The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1877-10-06

Previous to 1870, the law of these islands
respecting divorce was to be found in the Civil
| Code, Sections 1923 to 1885 inclusive. In the
year mentioned, the then Attorney General, (Mr.
S. Ii. Phillips) prepared and carried through the
legislature, San Act relating to Divorce
which repealed the sections above recited and
substituted for the former simple and speedy
process Of divorce, a lengthy. complicated and
costly one. Experience has proved the great
mistake then made that it was not possible to
keep together by law a man and woman who
had no regard for each other and further,
that facilities for divorce are really conducive to
morality. In 1874 the law of 1870 was repealed;
but by an oversight not in Hawaiian
legislation, the sections of the Civil Code above
referred to were not re-enacted. Consequently
there was no law for divorce extant, until nearly
a year after the legislature adjourned. when the
Supreme Court declared the law of 1874, repeal
ing that of 1870, to be unconstitutional and void,
on a test case brought by W. G. Jones, ESQ.,,
which will be found in vol. 3 Hawaiian Reports.
In a former issue, we suggested that, in view
of the frequency of cases of illicit cohabitation
among certain classes of this community, some
notifications are necessary in regard to the
legislation relating to divorce. In all
civilized communities, divorce is regarded as a
consequence of unfaithfulness to mar
rage relations. In some countries, society is
in such cases, Influenced by the convic-
ton of the imperative necessity of protecting
married life from moral corruption and it is
a bounden duty of an injured spouse
10 seek at once a divorce from a guilty consort.
10 hesitate about such a step or to condone the
is generally regarded in civilized and
communities as the deepest degradation.
All decent people shut their doors against a mar
led couple who continue to cohabit after the
husband or the wife has been proven to have
Violated their nuptial VOW. In their case, the
lallowed aureola which should environ cbaste
md honorable wedlock has been for ever tarn- !
shed, and all those who esteem the sacred char
'cter OF christian matrimony shrink with horror d
nd disgust from association with a married v
either of whom contentedly acouiesces I
0 discharge the odious role of a pander to the
theirs unlawful appetite. The safeguard of '
natrimony is divorce. =
The foregoing remarks appear to us the more o
ecessary, because we are aware that some neo-
lie raise some particular objections to divorce.
nder the mistaken impression that social i'm !
lorality is encouraged by legal divorce. a
Some years ago, in Great Britain, a yerv
lrious case was brought before the Divorce
curt, in which a noble marquis, just come of
e, eioped with the wife of a British Colonel Z
I'd Member of Parliament, taking her four y
ildren with her, she being eight or nine years :
8 senior. They fed to Paris, where the in
red husband followed and succeeded in getting Y
ok two of the children. The case came be-
Re the English Divorce Court, but as the lady
used to allow any act of adultery to be proven 4
, divorce was not granted: her plan was to stf
Try the young marquis, who was infatuated the
her, after she had got Q divorce from the sur
lionel. The young Marquis was solemnly 6