a charge of cruelty ; it being the acknow-
ledged doctrine that danger to the person and health is
sufficient.— Hubne v. Bulme, Consiatory of London,
.31. T., 1823.
" Husband and wife. however, must not expect that the
Ecalesiastical Court will interfere between them and ordi-
nary domestic quarrels. Sir William Scott, now Lord
Stowell, in his judgment in the case of " Evans v. Evans,"
lays down the law on the subject with great precision and
elegance, in the following words :
" • What merely wounds the mental feelings is in few
cases to be admitted, when it is not accompanied with
bodily injury, either actual or menaced. Mere austerity
of temper, petulance of manners, rudeness of language, a
want of civil attention and accommodation, even occa-
sional sallies of passion, if they do not threaten bodily
harm, do not amount to legal cruelty. They are high
moral offences in the marriage state undoubtedly; not
innocent surely in any state of life; but still they are not
that cruelty against which the law can relieve. Under
such misconduct of either of the parties, for it may exist on
the one side as well as on the other, the suffering party
must bear in some degree the consequences of an injudi-
cious connection ; must subdue by decent resistance or by
prudent cenciliatien ; and if this cannot he done, both
must suffer in silence. And if it be complained that, by
this inactivity of the Courts, much injustice may be suf-
fered, and much misery produced, the answer is, that
Courts of Justice do not pretend to furnish clues for all
the miseries of human life. They redress or punish gross
violations of duty, but they go no further; they cannot
make men virtuous; and, as the happiness of the world
depends upon its virtue, there may be much unhappiness
in it which human laws cannot undertake to remove.—
Still less is it cruelty, where it wounds not the natural
feelings, but the acquired feelings arising from particular
rank and situation ; for the Court has no scale of sensibi-
ities by which it can gauge the quantum of injury done
and felt ; and therefore, though the Court will not abso-
'utely exclude considerations of that sort where they are
stated merely as matter of aggravation, yet they cannot
constitute cruelty when it would not otherwise have
existed. Of course the denial of little indulgences and
particular accommodations, which the delicacy of the
world is apt to number amongst its necessaries, is not
cruelty, It may, to be sure, be a harsh thing to refuse the
use of a carriage, or the use of a servant ; it may in many
cases be extremely unhandsome, extremely disgraceful to
the character of the husband, but the Ecclesiastical Court
does not look to such matters : the great ends of marriage
may very well be carried on without them ; and if people
will quarrel about such matters, and which they certainly
may do in many cases with a great deal of acrimony, and
sometimes with much reason, they yet must decide such
affairs as well as they can in their own domestic forum.'
• * " I have heard no one case cittd, in which the
Court has granted a divorce without proof given of a rea-
sonable apprehension of bodily hurt. I say an apprehen.
sion, because assuredly the Court is not to wait till the
hurt is actually done; but the apprehension must be rea-
sonable ; it must not be an apprehension arising merely
from an exquisite and diseased sensibility of mind. Petty
vocations applied to such a constitution of mind may cer-
tainly in time wear out the animal machine, but still they
are not cases of legal relief ; people must relieve them-
selves as well as they can by prudent resistance—by calling
in the succours of religion and the consolation of friends.' "

MR. COOPER'S LAST NEW NOVEL " TILE
Baavo."—The graphic scene of the Regatta, when the
Doge goes to wed the Adriatic, the various glowing and
lucid views of the Piazza San Marco, filled by a masked
and chameleon-costumed multitude, bent on the pleasures
the Ilidotto and Casino, and the numerous highly -
finished pictures within the boundaries of the Ledo, and
of the " Ocean Queen," with all her glittering tow. rA and
Jalaces, prove that Mr. COOPER is as inue!i at home in
Venice as at the tiller of " The Water Witch," on the
lusrter•deck of the Arid, or, in the wild dud des'il,te
prairie of the New World.